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3 2
JARL CHARPENTIER
From De Barros we might easily gather that his relation was
the local tradition of Mylapore. But this is by no means sure
or even probable. That the Apostle was killed by the sting of
a lance is told also in the Acts of St. Thomas which make
North-Western India the scene of his missionary work. And I
feel fairly sure that this belongs to traditions current among the
St. Thomas Christians since times of yore but originally derived
from the same source as the Acts. If that be the case then
the real South Indian tradition is much rather the one telling
us that the Apostle was killed by being mistaken for a peacock.1
This legend, however, strikingly reminds me of certain Buddhist
tales of holy men; and it may well be that it is merely a
native legend which was during some remote period applied to
St. Thomas by his followers in South India.
No other writer than Marco polo has, as far as I am
aware, related the tale about the murderers of St. Thomas.
But some 16th and 17th century writers tell another tale, viz.
that the people to whom the murderer belonged had been
cursed by the dying Apostle and as a consequence of that curse
were pestered by Elephantiasis Arabum — popularly known as
the ’Cochin leg’ — in the left leg and foot. The Portuguese
even called this ailment the pejo de Thomé, the ’foot of
St. Thomas’. In another paper2 I have tried to explain this
curious idea by proving that enormous foot-prints —- called by
the Hindus sripada or holy foot-print’ and generally identified
with that of Buddha, Siva etc. — were sometimes in South
India thought to be those of St. Thomas. Alltogether it appears
to me that the South Indian traditions concerning the Apostle
are strongly mixed up with traits of purely Hindu origin.
Thus the South Indian tradition concerning St. Thomas
reached Europe at a fairly låte date, and we have no absolute
proofs of its existence until the end of the 13th century. But
1 What is really the interrelation of St. Thomas and the peacock I
do not know. The peacock, however, seems to take the place of the
pigeon on some crosses of the St. Thomas Christians. Cp. Correa Lendas
da India II, 722; do couto Decada VII: 10,5; Ath. Kircher China
illu-strata (1667), p. 54 etc.
2 Cp. Ostasiatische Zeitschrift VII, 179—200.
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