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Rh day at latest our India was known and not inaccessible. This is probable on other grounds. Moreover, Indian influences are to be traced in Alexandrian philosophy and in Christian Gnosticism. There is no insuperable difficulty in believing that the gospel may have readied the country before the end of the second century. Still, even if we could settle this question in the affirmative, the answer would not be of much value. We can see no signs of any results of the early mission; even if this did exist it would appear to have been abortive. Pantænus's return and resumption of his old work, as already indicated, point to an unsatisfactory ending to the ambitious project. A mission projected in this spasmodic way is not likely to be successful. It is heroic to attack the most impregnable fortress if the attempt is adequate to the aim; otherwise it is Quixotic.

Over against Jerome's authority in favour of India proper—so unreliable in itself—we have not only to set the loose way in which the name was commonly used, but also the absence of all real evidence in the land itself previous to the Nestorian period. The local tradition goes back to St. Thomas, passing over Pantænus in silence. That may be explicable on the ground that the passion for an apostolic foundation was common in the churches, while the visit of an unsuccessful missionary might be mercifully forgotten. Still, we have no evidence to point to the existence of any Christian Church in India at this early period, and that is the real question with which we are concerned, whatever may have been the objective of the Alexandrian scholar's expedition. Even Dion Chrysostom's Indians may have been the people just to the east of Persia, in the country since known as Beluchistan—very far from the Indian Christians discovered in later times, whose home is in the south; if Pantænus did go to that country, north of the Arabian Sea, he would have had nothing to do with the founding of the Church in Travancore.

Among the signatories at the Nicene Council we have