[3] M. Pauthier has suggested the same explanation in his notes.

[4] Running a-muck in the genuine Malay fashion is not unknown among the
    Rajputs; see two notable instances in Tod, II. 45 and 315. [See
    Hobson-Jobson.]

[5] See Journ.  Asiat. ser.  VI. tom. xi. pp. 505 and 512.  May not the
    dinar of red gold have been the gold mohr of those days, popularly
    known as the red tanga, which Ibn Batuta repeatedly tells us was
    equal to 2-1/2 dinars of the west. 220 red tangas would be equivalent
    to 550 western dinars, or saggi, of Polo. (Elliot, II. 332, III.
    582.)

[6] I observe, however, that Sir Walter Elliot thinks it possible that the
    Paraya which appears on the oldest of Indian inscriptions as the name
    of a nation, coupled with Chola and Kerala (Coromandel and Malabar), is
    that of the modern despised tribe. (J.  Ethn.  Soc. n.s.  I. 103.)

CHAPTER XVIII.

DISCOURSING OF THE PLACE WHERE LIETH THE BODY OF ST. THOMAS THE APOSTLE;
AND OF THE MIRACLES THEREOF.

[Illustration:  Ancient Cross with Pehlevi Inscription on St. Thomas’s Mount, near Madras. (From Photograph.)]

The Body of Messer St. Thomas the Apostle lies in this province of Maabar at a certain little town having no great population.  ’Tis a place where few traders go, because there is very little merchandize to be got there, and it is a place not very accessible.[NOTE 1] Both Christians and Saracens, however, greatly frequent it in pilgrimage.  For the Saracens also do hold the Saint in great reverence, and say that he was one of their own Saracens and a great prophet, giving him the title of Avarian, which is as much as to say “Holy Man."[NOTE 2] The Christians who go thither in pilgrimage take of the earth from the place where the Saint was killed, and give a portion thereof to any one who is sick of a quartan or a tertian fever; and by the power of God and of St. Thomas the sick man is incontinently cured.[NOTE 3] The earth, I should tell you, is red.  A very fine miracle occurred there in the year of Christ, 1288, as I will now relate.

A certain Baron of that country, having great store of a certain kind of corn that is called rice, had filled up with it all the houses that belonged to the church, and stood round about it.  The Christian people in charge of the church were much distressed by his having thus stuffed their houses with his rice; the pilgrims too had nowhere to lay their heads; and they often begged the pagan Baron to remove his grain, but he would do nothing of the kind.  So one night the Saint himself appeared with a fork in his hand, which he set at the Baron’s throat, saying:  “If thou void not my houses, that my pilgrims may have room, thou shalt die an evil death,”