freedom had been guaranteed to them from the earliest days of their existence in Malabar.”¹

It is held by many that St. Thomas arrived in India as early as 52 A.D. and lived at Mylapore and preached in the vicinity. He is supposed to have been murdered on or near the present St. Thomas Mount, hard by Madras. One is led to doubt this date since Tamil literature written before the 14th century mentions no such missionary work and “christianity” as a definite form of religion so entirely different from Hinduism is not written about. The Caṅkam classics do, however, talk about Yavaṉar which alludes to Greeks and Romans. If literary works reflect the era in which they were written, then definitely the Tamil scholars who ingeniously mirrored the incidents of their day in their masterpieces would never have overlooked the Christian missionaries and the religion that they preached.

The Christians in Malabar were divided into old and new and the old Christians are supposed to be the descendants of the St.Thomas Christians who are generally called Syrian Christians. They are believed to have been named after the Apostle Thomas who is supposed to have preached the Gospel in Malabar and the Coromandel Coast. The Syrian Christians of Malabar and coromandal have traditions and possess monuments of a certain Thomas “who made the christian religion known in these territories”. Moens believes that “apart from the above mentioned traditions, it has nowhere been clearly proved that this thomas was really the Apostle Thomas.”^1a He further states that the “travels, miracles and work of conversion of this Apostle, of which so much is told and invented especially by the Roman Catholics, that they are more likely trashy fables than any semblance of truth.”^1b

1) Panikkar, K. M. Malabar And The Portuguese; 1929; P. 22.

1a. Selections from The Records Of The Madras Government. Dutch Records No. 13. The Dutch in Malabar Being a Translation Of Selections Nos. 1 and 2. With Introduction and Notes; 1911; P. 171.

1b. Ibid; P. 172.