CHAPTER IV
On the East Coast
IT is noteworthy that the ancient song, described in the foregoing
pages, says that at a certain stage the Apostle ‘started for the
country of the Tamils’. The author, doubtless, means ‘for the
country which is now of the Tamils’. For, at the time of the Apostle,
as was remarked already, all the three kingdoms was the country of
the Tamils.
Regarding his labours here we have practically no record.
There are sufficient reasons, however, to say that it was in a place
called ‘Mylapore’ on this east coast, that the Apostle laid down his
life for his master.
Sources of Information
Older testimonies quoted in foregoing pages, which speak
about the country of the apostolate of St. Thomas, do not
unfortunately say anything definite as to which part of India he
actually laboured and died in.
The following are the only sources which seem to point to a
definite region or place, where he worked in his last days and
where he died (or was put to death):
(1) The Roman Martyrology says that the Apostle was
condemned to death by the king of the Indians, was pierced with
lances and was crowned a martyr at Calamina.
(2) Pseudo-Sophronius (7th century) and Pseudo-Hippolitus
and St. Isidore of Seville (7th century) mention Calamina in
connection with the place of martyrdom of the Apostle.
43
(3) Dorotheus, Bishop of Tyre, says that the Apostle suffered
martyrdom at Calamite, a city of India so named.
(4) An Anonymous writer on the subject says he ‘fell asleep in
the city of Calamine’.
(5) Bar Hebraeus (12th century) mentions ‘Calamina, a. town
of India’.
(6) An Anonymous Syrian writer says also that he was killed
in Calamina.
It may be said that it was through these writers that the name
entered into the martyrologies of the West.
Later Testimonies
(1) Mar Solomon of Basora (13th century) in his Book of the
Bees says: ‘Thomas taught the... Indians, and, because he baptized
the daughter of the king of the Indians, he was stabbed to death
with a spear. Habban, the merchant, brought his body, and laid it in
Edessa... Others say that he was buried in Mahlaph, a city in the
land of the Indians.’ (A variant reading is: ‘... he was buried in
India.’)41
(2) Amr, son of Mathew, a Nestorian writer (14th century),
writes that the Apostle’s tomb ‘stands on the peninsula Mailan in
India, to the right of the altar in the monastery bearing his name’.42
(3) Marco Polo, the great Venetian traveller, after his visit to
the tomb in 1292. records: ‘The body of Messer Saint Thomas the
Apostle lies in the province of Maabar at a certain little town
having no great population.’43
(4) Friar John of Monte Corvino (13th cent.), a Franciscan
Friar, the next visitor to the Apostle’s tomb, does not mention the
place. He says simply: ‘I remained in the country of India wherein
stands the Church of St. Thomas the Apostle.’44
(5) Bl. Oderic of Pordenone, a Franciscan, in the record of his
voyage (14th cent.) says, after discussing Malabar which he calls
‘Minibar’: ‘From this realm it is a journey of ten days to another
realm which is called Mobar... and in this realm is laid the body of
the Blessed Thomas the Apostle.’45
44
(6) Bishop John de Marignolli (14th cent.) records: ‘The
third province of India is called Maabar, and the church of St.
Thomas which he built with his own hands…’46 He does not
explicitly say that the Apostle was buried in the church built by him
but it can be understood.
(7) Regarding the visit of Nicolo de Conti, a merchant, it is
recorded: ‘Proceeding onwards the said Nicolo arrived at a
maritime city which is named Malepur situated in the second gulf
beyond the Indus. Here the body of St. Thomas lies honourably
buried in a large and beautiful church.’47 He says also that this
place was venerated even by Nestorians.
(8) A letter written by four Nestorian Bishops (A.D. 1504)
from the Malabar Coast to the Catholicus of the East, the head of
the Nestorian Church, says: ‘The house of St. Thomas the Apostle
has commenced to be occupied by some Christians who are looking
after the repairs... situated... in a city on the sea named Meliapor in
the province of Silan Which is one of the provinces of India.’48 The
‘house of St. Thomas’ would obviously refer to his burial place:
Present Mylapore
From these testimonies it is clear that the place of martyrdom
of the Apostle was called in the, earlier centuries calamina and
later, Mahluph, Mellon, Maabar, Mobar, Malepur and finally
Meliapor which name, we know definitely (from the time of the
Portuguese early 16th century) indicates the present-day Mylapore
in the south of the city of Madras. We may reasonably assume that
in spite of the varied spellings and pronunciations the later
appellations all refer to the same name, viz., the Mylapore of today.
The city of Mylapore was sufficiently known in ancient times.
