"“The first Portuguese historians say ... that St. Thomas built his ‘house’, meaning his church, on the site where a Jogi had his temple.” ... “Fragmentary Tamil inscription of eight lines on a stone found at the cathedral, northwest end of the veranda, on the top line of the granite foundations of walls projecting from the veranda into the garden. “When I visited Mylapore last February, 1924, the stone was still lying near the place of the find. It ought to go to the Bishop’s Museum and receive an appropriate number. “According to the Assistant Archaeological Superintendent of Epigraphs, Madras, this inscription is a fragment in Tamil and it seems to register a tax-free gift for burning at night a lamp before the image of Kuttaduvar (Nataraja) in the temple of Suramudaiyar. Palaeographically this inscription may be assigned to the 11th century A.D. “A later communication from the Government Epigraphist for India, Fernhill, Nilgiris, says that Mr. Venkoba Rao, the Assistant Archaeological Superintendent for Epigraphy, Madras, pronounces the inscription belongs to Vikrama Chola’s time (12th century) and that the gift was to the Hindu god Nataraja, whose shrine is always to be seen in a Siva temple. “The stone was not found at its original site, as is shown by its fragmentary condition, the parts above and below, as well as right and left, being wanting. All we can gather is that the foundations in which the stone was inserted are of a date later than the inscription. To argue, as was done at the time of discovery in the Madras Mail, that, if the stone was dug up from any depth, it would indicate an original Saiva temple, on the ruins of which the Portuguese church of modern St. Thomas was erected, is to show a lamentable ignorance of what Marco Polo and even earlier writers have written about St. Thomas.”"