HOW CHRISTIANITY CAME TO INDIA.

Everything is old in the Orient. We of the West, who talk of a thousand years past as a long time ago, realise a little as we travel thither, amid relics of a prehistoric age, how young is our own world when for the first time we stand on pathways which reach back to the very daybreak on the horizon of human life. With a child’s wonder turning the faded parchments of some ancient book or stepping reverently and softly among the resting-places of the dead, we feel the past calling to us from behind the veil of the present, and we cannot escape the impression; we would not if we could. The spell of its mystery, its spaces of silence, the hush of living millions now stilled for ever fill us with awe, as with finger on lip we peer wistfully down the vista of uncounted years. It is the demand, the insistence of past history which we cannot afford to ignore, for without its interpretation we shall never understand to-day. This is specially true of India. Her ancient temples, carved by the thin dark fingers of a time when Europe was in the cradle of its civilization, these shadowy figures of to-day with glistening white teeth and lustrous jet eyes, flitting in light raiment under the fronded palms, keeping up ancestral customs and living as their fathers did a thousand years ago, make an indelible impression. And at the back of all this there is a haunting sense of a far off time when this same glare of sunshine shone upon the same rushing rivers and wide dry plains, and voices, so like those now in our ears, spoke with smiles and tears of human gladness and heart-break so long, so very long ago.

The history of India is filled with the alarms of war, state arrayed against state, plunder, devastation, and remorseless shedding of blood. Her soil has indeed been made sacred by the slaughter of her sons. But beyond this story of strife we are looking for something else and asking another question. Where and how amid these hoary creeds and worship did a knowledge of the true God as we know Him, and the Name of the Saviour of the World first come to the people of this land? The quest of this is not easy where so much is legend and pious, but perhaps not quite honest, story telling.

In the age of the Old Testament history when Solomon was building the temple at Jerusalem it is very probable that the ships of Hiram, laden with gold and ivory, apes and peacocks, were bringing their treasures from that land beyond the Red Sea, which is the India of our to-day. And it is also likely that upon those shores the trading instinct of the Hebrews had established stations for the ingathering of these costly freights, and in this strange land the praises of Jehovah were heard in some simple synagogue with its window open towards the sacred city of the Hebrews across the wide sea.

The centuries pass, and in the fulness of time wise men from the East, following the guidance of the Star, came to Bethlehem to worship the Christ child. The Light of the world had dawned. And it is not inconceivable that the tidings of One so mighty in word and work would be spread abroad through the talk of travellers and traders to the regions eastward of the Holy Land. For what it is worth, a reference may be made to the letters still preserved in the British Museum, supposed to have been written during the life of our Lord by Agbgbar from Edessa. These record that he, like the Queen of Sheba, was anxious to know more of what was taking place at Jerusalem and sent messages to Jesus Christ asking Him to visit him and offering his protection. When the reply is given that Jesus Christ is too much occupied, but that after He had been received up He would send one of His Apostles, we feel we are in the midst of a legend, especially when Thomas is named as the writer of the answer, who afterwards sent Thaddeus, from whom the succession of the bishops of Edessa was traced. Before considering the claims of the St. Thomas theory, which has given his name to the Christians of the Malabar coast, we must realise the fact that after Pentecost the inspiration of the early Christian Church began to show itself in sending forth its witnesses for the conquest of the world under the Divine mandate received on the mount at His Ascension. Persecution also drove them hence; the hate of the Pharisees, the stern discipline of Roman repression, the prison walls and the sword of martyrdom—these only spread the embers which elsewhere broke out in fresh flames of testimony.

In the year 70 Jerusalem was destroyed and the soldiers of Titus completed the overthrow of the Jewish Kingdom. The people who in their pride and contempt had cried “Crucify Him” were now flying in terror from their doomed city, and many must have escaped to reach the refuge of those trading settlements on the shores of India. In support of this view it may be mentioned that there is in the Library of the University of Cambridge a facsimile of a copper plate of the greatest interest, found in the Jewish Colony at Cochin, which bears a Hebrew inscription to this effect:

Possibly among these fugitives Christians came, some maybe with personal memories of the life and ministry of our Lord, others, converts of the Apostles, stray Jews who had embraced the Christian faith, or Gentiles who had renounced their idolatry and gratefully accepted the Gospel. It is therefore not improbable that at this time and under these conditions Christianity first came to India.

But the Church on the Malabar coast still cherishes its tradition that St. Thomas laid its foundations when he landed on the island of Melankara near Kranganur. The source of this story is the apocryphal Acts of Thomas and the Martyrdom of Thomas, written towards the end of the third century. These records state that the Indian King Gondophares sent Abbanes to Jerusalem to find an architect or builder, and that in the slave market there Jesus Christ sold St. Thomas to him for £3 worth of uncoined silver! After this the recital of sundry extraordinary miracles wrought by the Apostle at the King’s court falls on rather unbelieving ears. The only item of fact which proves the existence of King Gondophares was the discovery, some years ago, of coins bearing his effigy among the mountains of Iran and an inscription showing that he was reigning during the lifetime of Jesus Christ and also that the Greek language was evidently known in that district.

