What Can India’s Persian Crosses Tell Us?

A stone can hold several histories

The Persian inscribed crosses associated with churches in southern India invite careful attention. A carved cross, its surrounding letters, its present location and the traditions told about it belong together, but they need not have begun together. Luca Olivieri’s archaeological reassessment distinguishes a possible older model from the surviving stones. The distinction matters: copying an old inscription can preserve a memory without giving the new stone the age of its model. ¹

Martin Thomas Antony’s illustrated account shows differences among the crosses in their carving, supports and decoration. They are particular objects, cared for in particular places. Looking closely at those differences is more fruitful than treating every example as an interchangeable illustration of one ancient event. Their continued place in worship is itself part of their history. ²

Françoise Briquel Chatonnet, Alain Desreumaux and Jacob Thekeparampil introduce their field research in Kerala by distinguishing systematic investigation from exaggerated reports of antiquity. That distinction protects the community’s heritage. A claim becomes more useful when its physical witness and circumstances can be described, rather than growing more impressive each time the story is retold. ³

This is also a matter of Christian truthfulness. An object need not establish an apostle’s itinerary to deserve study or care. A congregation can value what its ancestors received while admitting that the surviving evidence leaves questions unanswered. Gratitude for a remembered past can live alongside a willingness to correct an attractive explanation.

Letters give evidence and set limits

Pahlavi names a writing tradition associated with Middle Persian. The language and the script should not be confused. Mauro Maggi and Paola Orsatti explain how inherited spellings and Aramaic written forms could be read as Persian words. An old looking spelling therefore does not give a simple date for the speech behind it, still less for the stone on which someone later copied it. ⁴

Abe Meyers’s study of Book Pahlavi explains difficulties caused by similar letter shapes, joined characters and largely unwritten short vowels. Such problems help explain why a short inscription can sustain different readings. A photograph is valuable evidence, but a confident translation still requires knowledge of the writing system, comparison with other witnesses and an account of damaged or ambiguous marks. ⁵

The survey by Carlo Cereti, Luca Olivieri and Joseph Vazhuthanapally makes the limits concrete. The invocation of Christ is clearer than the personal name, patronymic and final expression. Their physical examination also recovered letters previously obscured. The text belongs within Christian history, while uncertainty over individual words prevents an effortless identification of the person commemorated or the action described. ⁶

Arthur Coke Burnell’s 1873 publication preserves the conditions behind an early attempted reading. He described letters obscured by whitewash and admitted that the short text offered little control over doubtful words. His interpretation belongs to the history of scholarship. Its value today includes the warning that a printed translation may rest on imperfect access to the object. ⁷

Edward William West later compared inked impressions of several inscriptions. He explained how agreement between physical witnesses restricted conjectures previously possible from a single copy. His proposed translation was still qualified. Improved access could correct an earlier reading without producing certainty about every word. The discipline is plain: the desired meaning must answer to the marks, rather than deciding them beforehand. ⁸

Nor did Pahlavi disappear as soon as Sasanian rule ended. Ahmad Ali Asadi and Cereti analyse inscriptions from Islamic period Fars whose dates and readings require their own qualifications. Their evidence rules out a shortcut that would assign every Pahlavi inscription to a period before the Islamic conquests. Script is evidence within an argument, rather than a calendar stamped onto an object. ⁹

A date can remain a real disagreement

The Goa cross makes the problem especially vivid. Pius Malekandathil interpreted its Portuguese inscription as a later addition to an older object. He also acknowledged difficulty reading the damaged Pahlavi. This reconstruction allows the stone to preserve more than one historical stage, but the proposed sequence remains an interpretation of the object and its inscriptions. ¹⁰

Olivieri’s later reassessment reads the relationship differently, taking the Portuguese date of 1642 as relevant to the making of the surviving Goa cross. He also considers early modern copying among the southern Indian examples. Readers should hear this as an archaeological proposal in a continuing debate. The competing explanations cannot be merged into one settled date merely because both accept a Persian Christian connection. ¹

István Perczel proposes another connection between a possible older model, a personal name and the Kollam grant’s Christian beneficiary. The identification is a hypothesis. Similar names and related networks can make a reconstruction interesting without establishing that the inscriptions commemorate the same person. ¹¹

Aleksander Engeskaug’s approach to inscriptions adds a useful perspective. Even identical wording can belong to separate acts of commissioning, carving and placement. A copy has its own circumstances and audience. Establishing that a surviving stone is later than its textual model would change the historical question, while leaving the act of preserving and displaying that text worth understanding. ¹²

Ariane de Saxcé’s comparison of southern India and Sri Lanka places Christian signs among wider evidence of movement and contact. A cross on a standing pillar and a cross on a portable seal offer different kinds of information. Mobility, setting and associated finds matter. A resemblance can suggest a connection without demonstrating that one object travelled, or that every example had the same date and use. ¹³

A shape needs its surroundings

Katarzyna Maksymiuk, Patryk Skupniewicz and Anita Smyk ask whether every cross shaped mark on a Sasanian seal must be Christian. Their comparison cautions against automatic identification from geometry alone. That does not erase the Christian invocation on India’s inscribed crosses. It shows why words, images and setting together can support a conclusion more securely than one isolated outline. ¹⁴

Ken Parry likewise warns against treating the leafy or branching cross as exclusive to the Church of the East. Related forms occur across several Christian artistic traditions. Shared ornament cannot by itself identify a denomination. Nor does the absence of a carved human figure prove that a community rejected all religious images or possessed one easily reconstructed theology. ¹⁵

Joseph Sanzo’s study of ancient Christian objects brings words, images, materials and gestures into one field of interpretation. What people wrote on an object and what they did with it may both matter. Christian wording alone does not settle every question about a practice. The historian needs to ask how an object was used, rather than assigning its whole meaning from its appearance. ¹⁶

