The Myth of Saint Thomas and the Mylapore Shiva Temple

Judas Didymus Thomas the Doubter

Saint Thomas depicted in a Latin manuscript

San Thome Cathedral Basilica, Mylapore, Madras

Introduction

The myth of St. Thomas is a prototype of today's popular Jesus-in-India story. The myth was invented by the Syrian Christians of Malabar and later taken over by the Portuguese, and the Jesus story was promoted around the beginning of this century by western spiritualists who also paraded as historians of the arcane.¹

Both fictions are attractive to foreign spiritual seekers and to convent-educated Hindus who fancy the idea that an apostle of Jesus, or Jesus himself, may have visited India. The Hindus do not notice that in these legends neither Thomas nor Jesus are presented as seekers of truth or admirers of Hindu religion and culture. They are presented instead as teachers of a superior truth or as enlightened social reformers who are persecuted by avaricious and degenerate pagan priests.

Whether the legends are set in Palayur or Mylapore as is the case with Thomas, or Puri and Benares as is the case with Jesus, the theme of martyrdom is the same. The “superior” teachings of both men are rejected and their lives threatened by “reactionary” caste Hindus. Thomas is murdered on a hilltop near Madras and Jesus is stoned and driven from the country by a mob—only to return and marry a princess of Kashmir after surviving the Crucifixion.²

The first objective of these stories is to vilify Brahmins and malign the Hindu religion and community.

The second objective—and here we part company with the Jesus story—is to present Christianity as an indigenous Indian religion, not a Western import, that can rightly claim religious hegemony in India.

The Syrian Church does not press the issue, but the Roman Church does claim India as part of her apostolic patrimony on the grounds that St. Thomas may have died here. The disclaimer “may” must be noted for the Church does not officially declare that St. Thomas ever came to India.

The third reason for the legend to exist is to help the community-conscious Syrian Christians maintain their caste identity. They claim to be Jews or Brahmins, the latter descendants of Namboodiris converted by St. Thomas in the first century C.E. — though there were in fact no Christians in India before the fourth century and when they did arrive and settle in Kerala, they would obtain a social position similar to that of Nairs.

The first St. Thomas story was invented to give these Syrian immigrants Indian ancestry and the patronage of a local martyr-saint—Christianity is the religion of martyrs³—and it was resurrected and embellished in the sixteenth century by Jesuit and Franciscan missionaries who needed a pious story of persecution to cover up their own persecution of the Hindus. This is another reason for the Church to promote the story in Madras, for during that period she and her imperial Portuguese “secular arm” destroyed many temples in Mylapore and its environs.

The Archaeological Survey of India has never investigated the origins of early Christian churches in India in the same way that it has studied old mosques and other Muslim monuments, but this work has been done by German scholars and awaits translation and publication in English. It shows that most sixteenth and seventeenth century churches in India contain temple rubble and are built on temple sites. The destruction of one of these temples, the ancient first Kapaleeswara Temple on the Mylapore beach, is reviewed here because of its inexorable link with the legend of St. Thomas.

The famous English historian Arnold Toynbee observed that the mission and death of St. Thomas in India was probably legendary but that his reputed burial place in Mylapore was a centre of pilgrimage for Indian Christians. We observe that this reputed burial place of St. Thomas must now become a centre of pilgrimage for archaeologists, historians and philosophers who do not have a theological axe to grind like the pilgrims of old and the priests of today, but who would know the plain truth about old Mylapore and record it for our children.⁴

Notes

1. See Nicolas Notovitch's famous forgery, of 1894, still treated by some writers as a true record, called The Unknown Life of Jesus Christ, and Levi's psychic and sententious “transcription from the Akashic Records”, of 1908, called The Aquarian Gospel of Jesus the Christ.
2. A. Faber-Kaiser, in Jesus Died in Kashmir, claims that Moses is buried on Mt. Niltoop near Bandipur, Kashmir, Jesus in the Rozabal in Srinagar, Mary in Murree, Pakistan, and that Thomas was cremated in Mylapore.
3. Gore Vidal, in Julian, describes the vicious attacks made on Emperor Julian “the Apostate” by Christian bishops because he refused to give them martyrs. He had rejected Christianity as a false religion and returned to classical Paganism, but he continued to treat Christians with tolerance. He debated with them and made them pay reparations for the temples they had destroyed in the Roman Empire. He was assassinated by a trusted Christian officer while on campaign against the Persians. The story that his last words were “Thou hast conquered, Nazarene!” is a later Christian invention. Julian is still revered by those Europeans who realise that Christianity destroyed a superior Greek and Roman civilization and took Europe into the Dark Ages.
4. This introduction was originally published in the first edition of this book and has been edited and abridged for this edition. We have carefully kept the last line intact as it has been so much “appreciated” by the editors of The Hindu and Indian Express. They have published articles promoting the St. Thomas fable on their children's pages after reading it. We suggest that they now approach Dr. R. Nagaswamy, eminent San Thome archaeologist, for more articles on the same subject. He has promised to write a new introduction for this book but has so far not been able to do it. A copy of our original manuscript remains with him.