MISSIONARY JOURNEYS OF ST THOMAS THE APOSTLE TO INDIA
St Thomas one of the twelve apostles of Jesus is the apostle of India. He journeyed to the vast subcontinent and sowed the seeds of Christian faith in several parts of this vast country and became martyr at Mylapore. The mission of Thomas in India is considered as an accepted fact and no more lengthy arguments are needed to prove it. An ocean of literature is already written about the Indian mission of Thomas and there is no dearth of writers and scholars who are experts on the subject. Instead of trying to prove the historicity of the mission of Thomas in India, what we need to do is to disprove the skeptics and convince them. Historicity of the mission is questioned not because it is not historically verifiable, but because it is unacceptable to the colonial minds. Here in this brief article I am trying to throw light into the stages and places in the missionary journeys of Thomas to India.
First Voyage
From where did he start his voyage to India? It could not have been from Jerusalem. Jerusalem was not a port and no routes started to India from Jerusalem. From Jerusalem Thomas first travelled to Alexandria. He had reasons to go to Alexandria, the second city of the Roman Empire, the cosmopolitan city which received people of all races, colours and languages. Two fifth of the population of Alexandria were Jews. Alexandria was the greatest port in the world then, the second city of the Roman Empire. In those days, 120 great ships sailed for India from Egypt every year. Alexandria was at that time a place quite frequented by Indians. It is said that perhaps Ptolemy got his surprising knowledge about India from the Indians residing at Alexandria. Pliny in 77 A.D. and Dion Chrysostom in 100 A.D. speak about the Indians living in Alexandria. It is the large presence of Jews in Alexandria that attracted Thomas and he came across people from India and he decided to go India in one of the ships sailing to India. It becomes clearer in the light of the opening passage in the De Miraculis that when the Apostle Thomas was in Caesarea the Lord asked him to go to India. Thus the author of this abridged Latin version of the Acts of Thomas knew that Thomas journeyed from Jerusalem to Alexandria via Caesarea.
The usual route from Alexandria to India was the one from Alexandria down the Nile by Memphis as far as Koptos, thence by land to Berenike and from there through the Red Sea to Okelis, Aden or Kana and thence to Bharuch (Barygaza). There fore the first port where Thomas disembarked in India was Bharuch or Barygaza. Bharuch was the most important sea port of India at that time all the ships to India landed at this port. Commodities from interior India were brought here and were shipped to the West.
The Christianity of Bharuch which had great affection for the Apostle Thomas bears witness to the mission of Thomas. Jordan of Catalani described those Christians in these terms. “In this India there is a scattered people, one here, another there, who call themselves Christians, but are not so, nor have they baptism, nor do they know anything about faith. Nay, they believe St Thomas the great to be Christ”. The Christians of Vasai who still hold on to some of the Thomas traditions may also be seen as remnants of the converts of Thomas in his first voyage. The same may be said also about the ancient Christian communities of Thana, Sopara etc.
From Bharuch the Apostle could have followed the route through Ujjain to reach Mathura where the Taxila-Pataliputra highway was gained. Following this highway the route of the Apostle finally reached Taxila, his destination. The Christian community of Thomas tradition that existed at Udaipur in Madhya Pradesh and Christian symbols discovered at Ujjain might prove the visit of the Apostle in these places. It seems that there were Christians at Taxila in the first century AD and they either migrated to other parts of India or to the adjoining regions of the Persian Empire more especially to the province of Fars. Some of these Christians were also probably converted to Buddhism.