In the 7th book of Ptolemy’s Geography, we find information
about India. In the various editions of this Geography we find
names like Maliarpha, Manarpha and Mana-liarpha. The name
Maliarpha is given in eight editions while the other readings are
found in five. ‘This leaves,’ concludes Medlycott, ‘a sufficient
preponderance to show that, though the present text offers a variant,
the balance of weight is for the root Maliarpha, taking together the
Greek text printed and the independent translations from the Greek.
45
St. Thomas Mount
A flight of 134 steps winds up the steep mount capped by the
shrine that stands on the spot where St. Thomas was pierced
to death, according to unbroken tradition.
46
The Old Cathedral at San Thome de Meliapor established in 1606 and demolished in 1893.
Tomb of St. Thomas was then in the domed oratory at the back. The same tomb is now in
transept of the new Cathedral.
WEST EAST
47
‘The form Maliarpha contains the two essential ingredients
of' the name Malia-pur, which would be the form known or
reported to the Greek geographers.
‘It is significant to point out that these maps place
“Maliarpha” where the present Mylapore would be shown.’49
There seems, therefore, to be enough grounds to identify the
variants of the later centuries with the Mylapore of today.
What is to be said about ‘Calamina’, the name by which the
place of martyrdom of the Apostle was known in the earlier
centuries? Can Calamina and Mylapore be identified?
It is reasonable to suppose that all the visitors and pilgrims
who came from the West to honour the tomb of the Apostle would
have certainly known the name by which it was known in earlier
centuries, viz., that it was called ‘Calamina’. Yet when they finally
visit the place they call it, as they do, either Maabar or Mobar, or
Malepur. The only conclusion which may reasonably be drawn
from this is that at the time of their visit it was no more known as
Calamina, but rather by the latter name, or, perhaps it was called by
both the names.
In fact we have a fairly good proof for this last assertion. We
have record of a letter said to have been written to the Thomas
Christians by Ahatallah, who was detained in Mylapore by the
Portuguese in 1652, in which Mylapore and Calamina are
identified, even as late as the middle of the 17th century. The letter
says: ‘Those whose custom it is to perturb the upright have
detained me in Calamina.’50 Since the person was detained in
Mylapore, it is obvious that Calamina and Mylapore indicate the
same place.
Calamina called Meliapore
It is to be noted that a life of St. Francis Xavier, printed in
Rome in 1630, has this to say: ‘The holy man of God, Thomas,
came to preach to the city of Calamina which people of the place
call Meilapore.’51
We have a proof of this identification even in the 14th century.
Sir John Mandeville, who passed through the Coromandel Coast
48
between 1330 and 1380, says: ‘In that land of Mabaron (Maabar)
lies St. Thomas the Apostle and his body all whole in a fair tomb
in the city of Calamy, for there was he martyred and graven.’52
There seems to be enough evidence to show that Calamina
and Mylapore are in fact one and the same place.
Calamina: If ‘Mylapore’ was known, at least in one of its
variants, even in ancient times, why was a name like ‘Calamina’
used to indicate the place of the martyrdom of the Apostle?
A great deal of speculation has been made to explain this
‘puzzle’. The name has been studied mainly etymologically and all
sorts of explanations have been advanced. They seem mostly farfetched.
Without going into learned theorising about this, it is possible
to support a guess as to how this name came into existence.
Possibly the spot where the Apostle was pierced by lances and
put to death did not have any special name. It may have been
considered as a sort of suburb of Mylapore, which was a
sufficiently important town at the time. When, not long after the
martyrdom, pilgrims from the West, especially from Syria, came to
visit this place, they would surely think of remembering the name
of the spot. Since, it did not have a special name it might have been
named simply ‘the hill or mount’; and the visitors returning to their
country might have said that the Apostle was killed ‘on the
mountain' outside the city. It is possible also that this death of the
Apostle outside the city brought vividly to the mind of Christians
the death of the Master Himself, who was put to death also on a hill
outside the city.
It is known that the people who were frequently in touch with
the land where St. Thomas laboured and died were the Syrians.
They would have, on their return to their country, spoken about
their visit to the place of the Apostles’ martyrdom and said in
Syriac simply that he had been killed at Galmona. The Syriac word
Galma means a rocky hill, or a mound of hard earth; the particle
ona is a diminutive suffix. The combined word Galmona would
simply mean a rocky hillock. The change of Galmona to Calamina,
49
in course of time, is not difficult to understand, and it is not
unreasonable to think that the name was adopted by the Roman
Martyrology.
Outside the City
It is remarkable that the famous work ‘Acts of St. Thomas’,
which mentions so many names of persons and places, does not
mention any name in connection with the place of death of the
Apostle. It simply says that it took place outside the city on a
mountain.
The Synaxarium (brief histories of Saints) of the Church of
Constantinople says that five soldiers took the Apostle up the
mount, covered him with wounds and made him attain his blessed
end.
The Greek Menologium (i.e. Martyrology) states: ‘The holy
man thus taken to the mount is by them transfixed with a lance and
killed.’
