y, learning and saintship should in different countries sometimes
attain similar results.

Christianity, like other western ideas, may have reached India both by
land and by sea. After the conquests of Alexander had once opened the
route to the Indus and established Hellenistic kingdoms in its
vicinity, the ideas and art of Greece and Rome journeyed without
difficulty to the Panjab, arriving perhaps as somewhat wayworn and
cosmopolitan travellers but still clearly European. A certain amount
of Christianity _may_ have come along this track, but for any
historical investigation clearly the first question is, what is the
earliest period at which we have any record of its presence in India?
It would appear[1073] that the first allusions to the presence of
Christians in Parthia, Bactria and the border lands of India date from
the third century and that the oldest account[1074] of Christian
communities in southern India is the narrative of Cosmas
Indicopleustes (_c._ 525 A.D.). These latter Christians probably came
to India by sea from Persia in consequence of the persecutions which
raged there in 343 and 414, exactly as at a later date the Parsees
escaped the violence of the Moslims by emigrating to Gujarat and
Bombay.

The story that the Apostle Thomas preached in some part of India has
often been used as an argument for the early introduction and
influence of Christianity, but recent authorities agree in thinking
that it is legendary or at best not provable. The tale occurs first in
the Acts of St. Thomas,[1075] the Syriac text of which is considered to
date from about 250. It relates how the apostle was sold as a slave
skilled in architecture and coming to the Court of Gundaphar, king of
India, undertook to build, a palace but expended the moneys given to
him in charity and, when called to account, explained that he was
building for the king a palace in heaven, not made with hands. This
sounds more like an echo of some Buddhist Jataka written in praise of
liberality than an embellishment of any real biography. Other legends
make southern India the sphere of Thomas's activity, though he can
hardly have taught in both Madras and Parthia, and a similar
uncertainty is indicated by the tradition that his relics were
transported to Edessa, which doubtless means that according to other
accounts he died there. Tradition connects Thomas with Parthians quite
as much as with Indians, and, if he really contributed to the
diffusion