[Footnote 149: Abdias of Babylon, to whom is ascribed the work mentioned in the text, is accounted among the ecclesiastical writers of the first age. He was a Jew by birth, and one of the seventy disciples of our Lord. He went with SS. Simon and Jude into Persia, and by them was made bishop of Babylon. The work which bears his name was first printed in the year 1532. Its alleged authorship, on account of its citations, and for some other reasons, has generally been denied by the learned. On this point the present writer ventures no opinion, although convinced that the tradition, as contained in The Legend of St. Thomas, is substantially true, and has existed in the same general outline from the earliest periods of Christian history.]
In the legend which we have repeated, and the discussion of which will occupy the present article, the scene of the labors of St. Thomas is laid in India. The tradition that he preached in Parthia and other countries of the east, and that he perished by martyrdom, is nearly as old as Christianity itself. All of the early writers are agreed that his apostolic province lay north and east of Palestine, and that the Persians, Bactrians, Scythians, and other kindred nations were entrusted to his spiritual care. But in regard to the particular regions over which he travelled, and the extent of his missionary efforts, as embraced in modern geographical divisions, there appears to be no small discrepancy between them. Thus, while certain ancient authors ascribe to him the evangelization of the entire East, Socrates and Theodoret expressly state that the Gospel was not preached in India till the fourth century, when Frumentius carried thither the knowledge of the true faith, and established a mission, of which he himself became the bishop; while some extend his wanderings to the Ganges, or even to the Celestial empire itself, others limit him within the eastern boundary of Persia, and place his death and burial-place near the city of Edessa, less than two hundred miles north-east from Antioch.
Much of this apparent disagreement, however, is explained away by the acknowledged ambiguity of the phrases under which these different countries were anciently described. "India" and "Ethiopia" seem to have been terms as loosely applied in that age as "the East," in Europe, and "the West," in America, are today; and it is not at all unlikely that, as has been the case with the latter phrase in this country, the application of the former was gradually changed as their nearer frontiers became better known, and were localized under distinct and peculiar names. The India of Socrates and Theodoret may or may not embrace the districts included in the India of Gaudentius and Sophronius; and each, in his historic statement, may be entirely accurate in fact, though contradictory to the others in his language.
Moreover, in those early ages kingdoms were less known than nations. The ancients spoke of "Persians," "Romans," "Jews," "Egyptians," rather than of the countries in which they were supposed to dwell; while in our day, on the contrary, the explorations of geography have rendered the regions far more definite than the nations which inhabit them. For this reason, what would be comparatively a safe guide to any given locality in modern usage, would be far less reliable in writings of a thousand years ago. Thus we may well dismiss whatever doubts this seeming disagreement at first sight throws around the post-scriptural account of this apostle, or at least hold it in abeyance, to be obliterated if subsequent investigations should disclose sufficient evidence of the toils and triumphs of St. Thomas in the vast empires of oriental Asia.
It is in this generic sense of the terms that "India" and "the Indies" are employed by the author of this legend, and under the singular as well as under the plural name are included many kingdoms through which the apostle travelled, from that in which he preached the Gospel at the nuptials of a king to that in which he found the mountain of his martyrdom. Each of these seems to have had its own court and king, and to have been so far independent of the others that the same religion which was maintained and promulgated by the state in one, was persecuted and condemned by the rulers of the other. It is not, therefore, to these names that we can look with any confidence of finding such vestiges of the apostle's footsteps as shall afford us a definite clue to the countries or the nations which enjoyed the fruits of his laborious love.
Such, however, is not the case with the name of King Gondaphorus to whom particularly, according to the legend, the mission of St. Thomas was directed. Until within a few years, the age, the residence, even the existence of this personage has been matter of serious controversy. The opinion most commonly received among the learned was, that "Gondaphorus" was a corruption of "Gun dishavor" or "Gondisapor," a city built by Artaxerxes, and deriving its name from Sapor or Schavor, the son and successor of its founder. [Footnote 150] As the city could have acquired this title only in the fourth century, this, among other reasons, has generally led historians to deny the substantial authenticity of the legend itself, and to regard it as the fabrication of some later age.
[Footnote 150: Gundisapor was the episcopal and metropolitan city of the province of Sarac, situated on the Tigris, six leagues from Susa. It is said to have been built by Hormisdas, the contemporary of the Emperor Constantine, and to have been called by the name of Sapor, his son, by whom it was afterward immensely enriched and beautified with the treasures which he ravished from the Roman empire.]
Recent investigations among Indian antiquities have thrown new light upon this subject, and, in this particular, at least, seem to have cleared the legend from all suspicions of fraud. Among the many coins and medals lately discovered in the East are those of the Indo-Scythian kings who ruled in the valley of the Indus about the beginning of our present era. One of these kings bore the name of "Gondaphorus," and pieces of his coinage are now said to be preserved in different collections of Paris and the East. [Footnote 151] This striking corroboration, in the nineteenth century, of a tradition which, in one shape or another, has been current in the Christian world for eighteen hundred years, can hardly fail to satisfy the most critical examiner that the legend ascribed to Abdias is, in its grand outline, entitled to a far higher degree of credit than it has been accustomed lately to receive.
[Footnote 151: Vide Le Christianisme en Chine, etc., par M, Huc. Paris, 1857, p. 28, etc.]