ST. THOMAS AND INDIA By THE RIGHT REV. STEPHEN NEILL*

DID St. Thomas really go to India and found a Church there? Each year St. Thomas' Day, December 21st, brings up the old question ; and still no decisive answer can be given. In the com- parative security of Cambridge I venture to write in these terms ; in Kerala, the south-western coastal strip of India, it is almost as much as one's life is worth even to hint that there can be any doubt on the matter, so strong is the conviction of the Thomas Christians (the Syrian Christians of Malabar), that the Christianity which they have inherited is genuinely apostolic, derived directly from the Apostle Thomas, and independent of the alternative version of the Christian faith established by St. Peter and St. Paul in the lands of the West.

Until recently the majority of scholars have not taken seriously

the story of the mission of Thomas to India. It is true that the Acts of Thomas, a heretical work of the third century, gives an elaborate and interesting tale of how, in the division of the world among the Apostles, India fell to Thomas ; and how when he was unwilling to go, saying " I have not strength enough for this because I am weak ; and I am an Hebrew : how can I teach the Indians? " the Lord arranged to sell him as a slave to Abbanes, the represen- tative of Gondophares, king of India, who most conveniently happened to be in Jerusalem at the time. But this could be dismissed, as no more credible than the similarly unverifiable tales commonly found in early Christian romances.

Things began to look a little different when in 1834 a coin was

dug up in the north-west corner of India bearing the name Gondo- phares. Since then a great deal has come to light about this king and his capital Taxila. It is certain that the unknown author of the Acts of Thomas had access to reliable traditions, and that behind his romance there is at least a background of fact. This proves no more than that in the third century there was contact between India and the Christians of Persia and Mesopotamia ; it does not make it certain that there were Christians in India as early as the 1st century ; It proves nothing whatever about St. Thomas and his mission. There is, however, nothing to make it incredible that one of the original Apostles should have gone to India. There was close contact between Mesopotamia and India via the Persian Gulf ; there was constant commercial intercourse between Alexandria and South India ; this is put beyond the reach of doubt by the discoveries of widely scattered hoards of Roman coins. If there is no definite evidence in favour, there is nothing decisive against ; we are left with the probability that there were Christians in India from a very early date, and with the possibility that the Thomas Christians may be right in claiming their spiritual descent from one of the twelve disciples of the Galilean.

The first fragment of written historical evidence comes to us from the 6th century, in the writings of Cosmas Indicopleustes, perhaps the stupidest writer who ever used the Greek language. This miserable man was a Christian, and, as his name implies, had actually been to India ; yet all he tells us about the Indian Christians amounts to about ten lines : Even in the island of Taprobane, where the Indian sea is,

* Till a few months ago Bishop of Tinnevelly, Southern India.

there is a Church of Christians, with clergy and a congregation of believers. . . . And such is also the case in the land called Male where the pepper grows. And in the place called Kalliane there is a Bishop appointed from Persia. . . . The island (Taprobane) hath also a Church of Persian Christians who have settled there, and a presbyter who is appointed from Persia, and a deacon and all the apparatus of public worship. But the natives and their kings are heathens.

There is a measure of doubt in the identification of the place names ; but it seems fairly certain that Cosmas is referring to Ceylon,

to the Malabar coast, where the pepper certainly does. grow, and to

its chief port Quilon. But he suggests that all the Christians are immigrants from Persia, and giVes, us no information at all as to a genuinely Indian Christianity. This fragment of light in the darkness of history remains to exasperate the historians of India and the Church ; if he had liked, Cosmas could have told us so very much that through his niggardliness is now irretrievably lost. We have no means of knowing at what date the Malabar Church ceased to be merely immigrant and became unmistakably Indian, as it is today.

