"[ W.W. Hunter details how this simple story, which had been in vogue in Christendom, collected an overlay of fraudulent fabrications over time:] Patristic literature clearly declares that St Thomas had suffered martyrdom at Calamina . . . The tradition of the Church is equally distinct that in 394 AD the remains of the Apostle were transferred to Edessa in Mesopotamia. The attempt to localize the death of St Thomas on the south-western coast of India started therefore, under disadvantages. A suitable site was however, found at the Mount near Madras, one of the many hill shrines of ancient India which have formed a joint resort of religious persons of diverse faiths – Buddhist, Muhammadan and Hindu . . . Portuguese zeal, in its first fervours of Indian evangelization felt keenly the want of a sustaining local hagiology. [. . .] A mission from Goa dispatched to the Coromandel coast in 1522 proved itself ignorant of or superior to the well-established legend of the translation of the Saint's remains to Edessa in 394 AD and found his relics at the ancient hill shrine near Madras, side by side those of a king whom he had converted to faith. They were brought with pomp to Goa, the Portuguese capital of India, and there they lie in the Church of St Thomas to this day. The finding of the Pehlvi cross . . . at St Thomas's Mount in 1547 gave a fresh coloring to the legend. So far as its inscription goes, it points to a Persian, and probably to a Manichaean origin. But at the time it was dug up, no one in Madras could decipher its Pehlvi characters. A Brahman impostor, knowing that there was a local demand for martyrs, accordingly came forward with a fictitious interpretation. The simple story of Thomas's accidental death from a stray arrow had, before this grown into a cruel martyrdom by stoning and lance thrust, with each spot in the tragedy fixed at the Greater and Lesser Mount near Madras."