An Armenian bishop who spent twenty years in visiting the Christians of that part of India which is near Coulam[171], declared on oath that he found what follows in their writings:  That, when the twelve apostles were dispersed through the world, Thomas, Bartholomew, and Judas Thaddeus went together to Babylon where they separated.  Thaddeus preached in Arabia, since possessed by the Mahometans.  Bartholomew went into Persia, where he was buried in a convent of Armenian monks near Tebris.  Thomas embarked at Basrah on the Euphrates, crossed the Persian Gulf, to Socotora, whence he went to Meliapour, and thence to China where he built several churches.  That after his return to Meliapour and the conversion of the king, he suffered martyrdom through the malice of the bramins, who counterfeited a quarrel while he was preaching, and at length had him run through by a lance; upon which he was buried by his disciples as formerly related in the church he had built at Meliapour.  It was likewise affirmed by a learned native of Coulam, that there were two religious houses built in that part of the country by the disciples of St Thomas, one in Coulam and the other at Cranganor; in the former of which the Indian Sybil was buried, who advised King Perimal of Ceylon to meet other two Indian kings at Muscat, who were going to Bethlem to adore the newly born Saviour; and that King Perimal, at her entreaty, brought her a picture of the Blessed Virgin, which was kept in the same tomb.  Thus was the invention of the holy relics of the apostle of India; which gave occasion to the Portuguese to build the city of St Thomas, in the port of Palicat, seven leagues from the ruins of the ancient Christian city of Meliapour.

[Footnote 171:  Coulam is on the coast of Travancore; in which country a remnant of the ancient Indian Christians has been recently visited by Dr Buchannan, which will fall to be particularly noticed in a future division of this collection—­E.]

In the year 1522, Antonio Miranda de Azevedo was commander of the fort at Pisang in the island of Sumatra.  On the west coast of that island there are six Moorish kingdoms of which Pedier was the chief, and to which those of Achem and Daga were subordinate.  But in consequence of war among themselves, Achem gained the superiority, and the king of Pedier retired to the fort for the protection of the Portuguese[172].  On coming to the city of Pedier with a great force, the king of Achem endeavoured to inveigle the king of that place into his hands, and prevailed on some of the leading men of the city to write their king that he might come there in safety as his enemies were expelled, and he might easily destroy them by the assistance of the Portuguese.  He accordingly went to the city, aided by eighty Portuguese soldiers and two hundred Moors, which went by sea in small row boats, while the king himself went along the shore with above a thousand armed elephants[173].  He