THE LEGEND OF ST. THOMAS. 
3 
tones of the Apostle, together witli fragments of the spear 
by "which he won the crown of martyrdom. These things 
may be seen there to-day, and great are the annual gather- 
ings at the festivals observed on the 3rd of July and the 
18th and 21st of December. 
The early history of Maylapur it is diflScult to trace, and 
little help is derived from the etymology of the name. Still 
it is needful to note this etymology as helping to explain 
some of the stories that superstitious ingenuity has invented 
for the purpose of connecting the name of the place etymo- 
logically with the story of St. Thomas. The purana of the 
Maylapur temple, I am told, states that the place derived its 
name from the circumstance that Siva's wife appeared there 
to her lord in the form of a [mayil =) pea- fowl. Maylapur 
would mean, therefore, peacock-town, and hence peacock- 
stories form part of the legendary lore that has gathered 
round the name of St. Thomas. Thus Marco Polo ^ in the 
thirteenth century and Duarte Barbosa^ in the sixteenth 
both relate stories very different in detail, according to 
which St. Thomas was accidentally shot by an arrow aimed 
at a peacock. 
But the little chapel attached to the cathedral of Mayla- 
pur is not the only place that claims the honor of possessing 
relics of the Apostle. Eelics of him have been preserved 
since the first quarter of the sixteenth century in St. Thomas' 
Church at Goa. As these are known to have been carried 
thither in 1522 from Maylapur under the direction of the 
Portuguese viceroy, its claim to the original proprietorship 
is not thereby invalidated. But the same cannot be said 
regarding the claim made by another city, outside of India, 
whose early appearance and prominent place in Christian 
2 The Book of Ser Marco Polo, B. Ill, c. xviii. 
3 "East Africa and Malabar in the Sixteenth Century," published by 
the Hakluyt Society, p. 175. 
