THE LEGEND OF ST. THOMAS. 
15 
lived at a time contemporary with the birth of Christ, and 
flourished a quarter of a centurj thereafter, mentions that 
the circiunnavigation of Cape Comorin from west to east was 
a thing not unheard of in his day, and that there was a 
great deal of trade between the ports of the Eed Sea and the 
western coast of Peninsular India. Trade with India proper 
by way of the Eed Sea and the Persian Grulf, at least as 
early as the beginning of the Christian era, is suiSciently 
well attested, and there is no reason on that score to doubt 
the possibility of an apostolic visit to Malabar. 
At the same time, while I frankly admit that the 
geography of Southern India was well-known to the com- 
mercial, the political, and the learned world of the first 
century, it is not so easy to admit that the writers of the 
Apocryphal Acts could boast of high accomplishments in 
this department of learning.^* It may be easy to admit 
that an Edessene author, writing at the close of the second 
century, could tell the name of a king who reigned at Kabul 
150 years before ; but diflB.cult to acknowledge that the same 
author could pass a tolerable examination on the geography 
of Southern India. 
Be that, however, as it may, the allegation that St. Thomas 
did ever actually visit our shores is utterly unsupported by 
any historical evidence. We may, of course, talk about 
Misdeus having possibly been king of Maylapur, but there 
is no record of the existence of any such king of that place. 
Moreover, if Misdeus was king of Maylapur, shouldn't 
Gondophares have been king of Malabar ? But if ever the 
^8 One of them ventures on a definition of India and this is what he makes 
iof it. " Historians declare," says the author of the Martyrdom of the Holy 
and Glorious Apostle Bartholomew, " that India is divided into three parts ; 
1 and the first is said to end at Ethiopia, and the second at Media, and the third 
completes the country, and the one portion of it ends in the dark and the 
other La the ocean. To this India, then," adds the redouhted author," the 
i holy Bartholomew, the Apostle of Christ, went." See Ante-Nicene ChriBtian 
Library, vol. XVI, p. 429 ; T. & T. Clark, Edinburgh. 
