180 Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal. [N.S., XIX, 
that they could not bury him (did he too disturb his tombstone 
or thrust out his arm, I forget) until they pnt a diamond 
into his mouth. I could only smile at such a piece of popular 
credulity, but I have often wished to be able to give a rational 
explanation of the popular conception of such things 
ne ten years earlier than Barbosa, in one of the earliest 
site of Mylapore dating from the Portuguese conquest, 
we find ourselves suddenly “confronted again with some of 
Mar John III.’s stories. The a anonymous writer, probably a 
Flemish sailor, did not venture beyond the Malabar Coast. 
How then did he get hold of the legend that for a fortnight, 
about the time of St. Thomas’ feast, the sea could be passed 
on foot, and that they gave the Sacrament to the worthy and ~ 
refused it to the unworthy ? If be did not read this in some 
European book, either before his coming to India or after his 
‘return to Europe, he must have picked it up in Malabar, On 
the other hand, he makes about Edessa and its being a four 
ays’ journey from the tomb of St. Thomas in the sea a remark 
already made by John of Hese. 
he 2 3 days from Coloen,! is a town which is called Lapis,” 
and near by is Saint Thomas i in the sea.® It is there that for a 


i is ilon. They aceivedk at Cochin on Nov. 1502, at Quilon on 
Jan. ty 1503, and left Cannanore for Portugal on Febr. 12, 1503. 
2 No other place can be intended by the Latin word a oo (=a stone) 
than n Mylagore. But the name is a — ee in a Flemish 
narrative, of which no Latin original h seeds Shee shall we 
account for it? Per rhaps, some rene Christians pelied. ta Mylapore - 
am mina and explained it, as yrian Christians do now, 
meaning Galmona (Syriac) or hillock; or F again they may have referred t 
Little Mount, Chinna Malai, a bare rock, which according most 
them is the place of St. Thomas’ martyrdom, or at any rate the place 
where he was first wounded. ae ag surmise is correct, we might 
have here the earliest attem the meaning of Ca ee More than 
one author writing in India the ‘deatoedl Calamina as meaning, in Tamil, 
‘on geil ock.’ 
5 The expression ‘St. Thomas in the sea’ either alludes to =~ sub- 
merged Calamina or echoes the medieval descriptions of Myla which 
speak of it as on an isl and, in imitation no doubt of the Arabs, whd fre- 

Thomé, as a place-name for Mylapore, is of later origin. ‘The Portuguese 
historians say that Mylapore received its name of S Thomé from the 
Is it a fact that t cta (I have no copy either of the Ac/a or of the 
Passto or of the Miracula) says that St. Thomas “ pale a spiritual palace 
under the sea” for King dophares? Cf ordon, Asian 
ing Gon . Mrs. E. A. 
Chr istology. Tokyd, Maruzen & Co., 1921, p. 244. The Syrians of Malabar 
and the R. C. Christians now at Mylapore will have it that Kandapa Raja 
( Gondophares ?) reigned at Mylapore, sa they speak (or at any rate they 
. Mae 300 — ars ago) of his palaces a3 lying buried in the sea in front of 
vlapore 
