172 Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal. {[N.S., XIX, 
place. Many of the infidels, struck with fear at so great a 
miracle, abandon the errors of their paganism: converted to 
the faith of Christ, they ask unceasingly for the sanctifying 
waters and are baptized together in the name of the holy and 
undivided Trinity. 
‘These ceremonies over, and the sacred mysteries pertain- 
ing to the feast of the holy Apostle Thomas having been 
celebrated by the clergy and the people the whole of that week, 
the Patriarch and the aforesaid ministers of God, Archbishops 
an ishops,' tremblingly replace the Apostle’s sacred body 
in the same place, great fear and reverence reigning all around, 
as when they take it down (? sicut quando illud expendunt). 
** After that, each one returns home happy and rejoicing at 
having been privileged to see such great miracles. And, in the 
same way as the plain and place aforesaid entirely dries up 
about the feast of the Apostle. when the people crowd in, so 
now, when they go away, it retufns quickly to its former con- 
dition, and is now at once flooded in deep water.” 
That is what the Patriarch of the Indians related at the 
glorified with one accord Christ, who, not ceasing to work year- 
ly such and so great miracles through His holy Apostle Thomas, 
liveth with the Father and the Holy Ghost, world without 
end. Amen. . 

We might perhaps suggest, for want of anything better, 
that by the body of St. Thomas may have been meant the low- 
relief statue of St. Thomas found underground in 1729 near 
the tomb of St. Thomas at Mylapore. The consecrated hosts 
might have been made to touch the statue, and St. Thomas him- 
self would have been understood to administer Holy Commu- 
nion. But, the withdrawing and closing of the hand remains 
oe in the case of a statue as in the case of a dead 
oay 
The Rev. Adrian Fortescue refers to cases of ordination by 
a dead body in Armenia. The Katholikos of Etshmiadzin is 
ordained by a kind of supplementary imposition of hands, the 
Imposition of a real or supposed relic of St Gregory the 
Illuminator, his right arm, called the holy Atsch.2 From 
alabar we have the curious story that twelve Nestorian 
priests went through an alleged form of ordination by laying on 
the head of Archdeacon Palakomatta a letter from the im- 


me 
for Southern India a Patriarch with Archbishops and Bishops who would 
prelates might have been found near Edessa ; not so in India, I think. 
2 A. Fortescue, The lesser Eastern Churches, p. 416, 
