CHAPTER IX

THE CALL FROM CHINA

WE will assume, then, that Christian preachers visited India somewhere about A.D. 45, and that the story of St. Thomas having been martyred near Mathura, on the Jumna, in Central India, or at Mailapur, on the Tamil coast, about A.D. 51 (this being the year traditionally assigned for his martyrdom), is not an absolutely improbable one. These men would have brought no Christian books with them; they would have their own memories of the things that they had seen or heard, and they may have had, or have made, logia, or short pithy sayings of or about Christ, such as have recently been found in Egypt, and such as St. Matthew is supposed to have jotted down before composing his Gospel. And they possibly had some converts.

Now, in the year 64 A.D., the Chinese Emperor Ming-ti had a dream. On several successive nights there stood before him a man in golden raiment, holding in his hand a bow and arrows, pointing him to the west. The emperor was much moved by his vision, and, divining its purpose, determined to send men to the west to seek for the mabito () "the true man" of his vision. There was at this moment no commanding figure in Buddhism to whom the words could apply. As'vaghosha might have

been such a man, but As'vaghosha is connected with the reign of Kanishka (circa A.D. 120), and his days were not yet. But there had lately been, and in the faith of his followers there still spiritually was, such a Man, and it is quite within the bounds of reason to suppose that rumours of such a person had reached the Chinese court at Loyang. We have only to consider that the active silk trade between China and the luxurious early empire of Rome was in the hands of the Jews, whose headquarters were in Antioch; that these Jews had colonies and trade posts all along the route to the distant East; that their furthest outpost was at Kaifongfu, in Honan, where a miserable colony of their descendants still subsists to bear witness to a buried past; that Jews from Parthia were amongst those who were impressed by the events of the day of Pentecost;--we have only to consider these things to understand how extremely probable it was that rumours of the mabito should reach China. The Roman Empire had good roads; the Parthians had inherited good roads from the Persians and the Seleucid Greeks; China under the Han was a progressive military power, and must have had them. The journey from Antioch to the Chinese capital at Loyang would not occupy more than a year and a half, and already thirty years had elapsed since the Crucifixion and Pilate's testimony to the mabito--Ecce Homo!