For ten centuries the fortunes of the Indian Church are hidden in almost complete obscurity. Whenever the mist lifts a little, through a copOer-plate charter probably of the 8th century, a few crosses perhaps of the 9th, the stray visits of Franciscan missionaries in the 13th and 14th, we find the " Syrian " Christians still there, strong in numbers, well established in trade and in social status, and always retaining their connection with the Nestorian patriarch of Babylon. With the arrival of the Portuguese, they emerge into the full light of history. In 1599, at the famous Synod of Diamper, by a combination of force, fraud, cajolery and persuasion, the Portuguese managed to bring the entire Syrian Church under allegiance to the Pope. But the uneasy fellowship did not long endure ; in 1653 a large section of the Church revolted against the Jesuits and established its independence ; being separated from the Patriarch of Babylon, and being left without a Bishop, it later accepted the suzerainty of the Monophysite patriarch of Antioch, who to this day is the head of the Malankara Church of Malabar.

In 1816 a mission of help was sent to the independent Syrians by the Church Missionary Society ; this led unintentionally to a schism, and to the creation of an Anglican Church of 8o,000 members, of whom perhaps a tenth are Syrian in origin, the remainder being converts, mostly from among the depressed classes.

The leaven of reform continued to work in the Church ; at the end of the 19th century a further division took place, with the separation of the Mar Thoma Reformed Syrian Church, a body which now has three Bishops and 170,000 adherents, and with which the Anglican Province of India is in communion. A small group round Trichur has separated from the Roman Catholic Church, and returned to the allegiance of the Nestorian Patriarch of Babylon. A few Syrians have joined the Brethren, the Pentecostal Mission and the Salvation Army. In spite of these many ecclesiastical divisions, the Syrians are strongly conscious of their essential unity, and proud of their apos- tolic lineage ; they regard all European Christians as " convert Christians " of rather recent date ; after all, even St. Patrick lived only in the 4th century; the landing of St. Augustine is an event of com- paratively modern history.

The last census revealed the astonishing fact that, whereas in India as a whole the Christians amount to only 2 per cent. of the population, in Travancore they are no less than 31 per cent. The proportion is steadily increasing, through a slightly higher birthrate and steady accessions by way of conversion. In parts of Travancore it is possible to feel oneself in a Christian country; even in remote places in the fairyland of the backwaters, a wayside chapel or a solitary cross reveals the presence of Christians. The Syrians have been fitted into the caste structure of Hindu society ; they take rank roughly on an equality with the Nairs, the great Hindu land- owning community ; they regard themselves as superior to the other Hindu castes, and infinitely above the depressed classes, from whom most of the labourers are drawn. In a country where literacy is commoner than in any other part of India the Syrians are well up to the standard of the best educated Hindu groups. They have a large share in the work of education, in finance and in journalism ; it is obvious that a group which has wide influence in these three activities is in a position to dominate the whole life of a country. There are not wanting indications that the rise in numbers and power of the Christian community is not altogether welcome to the Govern- ment of a very orthodox Hindu state. In so enlightened a state as Travancore there could be no question of anything approaching per- secution ; but the Christian community is sensible of a certain amount of anti-Christian discrimination, and is not without anxiety about the future.

It is not only in Kerala that this Syrian Christian community is influential. With their high attainments in learning, independence of mind and initiative, and a not inconsiderable flair for making money, its members are gradually spreading themselves all over India. In one great city we find a Syrian Christian as head of the leading college, in a second as a professor of the University, in a third as A.R.P. officer for the whole city, in a fourth as director of a large general store. I have found a Syrian police officer in a remote forest district in the centre of India, and not far away two Syrian girls as teachers in a mission High School. Until recently, the Syrian Churches were so conscious of their superior social status that they had little evangelistic zeal, and little sense of responsibility for the conversion of the rest of India ; now that phase has' passed, and all the branches of the ancient church are filled with a sense of mission, and of responsibility, as being by far the oldest Church in India, for taking the lead in bringing the Gospel to the non-Christian world. In the providence of God the Christian movement in India has spread northwards from the far south. The first beginning was the apostolic work of Thomas or his successors in the south-west. From the loth century till the end of the t9th most of the great Christian movements were in the Tamil country south of Madras. Now the movement has spread, and is developing strongly in the Telugu area north of Madras and in the Deccan. The torch lit by St. Thomas long ago has often smoked and flickered, But it has never gone out. In the zoth century it gives promise of growing to a blaze which may bring light to the whole Indian sub-continent.