Possibly the word ‘Galmona’ mentioned by the pilgrims from
Syria was not always taken for a proper noun and thus came to be
translated merely as ‘a hillock or mountain’.
It is interesting to note that even today the place of the
Apostle’s martyrdom is often referred to as ‘the mount’ (in English)
or ‘Peria Malai’ (i.e. the big mount) in Tamil. The word ‘big’ may
have been added in course of time to distin-guish it from the
smaller one nearby, which is today called Little Mount or Chinna
Malai (in Tamil).
If the later travellers mention, not Calamina, but, as we noted
above, some variant of Mylapore, it could be due to the lack of a
special name to the spot or it was considered a part of Mylapore,
the place of the burial.
Whatever the origin of the name ‘Calamina’ it is sufficiently
proved that both this name and the name of Mylapore indicate the
place of the martyrdom and burial of the Apostle.
‘Antenodur’ and ‘Malai’
All this seems to have been confirmed later by another native
scholar who said that it further described the death of the Saint at
50
‘Antenodur’ and his burial at ‘Malai’. It is interesting to note that
the name ‘Antenodur’ sounds not very different from Alandur, a
hamlet at the foot of the hill, towards the Southeast. Could ‘Malai’
be the short form of ‘Malepur’?
Regarding this ‘Antenodur’ we have some very interesting
information: Faria y Souza (Manuel Faria y Souza) wrote the book
known as Asia Portuguesa. The exact date of his manuscript cannot
be ascertained now. It was in Lisbon between 1666-1675. This was
translated from the Spanish edition by Captain John Stevens, and
the following is an extract from his translation:
‘As to Meliapor, for what relates to the Apostle: it is the
accepted opinion that he was killed at Antenodur, a mountain a
league distant from the town, where he had two caves whither he
retired to pray. The nearest now belongs to the Jesuits; the other is
the Church of Our Lady of the Mount. When one day he was at
prayer in the former, opposite to a cleft that gave light to it, one of
the Brahmins who was .watching,thrust a lance through that hole in
such a manner that, a piece of it remaining in his body, he went to
the other cave and there died, embracing a stone on which a cross
was carved. Hence his disciples removed and buried him in his
church, where he was found by Emmanuel de Faria or Frias and the
priest Anthony Penteado, sent thither by King Emmanuel.’53
Fame of the Apostle’s Tomb
St.Gregory, Bishop of Tours (France) towards the end of the
6th century A.D. writes thus regarding the Tomb of St. Thomas;
‘His holy remains, after a long interval of time, were removed to
the city of Edessa in Syria and there interred. In that part of India
where they rested, stand a monastery and a church of striking
dimensions, elaborately adorned and designed... This, Theodore,
who had been to the place, narrated to us.’54
Pilgrimages to famous shrines were quite common in those
days and so it is not surprising that some pilgrim named Theodore
narrated the story of his visit to the tomb of the Apostle to St.
Gregory who recorded it in his book Gloria Martyrum (The Glory
of Martyrs).
51
The account which St. Gregory gives in this book contains
also a very interesting description of how the feast of the Apostle
was celebrated in those remote times. Here is the narrative:
‘In the above named town, in which, as we said, the sacred
bones were buried, there is on the feast day a great gathering,
lasting for thirty days, of all classes of people, coming from
different countries, with votive offerings and for trade, buying and
selling without paying any tax. During these days, which occur in
the fifth month, great and unusual blessings are conferred on the
people... while at other times you have to draw water from wells at
a depth of over a hundred feet, now (at the season of the festival)
if you dig to even a short depth you will find an abundance of
water, which is no doubt due to the favour of the Apostle... After
that, there is such a supernatural downpour of rain that the entrance
of the church and the grounds around are swept so clean of all
defilement and dust that you would think the ground had not been
trodden on.’55
This seems to refer to a feast celebrated at Edessa rather than
to one in India at the Apostle’s tomb, for the words ‘...town in
which the sacred bones were buried' may refer also to Edessa where
the remains taken from India were interred. But the other details,
e.g. the climatic conditions and other matters seem to refer to a
celebration in India, as Medlycott has tried to prove at length.
It was not difficult for the fame of the Apostle’s tomb to travel
from France to England. Says Medlycott:
‘A venerable authority, the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, relating
the events of the early history of England, tells us that the greatest
of her Anglo-Saxon kings who ruled over Southern England also
venerated the memory of the Apostle of India and showed himself
grateful for benefits received by his intercession. While King
Alfred was defending the city of London, besieged by the heathen
Danes, he made a vow; but the date when this occurred is not
known. It was in fulfilment of this vow that King Alfred sent an
Embassy with gifts to Rome and to India to the Shrine of the
Apostle. The year is 883. In this year the army went up the Scheldt
to Conde, and they sat down one year. And Marinus, the Pope, then
52
sent lignum Domini (a relic of the Cross) to King Alfred. And in the
same year Sighelm and Aethalstan conveyed to Rome the alms
which the king had vowed (to send) thither, and also to India to
Saint Thomas and Saint Bartholomew, when they sat down against
the army at London; and there, God be thanked, their prayer was,
very successful alter that vow.’56
‘It will be well to see what some of the best modern writers
of English history have to say in regard to this mission sent to
India, whether they consider it an ascertained fact in history, or
treat it as legendary.’
