companions the Franciscans and Dominicans he had won over to the faith ten thousand schismatics (these must be Thomas Christians) and unbelievers, and that so far as his experience went he had found them ten times better and more loving than European Christians. He says that if he had had from two to three hundred faithful missionaries, less than a year would have been needed to convert over ten thousand people. Because of the limited numbers of his assistants they were unable to visit many districts. On the other hand, the emissaries of Islam speedily overran the entire Orient. They were the greatest foes and persecutors of Christian missionaries, and during his time of office alone had cruelly put to death five Dominicans and four Minorites. Jordan returned afterwards to Europe, but we know neither when nor why.

About the same time, apparently, two other Europeans visited India-Odoric (Odoricus) of Portenau in Friaul (who died in 1331), and the adventurous knight, Sir John Mandeville, who appropriated Odoric's narrative, and gave it a truly fabulous colouring. Odoric went through Thana, visited the sepulchre of the martyrs, opened it and placed the remains in handsome chests in order to convey them to a Franciscan mission station in Upper India. On the journey thither (his destination was probably Seitoon in China) he touched at the Malabar ports of Flandrina (the Muhammadan Fanderina) and Cyncilim (Singlatz or Gincalam, or, according to South Indian tradition, Kranganur). That which interests us more especially is what Odoric and Mandeville have to say of a reliable nature concerning the Christian communities. Christians and Jews apparently live at Flandrina; they are frequently at war; the Christians, however, are always victorious. Furthermore, at Singlatz (Kranganur) and Sarche (Sachee, Barchen, or probably Saimur or Saighar is meant) reside many Jews, faithful Christians, and Mendynantes (mendicant friars ?).1 Both travellers then conduct us in ten days to the kingdom of Mobaron, Marco Polo's Maabar. There, in a church at one of the many towns of those parts, rests the body of St. Thomas. This church is full of idols. Round about it in fifteen houses dwell numbers of Nestorian monks, recreant Christians, and schismatics. Mandeville then proceeds to relate many wonderful things about the grave of St. Thomas; amongst others he makes the remarkable statement that, although as a matter of fact the Syrians had translated St. Thomas' body to Edessa, yet at a later period it had been brought back to India-a proof of the way in which even then the old Christian traditions wrestled with the later Indian one for the mastery.

1 See Appendix I.

The Papal Nuncio, John of Marignola, on returning from China, spent the years 1348-1350 in India. He arrived in Quilon at Easter, 1348, and passed thirteen months in Malabar. Pepper was the principal article of export, and the Thomas Christians, who enjoyed a monopoly in it, levied an export duty on every pound sent out of the country. From this income they were able, strangely enough, to contribute to the Papal Legate, at first one hundred gold fanams per month, and later one thousand! Marignola lodged at the Latin church of St. George, and he had it decorated with valuable paintings. At his departure he boasted of having brought to completion many glorious projects, but what these were we are unfortunately not told. He travelled southwards by land to Cape Comorin, where he caused a most grotesque rite to be celebrated. On the promontory he erected a marble pillar on top of which, in the presence of innumerable crowds of spectators, he placed a stone cross, anointed it with oil, consecrated and blessed it. From thence he journeyed to the Maldive Islands, where at that time there were also Christians residing. Here too he was received-if he is not drawing the long bow-with remarkable honours by the Princess, or the "far-famed Queen of Sheba," as the fanciful prelate expresses it. Then he visited Ceylon, where he was thrown into durance vile for four months; but in spite of this long detention, and many speculations on the subject of Paradise, Adam's House, and Adam's Peak, he was unable to learn anything concerning the Christian church on the island in preceding centuries. Released from his imprisonment, he travelled as quickly as possible to the Thomas shrines at Milapur, where, however, he remained but four days. He calls Milapur Mirapolis. One of the churches which he found there he believes to have been built by Thomas himself, the others by his orders. Of course he narrates the legend of Thomas being shot to death by an arrow. "Many miracles are wrought upon Christians, Tartars, and heathens, by the blood-besprinkled ground, and also by draughts of water from a certain magic spring"; in fact, Marignola claims to have experienced in propria persona one such miracle, but unfortunately he forgets to describe it. The only other thing we are told is that close by the very beautiful church of St. Thomas there lay a small vineyard. Marignola returned to Europe via Nineveh, Damascus, and Jerusalem.

With this we come to the end of this short period of Roman Catholic missions; indeed, it is hardly to be termed a missionary period, for of actual missionary work we read absolutely nothing. We may, however, read between the lines

of the few scattered narratives that the Franciscans were even then trying to establish themselves in force amongst the Thomas Christians in the neighbourhood of Quilon-Jordan's 10,000 converts, the "Companions" of this first Roman Catholic Bishop of Quilon, the Latin church of St. George, and so on, all pointing in this same direction.

With 1350 all our information again comes to an end for a century and a half. Roman Catholic missions in China likewise. terminate with the fall of the Mongolian dynasty, and the death of the last Archbishop of Peking, William of Prato, in 1370. In 1449 the Venetian renegade, Nicolo de Conti, returned to Rome from his adventurous travels in the East; he related that in Milapur, a town of one thousand hearths, the body of St. Thomas "reposes honourably in a large and beautiful church, close to which dwell a number of Nestorian Christians, who are also found disseminated all over India, just as Jews are found in Europe." That is the only mention of Indian Christianity, and an incomplete one to boot, during the fifteenth century.

For twelve whole centuries slight traces of Christian influence upon India can be detected, but any direct information thereon is unfortunately but as a vanishing echo from afar. Had not the discovery of a sea-route to India brought news of the existence of a large Indian church in Malabar and of very ancient Christian pilgrim shrines at Milapur, we should have been unable out of these scattered notices to construct any idea of the extent of Christian activity during these centuries.

