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ST. THOMAS THE APOSTI.E AND INDIA
2 5
not martyred by the Brahmins. The story that Marco Polo
reports ran thus: ’the Saint was in the wood outside the
hermitage saying his prayers; and about him were many peacocks,
for these are more plentiful in that country than anywhere else.
And one of the idolaters of that country, being of the lineage
of those called Govi that I told you of, having gone with his
bow and arrow to shoot peafowl, not seeing the Saint, let fly
an arrow at one of the peacocks; and this arrow struck the
holy man in the right side, insomuch that he died of the wound,
sweetly adressing himself to his Creator.’ In the preceding
chapter the great traveller tells us how the murderer of the
Apostle belonged to a caste called Govil\ and he furthermore
relates the story that no member of this caste could ever be
induced to come near Mylapore where the Saint is buried.
’Indeed were even 20 or 30 me to lay hold of one of these
Govis and try to hold him in the place where the Body of the
Blessed Apostle of Jesus Christ lies buried they could not
do it.’2
Giovanni de’ Marignolli, Bishop of Bisignano and dead
after 1357, in 1347—49 visited Coromandel and Malabar on his
way back from China whither he had been sent by Pope
Benedictus XII. He also refers to the tradition concerning St.
Thomas and tells about his death in exactly the same way as does
Marco Polo. The same tale is repeated by duarte Barbosa,
a brother-in-law of the great Magellan, at the beginning of the
16th century in his very valuable work on South India. Both
of them, like Marco Polo, know of miracles having happened
at the sepulchre of St. Thomas.
Noone, as far as I am aware, has as yet accounted for
the discrepancy in the legends of the death of St. Thomas as
related by these earlier writers and by the Portuguese historians.
1 No such caste is known nowadays. Bishop Caldwell apud Yule
Marco Polo II, 286 suggested them to be Paraiyans but that is mere
guess-work.
2 Short references to the St. Thomas Christians are also found in the
writings of the Friars John or Monte corvino (1292; on him cp.
Fid-ler in Antoniusbote XXVII, 37 sqq.) and OdoricuS of pordenone
(1325). Cp. Yule-Cordier Cathay and the way thither III, 45: II, 141 sq.
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