174 Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal. [N.S., XIX, 
says that Marginolii, who had been at the place, could not 
mean such stuff as this. According to Yule, de’ Marignolli’s 
standing miracle of the opening of the sea may have alluded to 
the tradition that St. Thomas, in erecting a cross at Mylapore, 
which was then ten leagues from the sea, prophesied that, 
when the sea would reach that vicinity, white men should come 
from the world’s end and restore the Jaw which he had taught.! 
We fail to see what standing miracle de’ Marignolli might have 
seen in such a tradition, granting that he had heard it. He 
was at Mylapore only four days.? If he came at any time other 
than the Saint’s feast, he may have heard the story of the 
opening of the sea, and would have recorded it for what 
it was worth and without pretending to have seen it A stand- 
ing miracle would be a phenomenon often repeated, and, 
the Coromandel country, and that, carefully investigated, 
Malabar traditions might yet be made to yield vestiges of it and 
of its meaning. oth the Christian and the Hindu traditions 
seem to have preserved the memory of some tidal wave that 
would have buried a broad strip of the foreshore. Was there 
for a time after that a yearly receding of the waters so that 
_ Perhaps Yule is nearer to an explanation about the open- 
ing of the sea when he writes (Cathay, op. cit., II. 376, n. 1): 
“There is another curious Tamul legend bearing upon this 
which is cited in Taylor’s Catalogue Raisonné of Or. MSS. 
! Yule, op. cit., ibid. 
2 Ibid., I. 378. 
_ 3 Ibid., I. 376. Not more spontaneously than now, and therefore no 
miracle. To prevent the pilgrims from scooping out the earth or damag- 
the tom ea ide i i 
: glaring case of clerical imposition, someone 
will say. hy? Contact with the tomb suffices to consecrate the earth, 
the pilgrim would answer. But we cannot insist enongh that pilgrims 
should not be allowed to penetrate into the tomb and damage the bricks. 
