In the year 70 Jerusalem was destroyed and the soldiers of Titus completed the overthrow of the Jewish Kingdom. The people who in their pride and contempt had cried “Crucify Him” were now flying in terror from their doomed city, and many must have escaped to reach the refuge of those trading settlements on the shores of India. In support of this view it may be mentioned that there is in the Library of the University of Cambridge a facsimile of a copper plate of the greatest interest, found in the Jewish Colony at Cochin, which bears a Hebrew inscription to this effect: “After the second temple was destroyed (which may God speedily rebuild!) our fathers dreading the conquerors’ wrath departed from Jerusalem, a numerous body of men, women, priests and Levites, and came unto this land.” Possibly among these fugitives Christians came, some maybe with personal memories of the life and ministry of our Lord, others, converts of the Apostles, stray Jews who had embraced the Christian faith, or Gentiles who had renounced their idolatry and gratefully accepted the Gospel. It is therefore not improbable that at this time and under these conditions Christianity first came to India. But the Church on the Malabar coast still cherishes its tradition that St. Thomas laid its foundations when he landed on the island of Melankara near Kranganur. The source of this story is the apocryphal Acts of Thomas and the Martyrdom of Thomas, written towards the end of the third century. These records state that the Indian King Gondophares sent Abbanes to Jerusalem to find an architect or builder, and that in the slave market there Jesus Christ sold St. Thomas to him for £3 worth of uncoined silver! After this the recital of sundry extraordinary miracles wrought by the Apostle at the King’s court falls on rather unbelieving ears. The only item of fact which proves the existence of King Gondophares was the discovery, some years ago, of coins bearing his effigy among the mountains of Iran and an inscription showing that he was reigning during the lifetime of Jesus Christ and also that the Greek language was evidently known in that district. The genuine Thomas legend, however, has probably no reference to the Apostle but to a Bishop of Edessa of that name, who in the year A.D. 345 landed at Malabar with a company of presbyters, youths and maidens gathered from Jerusalem, Baghdad and Nineveh, and he it was who probably founded Kranganur. He is known as Thomas Cananaus.