The colonisation of the Christian communities seen by the Portuguese at the south-west extremity of the Deccan, dates from the earliest centuries of our era. Neander says (_Allg. Gesch. d. christlichen Relig. und Kirche_, I, i, 114) that the Syriac-Persian community on the coast of Malabar owes its origin to St. Thomas, although its existence, according to Cosmas “Indicopleustes”, cannot be traced earlier than the 6th century. Gregory of Nazianzus asserts (_Orat._, 25) that the Gospel was preached in India by the apostle St. Thomas, who was murdered at a place near Madras called Mailapur, on the Coromandel Coast, the Maabar of Marco Polo, and identical with Mirapolis, where Giovanni de’ Marignolli tells us the apostle was buried. We are scarcely encouraged to look for the forest of “Lambor” in the province of Maabar, because there happened to be indications of Christian churches, rather than on the coast of Melibar or Malabar, where the produce of pepper in ancient times is fully established.—BRUUN.
(1A.) Friar Jordanus, 1333 (_Hakluyt Soc. Publ._, 27), indignantly denies that fire was placed under the pepper trees, and is satisfied that the fruit turns black simply upon coming to maturity. Oderic (Hakluyt _Voyages_, ii, 160), also a predecessor of Schiltberger, repeats the statement that in the kingdom of Minibar where pepper grows, fires are made with the object of burning up the serpents, that the people might gather at the harvest without injury to themselves. Oderic estimated the circuit of the forest at an eighteen days’ journey, and the two cities in it, not named by our author, he calls Flandrina and Cyncilim. At the south end of the forest stood a city called Polumbrum, noticed in the foregoing note, and at a distance of ten days’ journey was the kingdom of Mobar, where lay interred the body of St. Thomas.
“It is seventeen hundred and forty years ago”, said the papa or priest at Cacador to Buchanan in 1800, “since a certain saint named Thomas introduced the Nazareens; he landed at Meliapura, and took up his residence on a hill near Madras, now called after his name” (_Journey from Madras_, London, 1807). There he performed a miracle annually, says another authority, until English heretics came into the neighbourhood. St. Thomas afterwards made a voyage to Cochin, and near that place established a church which became the metropolitan; he returned to Meliapura and there died, or, according to others, was put to death. It appears that a bishop of India was present at the Council of Nice, A.D. 325, and in the following century the Christians on the coast of Malabar received the accession of a bishop of Antioch, who was accompanied by a small party of Syrians. That Christians in Malabar were numerous at the time Schiltberger obtained his information is most probable, because Portuguese historians relate that in the year 1503 they possessed upwards of one hundred churches, those in the interior refusing to conform to Rome (Assemanus, _Bibliot. Orient._, iv, 391 _et seq._; M. Geddes, _The Hist. of the Church of Malabar_, 1694; Gardner, _Faiths of the World_, etc., ii, 900; see also G. B. Howard, _Christians of St. Thomas and their Liturgies_, 1864; Yule’s _Marco Polo_, ii, 341 _et seq._).—ED.