On Farther Inquiry, It Appeared By The Ancient Records Of The Kingdom, That Saint Thomas Had Come To Meliapour About 1500 Years Before, Then In So Flourishing A Condition That It Is Said By Tradition To Have Contained 3300 Stately Churches In Its Environs.

It is farther said that Meliapour was then twelve leagues from the coast, whereas its ruins are now close

To the shore; and that the saint had left a prediction, "That when the sea came up to the scite of the city, a people should come from the west having the same religion which he taught." That the saint had dragged a vast piece of timber from the sea in a miraculous manner for the construction of his church, which all the force of elephants and the art of men had been unable to move when attempted for the use of the king. That the bramin who was chief priest to the king, envious of the miracles performed by the saint, had murdered his own son and accused the saint as the murderer; but St Thomas restored the child to life, who then bore witness against his father; and, that in consequence of these miracles, the king and all his family were converted.

[Footnote 169: Heraldic terms, implying that the three upper arms of the cross end in the imitation of flowers, while the lower limb is pointed. - E.]

[Footnote 170: The strange expression in the text ought probably to have been the tenths of the duties on importation. - E.]

An Armenian bishop who spent twenty years in visiting the Christians of that part of India which is near Coulam[171], declared on oath that he found what follows in their writings: That, when the twelve apostles were dispersed through the world, Thomas, Bartholomew, and Judas Thaddeus went together to Babylon where they separated. Thaddeus preached in Arabia, since possessed by the Mahometans. Bartholomew went into Persia, where he was buried in a convent of Armenian monks near Tebris. Thomas embarked at Basrah on the Euphrates, crossed the Persian Gulf, to Socotora, whence he went to Meliapour, and thence to China where he built several churches. That after his return to Meliapour and the conversion of the king, he suffered martyrdom through the malice of the bramins, who counterfeited a quarrel while he was preaching, and at length had him run through by a lance; upon which he was buried by his disciples as formerly related in the church he had built at Meliapour. It was likewise affirmed by a learned native of Coulam, that there were two religious houses built in that part of the country by the disciples of St Thomas, one in Coulam and the other at Cranganor; in the former of which the Indian Sybil was buried, who advised King Perimal of Ceylon to meet other two Indian kings at Muscat, who were going to Bethlem to adore the newly born Saviour; and that King Perimal, at her entreaty, brought her a picture of the Blessed Virgin, which was kept in the same tomb.

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