What historical proof is there that St Thomas did come to India? Any documentation or indications that he really did come to Kerala?

The long-accepted belief is that St. Thomas preached in South India and established churches and left congregations known to this day as the St.Thomas’ Christians, and that in the end he was martyred in St. Thomas’ Mount and buried in San Thome, now a suburb of Madras. Thus the glory of the introduction of Christianity in India, by time-honoured tradition, has been ascribed to St. Thomas the Apostle. There are many scholars who hold the view that he did and there are also those who take the opposite stance. I will be trying to present as briefly as possible the evidence that points to the conclusion that St. Thomas’s visit to the shores of South India is not unfounded. 

St. Thomas in India

The Doctrine of the Apostles, which was probably written in the second century AD, mentions that St. Thomas evangelised India. We also have St. Ephraem (A.D. 330 – 378) attesting that the Apostle was martyred in India and that later his relics were taken to Edessa (a city in Upper Mesopotamia, present day Şanlıurfa inTurkey). Origen (A.D. 184 – 253) and Eusebius of Caesarea (the bishop of Caesarea Maritima from A.D. 315 to about A.D. 340) state that St. Thomas evangelised the Parthians and the same statement is made by the “Clementine Recognitions,” the original of which may have been written about A.D. 210. 

A much more detailed description of his journey is given in an apocryphal literature called Acta Thomae (The Acts of St. Thomas) for which there also exists certain historical data that would suggest that the apocryphal source contains some truth in them.  Harnack, a prominent church historian, has assigned to it a date before A.D. 220. This work connects with St.Thomas two Eastern Kings, whose names appear in the Syriac version as Gudnaphar/Gundaphar, and Mazdai. It is said in it that Thomas was able to convert the King Gudnaphar, his brother and many other people. After that, while St.Thomas was preaching “throughout all India,” he went to the city of King Mazdai. There, as the result of his converting Mazdai’s wife Tertia and a noble lady named Mygdonia, he was condemned to death. He was slain with spears by four soldiers on a mountain outside the city. And he was buried in the sepulchre in which the ancient kings were buried. But subsequently, while King Mazdai was still living, the bones of the Apostle were secretly removed by one of the brethren and were taken away to “the West”.

Corroboration from external sources has been found in the form of coins which from 1834 onwards have been obtained from Beghram in the vicinity of Kabul, from Pathankot in Gurdaspur district of Punjab on the north-east of Amritsar, from Kandahar, and from various places in Sindh and Seistan, bearing the name of one of the Kings, Gondopheres, mentioned in the tradition. The discovery of what is known as the Takht-i-Bahi inscription (in 1857) has helped to date the reign of Guduphara/Gondophernes in A.D. 20 or 21, and in establishing the fact that in A.D. 46 his dominions included, in India itself, at any rate the territory round about Peshawar. 

It is about the second king, Mazdai, that scholars are divided regarding where he reigned – was he the King Vasudeva of Mathura or a king from the southern part of India. The attempt to identify King Vasudeva with Mazdai does pose some historical problems. One of them being, in The Oxford History of India, 1919, it is stated that Vasudeva came to power in A.D. 182. If this is true, then it would place him too late in the timeline to be the second King that the Apostle visited. 

St. Thomas in South India

The Acts of St. Thomas and the Doctrine of the Apostles does mention that the Apostle preached “throughout all India” and established himself there, by making himself Guide and Ruler of the church (Bishop) which he built there and ministered there. Therefore excluding Southern India from the scope of St. Thomas’s labours and confining him to the north does not seem reasonable. Instead we do find some descriptions that points towards the possibility of a South-Indian apostolate of St. Thomas. In the Acts the General who heard of St. Thomas preaching comes to him in a cart drawn by cattle, which is characteristic of Southern India. Had this incident taken place in the north, the General would have come mounted on a steed.  Gondophares, for instance, is figured on his coins riding a horse, not seated in a cart drawn by oxen. Also seen is the depiction of Mygdonia using the palanquin when going to see the Apostle, which is also specially peculiar to Southern India. Even the name for the mode of transport originates from the Tamil word pallanku – a covered type of litter for a stretched-out passenger, carried on long curved poles carried on the shoulders of four or more bearers. 