It has been asked whether Christian thought has therefore left no impression upon the Hindu mind, so susceptible to religious influences, and whether traces of some such impression are not to be found in the literature or traditions of India. In the twelfth book of the great Indian epic, the Mahabharata, a “white island" (Svetadvipa) is spoken of, which is said to lie off the northern shores of the Milky Sea, this latter being situated in a northerly direction from Meru, "the Mountain of the Gods"; the inhabitants of this island are white, and glittering as the moonlight. Because of their religious views they are named "ekantinas," or monotheists. The source of true knowledge for them is said to be "devajaga," a sinking of themselves in the contemplation of God. They adore one sole and invisible God, "Narayana," to whom they often softly murmur prayers in the spirit. They are endowed with the most marvellous faith (bhakti). Only in the second age of the world would the men to whom had been communicated the doctrine of an invisible Divine Being take part in the final accomplishment of the work of God.

This is clearly an echo of Christian teaching, which had

somehow come to the knowledge of the sacred singer. Dr. Lorinser, a German Orientalist, claims to be able to point out in the Bhagavad Gita, one of the most beautiful and profound sections of the same Mahabharata, more than a hundred passages which are reminiscent of the New Testament. Other scholars, however, who have tested Lorinser's conjectures are unable to find any direct and certain connection between the two. An attempt has been made to trace strong Christian influence in the whole trend of Vaishnavism during the Middle Ages, emphasising as it does faith (bhakti) and union with God. But these questions are too complicated, and as yet too hypothetical, for us here to give any brief account of them. In this difficult branch of knowledge the region of conjecture has not yet been passed.

2. FROM THE LANDING OF THE PORTUGUESE TO THE ADVENT OF PROTESTANT MISSIONS

(a) 1498-1542

In May 1487 the wise and enterprising King of Portugal, João II., dispatched two ambassadors to the East with instructions to reach India by land and to obtain information with regard to a possible sea-route thither. One of these ambassadors, Pedro de Covilhas, took ship from Arabia to Malabar, and soon sent back valuable information for the king his master. Acting on this, Vasco da Gama sailed for India in 1497 at the head of a Portuguese fleet, and landed at Calicut on May 9th, 1498. This journey completed that union of the lands of the West and of India which had been sought for in vain for so many long centuries, and it marks the advent of a new epoch, an epoch of Roman Catholic missions in India. The Portuguese King Manuel 1. (1495-1521), and much more his bigoted successor, João III. (1521-1557), deemed it their most sacred duty, together with colonial conquest and exploitation, to plant Christianity -of course of the Romish type-in the newly discovered and inestimably vast regions of the East and of the West. The two missionary Orders, the Dominicans and the Franciscans, composed for purposes of this kind an imposing army of combatants, and many secular clergy joined their ranks. Even on board the second Portuguese fleet for India, which sailed under Cabral in 1500, hosts of monks destined for missionary service were dispatched, and by nearly every ship bound thither after that their numbers were augmented. Goa became at once the centre of an ecclesiastical hierarchy and of a great colonial empire. In 1534 it was raised to the dignity of a bishopric and placed under 1 See Appendix J.

the charge of Bishop João de Albuquerque (1533-1553; the see was unoccupied from 1553 to 1560). After his death Goa was made an archbishopric in 1557, and the Archbishops Gaspar de Leam Pereira (1560), Vincent da Fonseca (1585), Matthew of Medina (1590), and in an especial degree Alexio de Menezes (1594), endowed it with increasing splendour. Other bases of the Portuguese naval supremacy, such as Ormuz, Mozambique, etc., were also provided with churches and monasteries, secular clergy and monks. In this direction the Franciscans were particularly energetic, building monasteries at Goa, Cochin, Diu, Bassein, Shaul, Salsette, and other places. As the Portuguese encouraged intermarriages between their soldiers and sailors and native women, and baptized their frequently illegitimate offspring without inquiry, and as furthermore they encouraged and rewarded in every possible way the embracing of Christianity by the natives, there soon grew up, especially around Goa, a not inconsiderable church of nominal Christians-whose moral condition it must be admitted was generally deplorable, and who reflected little honour upon the faith they professed. The first forty years of Portuguese Catholic missions are, however, poor in noteworthy events or success, if we except the mysterious baptism of a Rajah of Tanore, on the Malabar coast. The first star of magnitude which arose in the sky of that mission was Francisco Xavier. The day he set foot on Indian soil, May 6th, 1542, is the birthday of Roman Catholic missionary activity in India on a large scale.

(b) Francisco Xavier1

Francisco Xavier, who was born on April 7th, 1506, in the castle of Xavier, Navarre, came of a noble family and was related on his mother's side to the royal house of Navarre and to the Bourbons. He was gifted with penetrating intelligence and a generous disposition, and received an excellent education in theology and philosophy. An intimate friend of Ignacio Loyola, he assisted him in founding the Order of the Jesuits on September 27th, 1540. The headquarters of Portuguese rule in India was, as we have already said, Goa. The Bishop of Goa, and later the Archbishop, had sent out clergy to the Molucca Islands, to the Malay Peninsula, to Travancore and the Coromandel coast, to Diu on the peninsula of Gujarat, to Ormuz on the Persian Gulf, to Sofala and Mozambique-in short, to all the Portuguese possessions in the Indian seas. On the island of Ceylon there were also a few missionaries. But the zealous King João III. of Portugal was far from satisfied with 1 See Appendix G.