Dr. Lingard, the Catholic historian, an esteemed authority,
says of the king: ‘Often he, sent considerable presents to Rome;
sometimes to the nations in the Mediterranean and to Jerusalem; on
one occasion to the Indian Christians at Meliapour. Swithelm, the
bearer of the royal alms, brought back to the king several Oriental
pearls and aromatic liquors.’57
Professor E. A. Freeman, a distinguished Protestant historian,
writes the following: ‘King Alfred was very attentive to religious
matters and gave great alms to the poor and gifts to the churches.
He also sent several embassies to Rome... He also sent an embassy
to Jerusalem, and had letters from Abel the Patriarch there. And
what seems stranger than all, he sent an embassy all the way to
India with alms for the Christians there, called the Christians of St.
Thomas and St.Bartholomew.’58
‘The writer of the article “St. Thomas” (Dict., of Christ.
Antiq.) has the following entry, “In the 9th century Sighelm and
Aethalstan were sent by King Alfred with alms to Rome and thence
to India to St. Thomas and St. Bartholomew.”
The sending of this embassy with gifts is supported by the
early Chroniclers whose works have come down to us. The first of
these is Florence of Worcester, who died 1117. In this Chronicle
under the year 883 he says: ‘Asser, Bishop of Sherborne, died and
was succeeded by Swithelm, who carried King Alfred's alms to St.
Thomas in India and returned in safety.’59
William of Malmesbury in an original work writes: (Alfred
was) ‘very attentive on bestowing alms; he confirmed the privileges
53
granted to the churches which his father had sanctioned. Beyond
the sea, to Rome and to Saint Thomas in India he sent many gifts.
The legate employed for this purpose was Sigelmus the bishop of
Sherborne, who with great success arrived in India, at which
everyone at this age wonders.’60
Western Travellers
Travellers from the West who visited the Tomb of St. Thomas
have left us a record of the very great devotion people, even non-
Christians, had towards St. Thomas.
(1) Marco Polo (1293 A.D.) has this to say, referring to the
Sepulchre of St.Thomas, the Apostle: ‘Both Christiains and
Saracens greatly frequent it in pilgrimage. For the Saracens also
hold the saint in great reverence and say that he was one of their
own Saracens and a great prophet, giving him the title of Avarian
which means “a holy man”. The Christians who go thither in
pilgrimage take earth from the place where the Saint was killed and
give a portion thereof to any one who is sick of quartan or tertian
fever; and by the power of God and of St. Thomas the sick man is
immediately cured. The earth I should tell you is red.’61
(2) Marignolli (14th century) speaks in the same strain:
‘When this earth is taken as a potion it cures diseases and in this
manner open miracles are wrought both among Christians and
Tartars and non-Christians.’62
Pious use of earth taken from the place of martyrdom seems
to be a sufficiently known practice in those days. It is remarkable
that the Synaxarium (Brief stories of Saints) of the Church of
Constantinople says: ‘... the son of the king was suffering from a
mortal disease and the king asked that a relic of the Apostle might
be brought to his son who was already beyond hope of recovery and
near death. As the body of the Apostle was not found he ordered
earth from the grave to be fetched. On this earth touching the dying
man he was cured at once.’
The practice of taking earth from the grave of the Apostle has
continued in the course of centuries and is prevalent even today.
From what has been said, we may conclude in the words of
Dr. Buchnan, a Protestant writer who speaks with no little
54
conviction after serious research: ‘We have as good testimony that
the Apostle Thomas died in India as that Apostle Peter died in
Rome.’ 63
And Dr. Mingana boldly asserts that ‘there is no historian, no
poet, no breviary, no liturgy and no writer of any kind who having
the opportunity of speaking of St. Thomas does not associate his
name with India.’64
The story of the Tomb, after the arrival of the Portuguese on
the scene will further prove what we have been saying, as will be
noticed in the next chapter.
55
The marble altar in the cave over which stands the Church at
Little Mount. The cave afforded shelter to St. Thomas who
was hunted by his murderers.
Slab of Chalcedony which covered the Apostle’s Relics at
. . . Chios, now in the Cathedral at Ortona, Italy, showing
figure bust and Greek inscription, viz., ‘Agios Thomas,’
Saint Thomas.
