162 Journal of the Asiatic Society oj Bengal. [N.S., XIX, 
Kingdom of India.” It had a circumference of four days’ 
journey, and two Roman chariots could rvn abreast along 
its walls, which were so high that even the towers of 
Rome looked small beside them. Phison, one of the rivers of 
Paradise. flowed through it, most limpid, and yielding gold and 
gems. Not far from the city, on a mountain surrounded by a 
deep lake, was the mother church of St. Thomas the Apostle. 
Round the lake were monasteries of the twelve Apostles. In 
the ciborium of the church. ina Silver case (concha), suspended 
by silver chains, was the body of the Apostle, whole and 
entire, which, according to John, did the most marvellous 
things during Mass. ! 2 
“ Though there is much in this narrative that is mythical 
and that foreshadows the wondrous stories of Prester John 
which were to excite the interest of Europe from this century 
to the close of the Middle Ages, it has incidentally preserved 
a grain of truth.” 2 
A few pages earlier, the same writer shows under what 
circumstances Patriare John may have met the Pope’s envoys 
etc., which he had forwarded to him (June 1124).’8 If John 
came to Rome with the Pope’ i 
above that he did not i 
1124. This date will have to be borne in mind to explain the 
discrepancies jn chronology which the different accounts 
furnish, = 
' ulin in his book on the Synod of Diamper, Rome, 1745, 
writes concerning ‘* John III., about 1129” -— 
“ Not without fear of error does Le Quien mention under 
the year 1122. among the Bishops of India, this John, about 
Whom Assemani is silent. is i i 
what is called Alberic’s Chronicle, where, under the year 1122, 
among the acts of Pope Callixtus II., who began to reign in 
the year 1119, it is related that a certain Patriarch of the 
na rrennli emailemail 5: 


a - Chro - Alberici Trium Fontium a monacho Novi-Monasterii 
Hoiensis oe an 1122, ap. M.G.8S., xxiii.” ~(H. K. Mann). 
rol wyatt: K. Mann, The Lives of the P, ; } , London, 
Vol. VET (1910), po 31a sar {the Popes in the Middle Ages 
-3 Cf. H. K. Mann. wbid., Vol. VIIL., 216-217. 
T have found no reference to him in Assemani’s Bibliotheca 
iit. 
a 
_* Indeed, 
Orientalis, 4 folio volumes, — 
