The genuineness of relics was often tested in this manner by exposing them to the action of fire. This custom, like the ordeal itself as a judicial process, finds its original home in the East. When, for instance, the sacred tooth-relic of Buddha was carried to the court of King Pandu at Patali-putta, and its holiness was questioned by the Niganthas, or worshippers of Siva, they tested it by casting it into a pit filled with glowing charcoal “bright and horrid as the hell Roruva”—when the tooth, in place of being consumed to ashes, rose out of the fiery mass resting on a lotus the size of a chariot-wheel.[988] Even Roman unbelief accepted a similar faith respecting the superfluous thumb which ornamented the right foot of King Pyrrhus, the touch of which cured diseases of the spleen, and which remained unharmed on the funeral pyre which consumed the rest of his body to ashes. The indestructible supplementary member was thereupon inclosed in a casket, and reverently placed in a temple—the first relic, probably, on record in the western world.[989] At how early an age Christianity adopted the belief which led to this is manifested by the story of the swaddling-cloth of Christ in one of the apocryphal Gospels. The Virgin, being unable, on account of poverty, to make a return for the offerings of the Magi who came to worship the infant Saviour, presented them with one of his swaddling-bands. On their return they placed it in the sacred fire of their altar, and though the flames eagerly embraced it, they left it unharmed and unaltered, whereupon the Magi venerated it, and laid it away among their treasures.[990] On the conversion of the Spanish Arians the experiment was tried on a larger scale. It seems that doubts were felt by the orthodox as to the relics preserved in their churches, and a general regulation was adopted by the Council of Saragossa in 592 that they should be all brought before the bishops and tested by fire—with what result is not recorded.[991] In such cases the ceremony of the ordeal was conducted with appropriate religious services, including the following prayer, which would seem to show that in its regular form it was not the relic itself, but the cloth in which it was wrapped that was exposed to the test—