The genuine Thomas legend, however, has probably no reference to the Apostle but to a Bishop of Edessa of that name, who in the year A.D. 345 landed at Malabar with a company of presbyters, youths and maidens gathered from Jerusalem, Baghdad and Nineveh, and he it was who probably founded Kranganur. He is known as Thomas Cananaus.

The Thomas tradition is perpetuated by a cathedral of simple dimensions in the neighbourhood of Madras which is dedicated to his memory, while another church three miles from St. George’s offers the faithful the privilege of entering the floor and taking a handful of earth as a cure for diseases, because the ashes of the saint were found there. The bones, however, were religiously taken by John III of Portugal to a church at Goa, where they are still an object of worship. At St. Thomas’ Mount near Madras there is a granite stone upon which is carved a cross and dove with outspread wings, probably the work of the seventh century. The inscription, which is in Pelhavi or ancient Persian, says: “In punishment by the Cross was the suffering of this One who is the true Christ God above and Guide ever pure,” according to Dr. Burnell. But another expert, Dr. Haug of Munich, rather expands the literal meaning as “He that believes in the Messiah and in God in the height and also in the Holy Ghost is in the grace of Him who suffered the pain of the cross.” Two other crosses are preserved in the ancient Church of Cottayam in Travancore; upon one of these a portion of the old Pelhavi inscription has been replaced by a quotation from Galatians vi. 14, “Let us not glory except in the Cross of our Lord Jesus Christ.” These crosses are full of antiquarian interest and seem to indicate Persian influence on the Christian Churches of South India and also go to prove the existence of Christianity on the Coromandal coast in these early centuries.

Going back to a much earlier time, we meet with the name of a man who perhaps deserves, according to definite historical data, the credit of being the first to come as a missionary to India. It is that of Pantaenus. Eusebius in his Church History gives us the following reference to him:

“About the year 180 there were still many evangelists who sought to imitate the godly zeal of the Apostles by contributing their share to the extension and upbuilding of the Kingdom of God. Among these was Pantaenus, who is reputed to have reached the Indians, amongst whom he is stated to have found the Gospel of St. Matthew, which, prior to his arrival, was in the possession of many who had known Christ. To these Bartholomew, one of the Apostles, is reported to have preached and to have left behind him the Gospel of St. Matthew in Hebrew characters, which had been retained up to the time in question. This Pantaenus, after many praiseworthy achievements, was at last placed at the head of the school at Alexandria.”[1]

It is a moot point among scholars whether the sphere of this great missionary was not Southern Arabia, but Egypt and India were at this period closely connected by trade, and the Roman coins found at Coimbatore and Calicut, in the year 1850, of the time of Tiberius, Augustus and Nero, show the possibility of India being indicated. Besides, the words of Jerome are explicit: “On account of the fame of his superior learning Pantaenus was sent to India by Bishop Demetrius (of Alexandria) to preach Christ among the Brahmans and philosophers there.”[2]

This much is clear; this distinguished Greek, by birth an Athenian, by culture of the School of the Stoics, was at the head of a great college for catechists at Alexandria and exercised a powerful influence upon his students, among whom Clement and Origen were the most famous. Pantaenus trained his pupils to look beyond their immediate horizon and proclaim the Gospel of Christ to a then unknown world. Alexandria was a cosmopolitan city; all sorts and conditions of humanity, from all quarters of the world, flocked there. They came for trade, for intellectual treasure, and some for light on the great question of religion. It may be that in the pathways of his own city Pantaenus met Brahmans with their philosophic sense of superiority and Buddhist priests steeped in the calm of intellectual repose. All this would stimulate and influence a mind such as his. He longed to bring to their homeland a better Gospel and a word of truth which would reveal to them the only true God and Jesus Christ Whom He had sent. We have the high authority of Eusebius for the statement that “he was distinguished as an expositor of the Word of God,” and it was said of him that he “had penetrated most profoundly into the Spirit of Scripture.”

