Contact, Conflict and Dialogue

Abstract

The history of contact between Christianity and Hinduism is far longer than is often imagined. It is the firm belief of the Thomas Christians in South India that their church was founded by the Apostle Thomas, who was martyred in India around 72 a.d., although there is no direct confirmation of this tradition. There are in fact two quite separate traditions about St Thomas. In the South Indian version (attested from the sixth century onwards), the apostle went to the Cochin area in Kerala by sea in 52 a.d., founded churches both in Kerala and in Tamilnad, and died in Mylapore in 72 a.d., after some twenty years of missionary work. In the western tradition (for which the oldest record is the apocryphal Acts of Thomas, of which the Syriac version may belong to the third century), Thomas went across Persia towards India, converted an Indian king named Gūdnaphar or Gondophernes and later became a martyr in the neighbouring kingdom of king Mazda; there was indeed a king Gondophares or Guduphara ruling in northwestern India from 19 till at least 45–6 a.d.¹