In Cochin and Travancore there have been Jews from prehistoric times, and Christians from the earliest ye,ars of the era. Some of them have adopted the Latin hierarchy, others serve under the rule of the Patriarch of Antioch, others under the Patriarch of Mosul, and others, again, are designated Nestorians. The disputes there led to, and followed, the arrival of the Patriarch of Antioch, and on the 4th March 1876 the Travan core Government issued a proclamation, declaring all matters connected with the churches to be adjudicable by the ordinary courts of the country. The Syrian Christians in Travancore are styled Nasrani Mopla, also Pullen Kar ; and Mahomedans are Iona Mopla. The Palaya Kar is a convert from the Syrian sect to that of the Romish Church.
The seaboard regions of the Peninsula have many Christian sects meriting notice. One part of these, the Travancore state, is in alliance with the British Indian Government. Its population in 1875 was 2,311,379 souls, of whom 468,000 were Christians, 63 per cent. being Syrians, in part Roman Catholics of the Syrian rite, and the rest Nestorians ; Roman Catholics of the Latin rite were 24 per cent., and the remainder Protestants. The Syrian Christians on the Malabar coast date from the earliest centuries of the Christian era.
Cochin is another tributary state on the Malabar coast, with a population over half a million, of whom 140,262 are Christians and 1278 Jews. The Christians belong for the most part to the Romano-Syrian Church, under the Archbishops of 3Ialabar and Goa. The Jacobite and Nestorian Churches were established long before any Euro pean settlements there, and they acknowledge the Patriarch of Antioch as their head. The Chris tians are almost all fishermen and boatmen.
Tinnevelly is a British district in the extreme south-east of the Indian Peninsula. In 1871 it had a population of 1,693,979, 102,576 or six per cent. of whom were Christians, mostly of the Parawa race, and those of the Romish and Pro testant persuasions were in nearly equal numbers. It was on the Tinnevelly coast that St. Francis Xavier landed in 1542, after a short stay at Goa. He found there a small body of Christians ; but since his time their numbers have largely increased in Madura and along the coasts of Tinnevelly and Ceylon. They have not been free from persecu tion. In 1549 Father Antonio Criminale became a martyr at Punnakayal. In 1693 John de Brito fell a martyr at Madura ; and after the middle of the 18th century (1773) the Portuguese suppressed the Jesuits in their own dominions, and greatly oppressed the Eastern and Italian missions. Robert deNobili, in 1G07, founded the missions at Madura. Early in the 18th century, Father Beschi, a great Tamil scholar, lived for some time at Kayatar. 1816 was formed the vicariate-apostolic of Madura, including Tinncvelly. Beschi died in 174G. The Protestant missionary Schwartz was in Tinne velly in 1770, Jmnicke from 1792 to 1800 ; after him came Gericke, J. Hough, 1816, with Rhenius, a man of great ability, Schmid, Dr. E. Sargent,
and -Dr. R. Caldwell, all of them men of great intellectual ability.
Christianity made much progress in Japan from the time of Xavier and his fellow-labourers. Louis Almeyda, a Portuguese Jesuit, was every where welcomed among the territorial princes of Kew-sew. Sumitanda, prince of Omura, becatne a convert. In A.D. 1582, four noble Japanese went to Rome on an embassy to Pope Gregory xrir., from the princes of Bunga, Aroma, and Omura, and were for eight years absent from Japan. But the secular emperor, Tyco-sama, repressed the movement, and his successor, Eyay yes, issued an imperial edict, A.D. 1638, expelling and exterminating the Christian religion and foreign races. In 1638, 4000 Japanese Christians were thrown into the sea. from the Papenburg rock near Nagasaki.
The first missionaries to China were Italians. In the middle of the 17th century, workmen at Sen-gan-fu, in the N.W. of China, found a Syrian inscription, which had been sculptured by the missionaries of the Nestorian Church in the 7th century, and native scholars regard it as a most valuable specimen of the caligraphy and composition of the Tang dynasty. Christianity seems to have penetrated three times into China, the first time in the 5th or Gth century. We learn from the Mahomedan travellers, who visited China as early as A.D. 850, that it then prevailed ; and that, when Canton was taken and sacked in A.D. 877, by a rebel army, as many as 120,000 Mahomedans, Jews, Chris tians, and Parsees perished in the sack. The general who conquered Southern China is stated to have been a Nestorian Christian, and to have built a church at Nankin for those of his own faith. Marco Polo was himself in high favour, though a Roman Catholic. In the 13th it was very flourishing. At this epoch there existed at Pekin an archbishop with four suffragans. The Chinese have also for a long time had at their command a precious collection of books of Christian doctrine, composed by the ancient missionaries, and -which, even in a purely literary point of view, are much esteemed in the empire. These books are diffused in great numbers through out all the provinces. Chengiz Khan's wife was a Christian. She was the mother of his four sons, and he was liberal-minded in religious matt,ers. Christianity was encouraged at the Moghul court during the reign of tho einperor Jahangir. But Bernier mentions (i. p. 198) per secutions there. Pere Ricci went from Macao into the interior of China in A.D. 1585, and established himself in the first instance at Nankin. Ile removed, after a few years, from Nankin to Pekin, where he WaS well received, and his doc trines made an impression on some nobles of the court. He lived there for many years, the recog nised head of several missionary establishments located in different parts of China, making many converts, and respected by all, until his death, which occurred at the age of fifty-seven, in the year 1610.