ON KRISHNA, AND SOLAR MYTHS. 173 
interest and importance—what grounds have we for believing, 
even allowing that the Bhagavad-Gita was composed after the 
first century A.D., that the Christian story had taken any hold 
upon India? I may here refer-to what I have already sug- 
gested on this point in a former paper on Buddhism; but it 
will be well to note one or two points here also in evidence. 
1. There is a fair amount of evidence that St. Thomas was 
the Apostle of India: namely, the tradition of the Christians 
that still exist on the Malabar coast ; their early connexion with 
Edessa, and the fact that they still own the Patriarch of 
Merdin; the account in the Syriac document called The 
Teaching of the Apostles (ante-Nicene Library, vol. xx.), 
that ‘“‘lhomas was the guide and ruler of the Church which 
he had built in India, in which he also ministered there; ” the 
Acts of Thomas, of which, though it is apocryphal, we should 
observe that the writer had nothing to gain in sending the 
Apostle to India, but much to gain, if the Apostle whose name 
he forged was well known, at the time he wrote, as having 
been the Apostle of India. 
2. Then there is the testimony of Eusebius, that Pantzenus, 
the predecessor in the chair of the catechetical school at 
Alexandria, and tutor of Clemens Alexandrinus, found a 
gospel of St. Matthew in India, when he went there as a 
missionary in the second century. 
3. There are also the Christian crosses at Madras and 
Kottayam, with Pahlavi inscriptions ; and the royal grants to 
early Christians inscribed on copper-plates, which also contain 
signatures in Pahlavi characters, showing that the Christians 
had in the early centuries of the Christian era already attained 
a position of considerable importance. ‘The connexion 
between India and Persia is too long a subject to dwell upon 
here ; but it was evidently very early, as in the sixth century 
the Indian Panchatantra was known in Persia. The Christian 
influence of Persia, too, may have been greater than is often 
supposed ; for, if Mr. Thomas’s translation of the Hajiabad 
inscription is correct, even Sapor I., in the fourth century a.p., 
must have been favourable to Christianity, if not a Christian 
himself (Karly Sassanian Inscriptions). 
23. It is worth mentioning, too, in connexion with Persia, 
that in the history of Manes, or Mani, there is a singular illus- 
tration of how the story of Jesus Christ was adopted by other 
religions. Manes identified Christ with the Persian Mithras, 
giving Christ the character of Mithras, and Mithras the 
character of Christ; so that, as in the case of Krishna, Christ 
was degraded by the attributes of Mithras, and Mithras exalted 
by the attributes of Christ. 
(3 ee 
