d by tradition to have contained 3300 stately churches in its
environs. It is farther said that Meliapour was then twelve leagues from
the coast, whereas its ruins are now close to the shore; and that the
saint had left a prediction, "That when the sea came up to the scite of
the city, a people should come from the west having the same religion
which he taught." That the saint had dragged a vast piece of timber from
the sea in a miraculous manner for the construction of his church, which
all the force of elephants and the art of men had been unable to move
when attempted for the use of the king. That the _bramin_ who was chief
priest to the king, envious of the miracles performed by the saint, had
murdered his own son and accused the saint as the murderer; but St
Thomas restored the child to life, who then bore witness against his
father; and, that in consequence of these miracles, the king and all his
family were converted.

[Footnote 169: Heraldic terms, implying that the three upper arms of the
cross end in the imitation of flowers, while the lower limb is
pointed.--E.]

[Footnote 170: The strange expression in the text ought probably to have
been the tenths of the duties on importation.--E.]

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
a