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:
“After the second temple was destroyed (which may God speedily rebuild!) our fathers dreading the conquerors’ wrath departed from Jerusalem, a numerous body of men, women, priests and Levites, and came unto this land.”
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.”