Christian Topography
A work in twelve books by a merchant of Alexandria who had sailed the Red Sea and the Indian Ocean. Written to argue for a flat, box-shaped world, it also reports Christian churches in Sri Lanka and on the west coast of India.
Read the text at tertullian.org ↗Book 3, with the passage on the churches of Taprobane, Male and Calliana (McCrindle pp. 118–119) ↗Book 11, on Taprobane and the ports of India (McCrindle pp. 365–367) ↗
The author, known as Cosmas Indicopleustes, “the sailor to India”, had been a merchant before he became a monk. His translator, J. W. McCrindle, works out from the text that he was writing about the year 547. The purpose of the book is to defend a picture of the world drawn from Scripture against the round earth of the Greek philosophers, and most of it is argument of that kind.
In passing, Cosmas says what he saw and heard on his voyages. In the third book he lists the lands where the gospel has been preached and names a church with clergy on Taprobane, a church in Male “where the pepper grows”, and a bishop at Calliana who is appointed from Persia. In the eleventh book he says that the church on Taprobane belongs to Persian Christians settled there. McCrindle identifies Taprobane with Sri Lanka, Male with the Malabar coast and Calliana with Kalyana near Bombay. These passages do not mention the apostle Thomas. See the Apostle Thomas and the Christians of India.
Cited in
- AD 52, traditional date
- AD 523 (or 518), estimated date