by any Christian communities in that vast land. We must leave the apostolic origin of Malabar Christianity as a very doubtful legend.
But the "Christians of St. Thomas" are right when they protest against being described as a Nestorian mission. It is, I think, certain that their Church was founded by East Syrian missionaries; but there is every reason to suppose that this was before the East Syrian Christians had turned Nestorian. Indian Christianity was always dependent on the people who became the Nestorian Church, so India followed its mother Church into heresy. But there was Christianity in India (and along the Malabar coast) before Nestorius. We have a number of allusions to this. Even allowing for the inevitable ambiguity of the name "India," we can trace at least some of them with certainty to Hindustan. The first of these is the story of Pantænus († c. 200), the celebrated founder of the Alexandrine school of theology. Eusebius[1] and St. Jerome[2] tell us that he travelled to India, there found Christians who had St. Matthew's gospel in Hebrew, and that St. Bartholomew[3] had preached there. There is already some doubt as to where this "India" may be. Many people think it is Southern Arabia; but Jerome, at any rate, means Hindustan.[4] We may note at once that two races of Jews, white and black, have for a very long time been established along this coast.[5] If they were there first, we may suppose that the faith was preached in the first instance to them, and this would account for the "Hebrew" St. Matthew, meaning a Syriac version.[6] The "John of all Persia and great India," in the list of Fathers of Nicæa (325), is possibly a mistake (see p. 43 above). But soon after the council there was a Theophilus of Diu, of whom Philostorgius tells.[7] He was an Indian from the island Dibus ((
Greek characters)) who had come to Constantinople under
1 Hist. Eccl. v. 10.
2 De vir. illustr. 36.
3 St. Bartholomew also constantly appears as the other apostle of India.
4 See above, p. 355, n. 3.
5 Asiatic Journal, N.S. vol. vi. (Sept.-Dec. 1831), pp. 6-14.
6 "Hebrew" is always Syriac (Aramaic) in such cases, as in Acts xxi. 40, etc.
7 In the fragments of his history preserved by Photius, iii. 4-6 (P.G. lxv. 481-489).
