THOMAS. Edward Thomas, a Bengal Civil Ser vant, editor of Prinsep's Antiquities, joint editor of Sir Henry Elliot's posthumous History of India. Ile wrote On the Coins of the Patan Sultans of Hin dustan ; On the Coins of the Kings of Ghazni, A.D. 961-1171 ; The Epoch of the Sall Kings of Surashtra; On the Numismatic History of the Early Muhammadan Arabs in Persia ; On the Explanation of Oriental Legends to be found on certain Arsacidian and Partho -Persian Coins ; The Initial Coinage of Bengal, introduced by the Muhammadans A.H. 600 to 800 (A.D. 1203-1397); the same, with a Supplementary Part, embracing the preliminary period between A. H. 614-634 ; also Comments on Recent Pehlavi Decipherments, with Contributions to the Early History of Tabaristan. ` Towards the end of August 1863, an unusually largo .hoard of coins, numbering in all no less than 13,500 pieces of silver, was found in the protected state of Koch-Bahar, in Northern Bengal. This accumulation, so singular in its numerical amount, is not the less remarkable in the details of its component elements. . . . It may be said to embrace compactly the records of ten kings, ten mint cities, and to represent 107 years of the annals of the country.' George Thomas, a native of Tipperary in Ireland, who came to India as quarter master of a ship of war. He deserted, and in 1787 he took service with the Begum Sannu, and rose into high favour. Ile carved out for himself an independent principality nyIanst, where, to use his own words, ' I established a mint and coined my own rupees, which I made current in my army and country ; . . . c,ast my own artillery, commenced making muskets, matchlocks, and powder ; . . . till at length, having gained a capital and country bordering on the Sikh territories, I wished to put myself in a 1 estpacity, when a favourable opportunity should offer, of attempting the conquest of the Panjob, and aspired to the honour of placing the _British standard on the banks of the Attock.' Thomas at this time had a revenue of four or five laklis of rupees. At ono time he seems to hay° entered the service of Apa Kunda Rao, a pnnapal officer of Sindia. In S. 1857 (A.D. 1801), for the stun of three lakhs of rupees, he put the Bhatti race into the possession of Bhatuair, but the succeeding year the Rahtor Rajputs again wrested it from them. After twice defeating Perron's troops, he accepted Lord Lake's terms at Hansi, 1st January 1802, and proceeded towards Calcutta with about one lakh of rupees, but he died near Berharnpur, August 1802, and was buried in its churchyard.
St. Thomas the Apostle is generally believed to have proceeded to Arabia, and some say to India, and to be buried at St. Thomd or Mylapur, .a suburb of Madras, where his tomb is shown in the Portuguese Roman Catholic cathedral. But there is much doubt both as to the places which he laboured, and as to the place and cir cumstances of his demise. Even in the same cathedral at St. Thome is a bone relic, sent from a former pope of Rome, and older traditions. in the west assert positively that Thomas was buried ' at Edessa. There is a hill ten miles from Madras, called St. Thomas' Mount, to which, from un known times, Syrian and Roman Christian pil grims from all Asia repair ; and at the Little Mount, at the Marmalong Bridge, _six miles from Madras, is shown a cave where St. Thomas is said to have been killed. There are numerous native Christians in Madras and its neighbourhood, mostly the fishermen, but no tradition exists as to their conversion. Those near the Triplieane temple of Vishnu have houses built over temple ground, on the stipulation of pulling the idol car. Nicephorus declares St. Thomas to be the apostle of the Indians ; and Gaudentius says, like Sophro nius, that he died in India at the town of Cala mina, which is no other than Mylapur, a place at a short distance from Madras. Marco Polo relates
that St. Thomas was accidentally killed when at prayer in a wood, by a low caste man, who was shooting at peacocks, and that, as a consequence of this mischance, none of the poor man's tribe could ever enter the place where the saint lay buried. Gibbon says that Marco Polo was told on the spot that he (St. Thomas) suffered martyr dom in the city of Mylapur.' Dr. Fryer, who visited India about 1680, says that about this mount live a caste of people, one of whose legs are as big as elephants', which gives occasion for the divulging it to be a judgment on them, as the generation of the assassins and murderers of the blessed apostle St. Thomas, one of whom I saw at Fort St. George.' Some of the doubts as to St. Thomas the Apostle seem to have arisen from the.martyrdom of a Christian named Mar Thomas. It is on record that Alfred the Great despatched from Britain an embassy under Sighelm, BiShop of Shireburn, to the shrine of the saint at Madras. This was in 883, and it seems little likely that if the legend of the death and burial of St. Thomas iu the neighbourhood of Madras really arose out of the fact of the death and burial of Mar Thomas, —an event which took place only about half a century before Alfred's embassy,—there should have been at that time, either in Egypt or Great Britain, any confusion of an incident which occurred fifty years before with one that was at least eight centuries old. It is surmised by Gibbon and other writers, that the pilgrims were despatched from Great Britain, but never pro ceeded farther than Alexandria, where they collected their cargo of legend.' The Christians on the coast of Malabar trace their paternity to the Apostle Paul, who went through Syria and Officio, confirming the churches.' They looked to Syria as their spiritual home. _They owned the supremacy of the patriarch of Babylon. It appears that while the Indian bishoprics were under the authority of the Christian patriarch of Seleucia, an Armenian Christian named Thomas Cana took up his abode at Malabar, and sonie suppose that his name has led to the belief that Thomas the disciple visited India. Thomas is said to have founded seven churches in Malabar. According to Eusebius, it was Bartholomew who visited India. The Eastern churches believe that St. Thomas preached in Arabia Felix and Socotra, on his way to India, about A.D. 50, where he suffered martyrdom. And it is said that the rudiments of the religion of the cross were first implanted amongst the Hirnyarites by St. Bartho lomew. It is also recorded that St. Pantenus was sent by Demetrius, Bishop of Alexandria, to preach in Arabia Felix, and that there he found traces of St. Bartholomew, arnongst others a copy of St. Matthew's Gospel, written in the Hebrew character, which he brought aWay with him to .Alexandria. In the reign of Tobba, son of Hagan; from A.D. 297 to 320, Christianity became more generally known in Arabia, and extended to Abyssinia, where the people, though sur rounded by Muhammadan and pagan tribes, continue Christians till the present day. Subse quently, in A.D. 326, Frumentius was elected by Athanasius bishop of the Indians, and he con tributed much to the propagation of the Chris tian religion ; but whether Arabia or Abyssinia was the scene of his labours, is disputed. In A.D. 342, Theophilus Indus, a native of Diu, obtained permission to build churches in Yemen, one of which was located in Aden.—Playfair ; Kaye's Christianity in India ; P. Vincenzo Maria, Viaggi, p. 132 ; Yule, Cathay, ii. p. 378 ; Huc's Chris tianity, i. p. 2 ; Growse.