containing the cross, has on each side of it the figure of a peacock. Here we first meet with the mysterious symbol associated with St. Thomas in the later times of the Syrian Church in India. Various fantastic legends given by successive travellers—by Marco Polo, by John de Marignolli, and lastly by Duarte Barbosa as late as the sixteenth century—bring peacocks in some way into the story of the apostle. Evidently the symbolism has been borrowed from the mythology of the neighbouring Hindu temple, the Purana of which tells how Siva's wife appeared to her lord in the form of a peafowl, the name of which in Sanscrit is mayil. This is given as an explanation of the name Mailapore, Mayil-a-pur—"Peacock-town."
While this church at Mailapore declined and died out, the church at Malabar continued to flourish, assimilating the native population, and obtaining political status and recognised rights of self-government. These are registered in two copperplate charters, one of the date a.d. 774, recording a grant by King Vira Raghava Chakravarti to Irair Corthan of Crangamore as the representative of the Christian community, making him sovereign merchant of Kerala; the other granted to the Syrians of St. Thomas, about the year 824, with the sanction of King Sthanu's palace-major, confirming a gift of land to Muruvan Sapor Iso and the Tarasa Church. Further intercommunication between State and Church and confirmation of the Church's rights followed. In the year 745, according to the local tradition, Knaye Thomas, or Thomas of Cana, came with a fresh band of emigrants from Bagdad, Nineveh, and Jerusalem. Some have attributed the name "Christians of St. Thomas" to a confusion of this leader of the more recent additions to the Church with the Apostle Thomas. These new-comers appear to have settled to the south of the original Syrian community. The Christian Church in India is thus divided into two portions, a northern and a southern. The latter consists of people of fairer complexion than their brethren to the north. Yet another body of refugees appeared in the year 822 led by two
