Origins of Christianity in India

St Thomas Cross

Christianity reached India from the earliest times. There is a reliable tradition that the Apostle Thomas preached there from the year 52, seeing the conversion of members of the Brahman caste, as well as local Jews, founding a church at Kodungallur on the Malabar coast and ordaining local clergy. Thomas himself was martyred at Mylapore, near Madras. Indian believers in Christ were called "nasrani" from the word "Nazareth". 

In 180 it is possible that Pantaenus, the Christian teacher from Alexandria, found this church, which had the gospel of Matthew in "Hebrew". 

Thus, when trader-missionary Thomas of Cana arrived from Mesopotamia in 345, along with 400 refugee believers, there was already a community of Christians. The incoming, newly-arrived Christians belonged to the Church of the East ("Nestorians") with its central episcopal see at Seleucia-Ctesiphon. They settled in the south of the city of Kodungallur, while the longer-standing existing community were based in the north. The language of the liturgy was Syriac. Over time, links with the Nestorian Church of the East were strengthened; Patriarch Timothy I (780–823 AD) set up the Metropolitan See of India. The map shows other places in India and Sri Lanka where the Church of the East was represented. 

In the 1500s, explorers and missionaries arrived in India to evangelise, and found an existing, indigenous church which used Syriac in its liturgy, held allegiance to the Church of the East, and was led by a bishop from Mesopotamia. Over time, as a result of contact with the incoming Portuguese Roman Catholic Christians, and later other denominations, the Thomas Christians divided into various communions. In the 1600s a sizeable number of Thomas Christians transferred their allegiance to the Oriental Orthodox ("Monophysite") West Syrian church.