In Guzerat, Chau Ju-kwa, p. 92, mentions:  “Four thousand Buddhist temple buildings, in which live over twenty thousand dancing-girls who sing twice daily while offering food to the Buddha (i.e., the idols) and while offering flowers.”

XVIII., p. 356.

TRADITIONS OF ST. THOMAS.

“The traditional site of the Apostle’s Tomb, now adjacent to the sea-shore, has recently come to be enclosed in the crypt of the new Cathedral of San Thome.” (A.E.  MEDLYCOTT, India and the Apostle Thomas.  An inquiry.  With a critical analysis of the Acta Thomae.  London, David Nutt, 1905, 8vo.)

In the beginning of the sixteenth century Barbosa found the church of St. Thomas half in ruins and grown round with jungle.  A Mahomedan fakir kept it and maintained a lamp.  Yet in 1504, which is several years earlier than Barbosa’s voyage, the Syrian Bishop Jaballaha, who had been sent by the Patriarch to take charge of the Indian Christians, reported that the House of St. Thomas had begun to be inhabited by some Christians, who were engaged in restoring it.

Mr. W.R.  Philipps has a valuable paper on The Connection of St. Thomas the Apostle with India in the Indian Antiquary, XXXII., 1903, pp. 1-15, 145-160; he has come to the following conclusions:  “(1) There is good early evidence that St. Thomas was the apostle of the Parthian empire; and also evidence that he was the apostle of ‘India’ in some limited sense, —­probably of an ‘India’ which included the Indus Valley, but nothing to the east or south of it. (2) According to the Acts, the scene of the martyrdom of St. Thomas was in the territory of a king named, according to the Syriac version, Mazdai, to which he had proceeded after a visit to the city of a king named, according to the same version, Gudnaphar or Gundaphar. (3) There is no evidence at all that the place where St. Thomas was martyred was in Southern India; and all the indications point to another direction. (4) We have no indication whatever, earlier than that given by Marco Polo, who died 1324, that there ever was even a tradition that St. Thomas was buried in Southern India.”

In a recent and learned work (Die Thomas Legende, 1912, 8vo.) Father J. Dahlmann has tried to prove that the story of the travels of St. Thomas in India has an historical basis.  If there is some possibility of admitting a voyage of the Apostle to N.W.  India (and the flourishing state of Buddhism in this part of India is not in favour of Christian Evangelization), it is impossible to accept the theory of the martyrdom of St. Thomas in Southern India.