Even in the hymns of St. Ephraem (A.D. 300 – 378) we see the traditional belief that St. Thomas was connected to India. Though the exact name of the place of his martyrdom and burial is not mentioned, it does have some indicators as to where these events might have taken place. In the hymns the place whom St. Thomas evangelised is called “land of people dark” and the people themselves are called “the sunburnt ”. Both of which point to the possibility that the tradition current in St. Ephraem’s time was that St. Thomas preached mainly in Southern India and was martyred and buried there.

We also have St. Gregory, Bishop of Tours in his “Liber in gloria martyrum” (Book of the Glories of the Martyrs) a work which he revised in A.D. 590, shortly before his death, recording the testimony of one Theodore who visited the tomb of the Apostle in Mylapore. He records the presence of a large church covering the tomb and a monastery nearby and also that the remains of the Apostle which had remained buried there for a time were later transferred to Edessa. 

In the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle we find King Alfred sending an embassy to the tomb in India, in fulfilment of a vow made at the time he was besieged by the Danes. Again in the 13th century we find Marco Polo and Friar John of Monte Corvino visiting the tomb in India. Though the name of the small town is not mentioned, there is no reason to doubt that it was Mylapore, which alone, has always claimed to be the place where St. Thomas was first buried. There are several other records of the presence of the tomb, one of which was made by certain Nestorian bishops, who wrote in A.D. 1504, to the Catholicus of the East, speak of “the houses of St. Thomas in a city by the sea named Meliapur”. 

St. Thomas in Kerala

The traditional belief among the St. Thomas christians of Kerala is that St. Thomas landed on the Malabar coast in Kodungallur and that he established seven churches. It is also believed that the Apostle then travelled to the Coromandel Coast and suffered martyrdom there. This same belief was found among the Christians of Socotra by St. Francis Xavier – that St. Thomas landed on the Malabar Coast. To have traditions from several places separated by such long distances to converge, does show that these are indeed not unreasonable beliefs. 

Even before the birth of Christ, there are records of trade happening between the Greco-Roman world and present day Kerala. Muziris, roughly identified as present day Kodungallur, was an ancient harbour at the Malabar coast which was key to trade between South India and Persia, the Middle East, North Africa, and the (Greek and Roman) Mediterranean region. From the location of unearthed coins and artifacts it can also be concluded that there was an inland trade route between this port and the east coast of India. In short, St. Thomas not only could have known about this distant land but also had the means to reach here by making use of the already existing trade routes. The traditional account that Jews had started coming to Cranganore (Kodungallur) for trade from 562 B.C. also makes a trip by the Apostle very much plausible. 

In the book The Catholic Church in India by Paul Pallath, the author talks about various folksongs and ballads that speak of “the mission, death and burial of the Apostle ”. Though these were only written down much later after their original composition, it is certain that these existed from a very early time period. The author goes on to list Margamkalipattu (song-dance of the Way), Rambanpattu (Song of the Ramban), Thomaparvam (Ballad of Thomas) and Veeradiansongs (recited by a particular Hindu caste) – all of which talk about the apostolate of St. Thomas. 

As for the earliest records that we have regarding Christianity in India comes from Eusebius, a Christian historian, who notes that St. Pantaenus had visited India somewhere between A.D. 177 and A.D. 192 and found Christian communities already present in India and that these communities where using a version of the Gospel of Matthew in Hebrew letters. Though Pantaenus attributes the presence of the Gospel to the Apostle Bartholomew, there are scholars who believe that the difficulty in understanding the language might have caused him to misinterpret the reference to Mar Thoma as Bar Tolmai (the Hebrew name of Bartholomew).

Conclusion

After taking into account all the evidence that is there, it can be said with certainty that there is nothing impossible or improbable about St. Thomas travelling to India, specifically the southern part of the country. When combined with the fact that solemn Ecclesiastical confirmation has been given, regarding the apostolic origin of St. Thomas Christians, by several popes and that there is neither a rival claim regarding the tomb of the Apostle nor archeological evidence against it, to hold the view that St. Thomas had come to Kerala, would be completely reasonable.