It may be that amongst this crowd of visitors from other countries some would apply to Bishop Demetrius for a missionary to be sent to India; indeed, it is stated that some of the catechists who had passed under the hands of Pantaenus did actually beseech him to come and nourish the faith and bless the lives of the Christians scattered abroad. When he went and how long he stayed with the Church on the Malabar coast we know not, for as yet no fragment of ancient history gives any sign. But the alleged discovery of the autograph Gospel of St. Matthew amongst these Jewish Christians awakens our interest. It was believed that this Gospel, written in Aramaic, was brought thither by St. Bartholomew after the martyrdom of St. Stephen. After his visit Pantaenus brought back this precious MS. in the year A.D. 211 when he returned to take up his old position with the catechumens in Alexandria. We would fain know more of this strong and cultured man, to whom was entrusted the task of instructing the Church at a period when already the bitterest doctrinal differences had arisen within her borders, and also of strengthening, as doubtless he did, the hearts of the little colony of Christian believers on the Malabar coast. These probably held the Faith not unalloyed with errors born of ignorance within and their environment without.

Once more the veil of obscurity, like a shifting mist, settles on that Indian Church; no word breaks the silence, no streak of light enables us to see the growing powers of this faithful few, hedged in by Judaism on the one hand and the native religions on the other.

In the year A.D. 345 Thomas Cananaus, as we have seen, landed in Malabar. Two centuries afterwards the Egyptian merchant and traveller, Cosmas Indicopleustes, journeyed thither, and we get another glimpse, disappointingly meagre, of the Christians in India.

“What I have seen,” says he, “and experienced in the majority of places during my stay I truthfully declare. On the Island of Taprobane (i.e. Ceylon), in Inner India, where the Indian Ocean is, there is to be found a community of Christians, consisting of both clergy and the faithful, but I do not know whether there are any Christians to be found beyond this. Similarly in Male (Malabar, perhaps more particularly Quilon, which was later known by the Arabs as Kullam-male) where pepper grows and in the place called Caliana (Kalyan near Bombay) there is also a Bishop, who receives imposition of hands from Persia, as well as in the isle called the Isle of Discoris in the same Indian Sea. The inhabitants of that island speak Greek, having been originally settled there by the Ptolemies who ruled after Alexander of Macedon. There are clergy there also, ordained and sent from Persia to minister among the people of the island, and a multitude of Christians.... In a very great number of places one found churches of Christians with Bishops, martyrs, monks and recluses, wherever in fact the Gospel of Christ had been proclaimed.”

This extract, taken with its context, not only proves how widely dispersed the Christian faith had become in the fifth century but also attracts our attention to the diffusion of the Nestorian doctrine which, with its imperfect presentation of Christianity, carried everywhere the element of its own failure, even where apparently such a success. It was an age in which, humanly speaking, the Church had her magnificent opportunity, but being divided and unworthy she failed to carry conquest. Had she remained true to the Apostolic teaching how different it might have been!

Again the curtain falls and for six centuries the Syrian Church on the Malabar coast is out of sight and mind. Just a break for a moment in the year A.D. 883 when we see two priests of the Anglo-Saxon Church, Sighelm and Athelstan, taking to India the votive offerings of the great King Alfred of England, which he had promised to the shrine of St. Thomas during his siege of London. We only know they went and returned safely.

But during these centuries Islam was advancing, its crescent banners red with blood, its eyes fired with hatred, trampling in its onrush the Christian Churches and all other religions and effacing only too effectively the fruit of the work of evangelizing Asia. The seats of learning, the sacred temples of the Christian faith, the priceless archives rich in the thought and piety of the age, the seven Churches of the Apocalyptic messages, all were overthrown as the Crescent supplanted the Cross. The tide of conquest not only overran the holy places of the East, but flung itself against the ramparts of European Christianity. The peril of the age woke the chivalry of the Crusaders, and the flower of Knighthood perished in trying to wrest the sacred spots of Palestine from the Infidel.

Scarcely had this storm spent itself when another cloud arose in the East and burst with force and rage. The great Mongol chieftain Chengis Khan, beating down Islam with its own weapon, had made himself master of China and the whole of Western Asia, and now, flushed with victory, essayed to conquer Europe also. Islam had brought the flag of the prophet as far as the gates of Vienna; Chengis Khan on that fateful day in April, 1241, broke down the defence of Prince Henry at Liegnitz. It seemed as though all Europe lay defenceless, when suddenly, by one of the great acts of God in history, the Tartar host like a swarm of locusts arose and departed whence they came.

Then we see the Church of Rome diplomatically trying to meet the desire of Kubla Khan to make some alliance with the Christian Kingdoms of Europe against Islam, their common foe. It is an amazing fact, well worth keeping in mind, that, after the visit of Polo to his court, the Khan of Persia actually wrote letters to the French King asking for “a hundred Christians, intelligent men, acquainted with the seven arts, well justified to enter into controversy and able clearly to prove by force of argument to idolators and other kinds of folk that the law of Christ was best, and that all other religions were false and naught; and that if they would prove this he and all under him would become Christians and the Church’s liegemen.” It is disappointing to find that this open door did not admit the pure Gospel; it was a cry from Macedon with no St. Paul to answer it.