THE HISTORY OF MANIKKA-VACAGAE. 107 



and Persia, and I hope that it may pass through the hands of our 

 more enlightened fellow-subjects in India. I think the value of 

 vsuch papers as this is very great to missionaries going to the 

 East, who ought to get an idea of the religions they are about to 

 controvert." 



As regards South India the same words aptly apply to the 

 paper just read by Dr. Pope. 



The Author. — If you will bear with me I will make one or two 

 remarks. I am obliged to condense very much what I have to say 

 because the subject is a very wide one. First of all, what I have 

 read is a mere fragment. I have got seven or eight volumes, type 

 written, waiting for the press ; but these things do not sell, and 

 the Clarendon Press Authorities hesitate as one might expect. It 

 is a question of " How can we recoup ourselves ? " That is 

 another matter, and there it remains. Secondly, the whole sub- 

 ject is invested with a controversial element, about which I am 

 rather loath to say much. 



My Hindu friends, with whom I am in constant communication, 

 strenuously refuse to believe that Manikka ever got anything 

 from such a polluted source as western tradition ; so I have not 

 emphasised that point here, but I have argued it at length else- 

 where. 



Now I will deal with facts. In the second century there were 

 Christian missionaries in Madras — not the Apostle St. Thomas, as 

 tradition has it ; but certainly a century later Panteanus came 

 and taught in Madras. Then the Nestorians came to the western 

 coast, and during the time of Manikka, or about that time, they 

 were so successful that the King of Travancore became a 

 Nestorian Christian. The Christians on the western coast have a 

 tradition that Manikka came there at this time. K^early every 

 excellency of his theology can be traced, I think, to intercourse 

 with these Nestorian Christians and the Alexandrian mission- 

 aries ; but their teaching was wanting in fervour and spirituality. 

 It did not make much of sin, nor did it teach the necessity for the 

 atonement. That was the case with the Nestorian missionaries, 

 and you can see in this tradition of Christianity, defects and 

 hiatuses still remaining in it. With regard to missionary work, 

 I may say that an old Qaivaite, who is still what we call a heathen, 

 is going to translate this into Tamil in India and circulate it. 

 If we can only do this kind of thing and study their system, 

 and meet them, not with antagonism, but as brothers who have a 