Return voyage to Jerusalem
From Taxila Thomas seems to have returned to Jerusalem through the overland route, the famous silk route. There are various traditions regarding the journey of Thomas to Jerusalem to take part in the funeral of Mary, the mother of Jesus. In Transitu Mariae, an apocryphal book dealing with the dormition of Mary, Thomas is depicted in the same way as in the episode (which accords him the title ‘doubting Thomas’) in the Gospel of John. As the story goes, the Holy Spirit informs the apostles, each in their proper mission fields, of the immanent departure of Mary, mother of Jesus, from this earth and bids them to come to her. After their arrival the apostles narrate their experiences in various countries of the world. (The document belongs to the 5th century A.D.). Thomas describes to the other apostles about his mission to the king of India in these words, “I went about the country of India and by the grace of Christ, proclaimed the gospel; the son of the sister of the king, called Abdanes, was about to be converted when the Spirit of the Lord spoke to me….” According to another version of the story Thomas was saying Mass in India when the angels transported him to Jerusalem (he was still in his holy vestments!). These traditions reveal that there was already information regarding the arrival of Thomas from India to Jerusalem. Basing on this information the author of this apocryphal book narrated the story.
It seems to be logical to say that Thomas was in North West India and from there he went to Jerusalem following the well travelled silk route. The tradition of Thomas in various parts of the Persian Empire may be a result of this voyage from India to Jerusalem. We know that on those days the journey through silk route was not a non-stop journey from one end to the other. The traveler had to stop at regular intervals and spend a few days or perhaps weeks and even months before he resumed the voyage in different caravan groups.
Second Voyage
On a second voyage to India Thomas reached Muziris in 52 AD, as the traditions recount. On his way to India, he also might have stayed in Socotra and preached the Gospel there establishing a Christian community. Socotra is a small island in the Indian Ocean and is today part of the People’s Democratic Republic of Yemen.
This island was a strategically important point from which trade in the Indian Ocean and, especially, any vessel sailing into Red Sea could be controlled. It was a calling port for the voyagers coming to the western coasts of India. It had also a considerable Indian colony and Bashan suggests that the name of the island may be of Indian origin. The considerable Christian presence in this island from early centuries of Christian era gives an added reason to this theory. Tradition among the Christians of St Thomas of the Malabar Coast about the apostle Thomas claims that he came to them via Socorta. The first notice of the Christians of St Thomas in Socorta is given by Cosmos Indicopolisteus who wrote in 535 A.D. Francis Xavier a thousand years later spoke of the nominal presence of Christians in Socorta. According to him they claim to be Christians of St Thomas.
From Socotra Thomas travelled to Muziris and reached there in 52 AD. Traditions abound among the Christians of Kerala regarding these journeys and the establishment of communities in seven places. The Apostle established Christian communities in seven places in Kerala. They are Maliankara (Kodungallur, the ancient Muziris), Kollam, Niranam, Nilakkal, Kokkamangalam, Paravur and Palayur. All these seven places where Thomas is said to have established communities are now strong Christian centres and all of them offer tangible evidence for the mission of the Apostle. As we learn from the traditions in Malabar, after establishing seven communities in Malabar, the apostle went over to the Coromandel Coast. The Rambanpattu which summarizes the traditions of Malabar regarding the mission of Thomas narrates that before crossing over to the Coromandel Coast the Apostle had already strengthened the communities by ordaining bishops and priests for them. While he was in Mylapore some of the envious Brahmins killed the apostle with a lance and he was buried by his disciples in the church of Mylapore which he had built with his own hands. It happened in 72 AD.
This is the fascinating and inspiring story of the missionary journeys of Thomas the apostle of India. His name itself evokes sentiments of pride and devotion in the minds of the faithful of Kerala who belong to the Churches of Thomas tradition. However hard the colonial historiographers try to disprove the mission of Thomas to India, Thomas remains and will remain in the hearts of the Christians of India as their Apostle and they themselves are the solid proof for the coming of the Apostle to India. Thomas, the Apostle described as the twin of Jesus by Eastern traditions, is the apostle who travelled the most to preach the Gospel of Christ, thus fulfilling the missionary command of Jesus to go to the ends of the world. He literally went to the ends of the world, by not limiting his field of mission in the Roman and Persian Empires, but going beyond the limits of these and gained India and China for Christ.