The excavators at Samahij in Bahrain combine architecture with cross marked ceramics and other finds when suggesting occupation by a Christian community. They retain uncertainty over the building’s precise function. A collection of associated evidence allows a stronger historical proposal than a detached emblem, while still leaving distinctions between a church, a monastery and another Christian residence unresolved. ¹⁷

Julie Bonnéric’s account of Al Qusur on Failaka connects religious buildings with a refectory, food preparation and probable residential cells. Such remains bring ordinary community life into view. People needed places to eat, work and live as well as places to worship. Christian history gains substance when its objects are returned to those practical relationships. ¹⁸

Robert Carter’s reconsideration of Gulf archaeology shows why a revised date for surviving monuments need not erase an earlier Christian presence known through other evidence. A community’s beginnings and the construction of its surviving building are different questions. The distinction travels well to India: revising a stone’s date should revise the particular claim it supported, rather than settle every question about the community. ¹⁹

Christians have used the sign in different ways

Bruce Longenecker challenges the familiar assumption that the cross lacked significance for Christians before Constantine. His opening discussion also exposes the limits of building a history around only the best known imperial turning point. A symbol can have uses and associations before it becomes prominent in public monuments. We should allow different kinds of evidence to enter the account. ²⁰

Larry Hurtado studies a combination of Greek letters used within words concerning crucifixion in early Christian manuscripts. His analysis brings writing and visual form together. The history of the cross includes marks within books as well as large carved monuments. A reader looking only for freestanding crosses could miss a different way Christians gave visual attention to Christ’s death. ²¹

Justin Martyr found the form of a cross in a ship’s mast, agricultural tools and outstretched arms. These comparisons disclose his Christian interpretation of familiar things. They do not make every ship or tool a Christian artefact. The author’s explanation supplies the religious connection, which the shape by itself could not establish. ²²

In his Apology, Tertullian answers accusations about Christian worship by drawing comparisons with Roman standards and trophies. The passage is an argument addressed to opponents. It reminds us that an accusation about a religious object and a believer’s account of it can differ sharply. Neither should be detached from the purpose and audience of the writing. ²³

The speaker in Minucius Felix’s Octavius rejects worship of crosses while pointing out cross forms in banners and ordinary objects. That apologetic distinction is significant in its own right. Seeing the shape does not identify what someone worships. The work should not be treated as a simple inventory of all Christian practice, or as an independent eyewitness report of every custom discussed. ²⁴

Tertullian’s separate work De corona describes Christians marking the forehead during ordinary activities, including dressing, bathing and meals. Here the sign belongs to bodily custom rather than to stone carving. This is evidence for the practices he describes and defends. It does not require a present congregation to adopt every custom recorded by an ancient Christian writer. ²⁵

Eusebius gives another setting in his Life of Constantine. He reports the emperor’s later account of a vision, then describes the military standard with its Christogram. The author’s report of the vision and his description of the standard are different kinds of testimony. Imperial adoption also gives a Christian emblem a political and military setting that must enter its interpretation. ²⁶

Robin Jensen traces differences between the cross as an emblem and representations of Christ’s crucified body. Their histories intersect without being identical. A plain cross cannot simply be translated into one universally fixed message about suffering or resurrection. The people who used it, the accompanying words and its place in Christian teaching help give the form its particular meaning. ²⁷

Let the sign lead towards the crucified Lord

Michele Bacci’s study of European travellers shows how descriptions of unfamiliar religious images could be shaped by the visitors’ own categories and purposes. The observer’s confident vocabulary may conceal misunderstanding. That is a reason to read travellers carefully, especially when their account appears to classify a whole community from the images they happened to encounter. ²⁸

Sebastian Brock’s account of the Church of the East explains why inherited labels and familiar sounding theological terms can mislead readers. Its Christology must be understood through its own distinctions and confessions. Neither a Persian script nor an undecorated cross permits a conclusion that its users denied the Trinity or treated Christ as merely human. Those claims require textual evidence. ²⁹

Isaac of Nineveh offers one East Syriac explanation. In his discourse on the cross he gathers remembrance of Christ’s humanity, ministry, death and resurrection around its visible form. His defence of veneration describes a particular historical theology and practice. It also shows how much Christian teaching could accompany a sign whose carved outline contains no figure at all. ³⁰

Cyril of Jerusalem insists that Christ’s suffering was real: an imagined crucifixion would undermine the reality of salvation and resurrection. His teaching gives another reason to resist reading an unfigured cross as a denial of the historical, embodied Lord. An object’s simplicity does not tell us how fully its community confessed the events to which it pointed. ³¹

Paul writes, “For the preaching of the cross is to them that perish foolishness; but unto us which are saved it is the power of God.” In its Corinthian setting, this proclamation confronts division and boasting. The saving power belongs to God’s work through Christ, rather than to an impressive ancestry, a prized object or our success in winning an argument. ³²

Timothy Brookins offers a different reading of the Corinthian conflict from explanations centered on rival parties attached to leaders. He argues that Paul and Apollos together exemplify the service that answers the Corinthians’ claims to superior standing. This remains an interpretation of the letter. It usefully directs attention toward what a community becomes through the message of the cross, rather than the status it claims through an admired name. ³³

Paul’s own sequence also deserves attention. In 1 Corinthians 2:12, the Spirit enables knowledge of what God freely gives. The next chapter challenges envy and strife, then describes Paul and Apollos as servants whose work depends on God’s action. Spiritual confidence therefore belongs with received grace and shared service. It should not make us careless about truth or contemptuous toward another community. ³²

India’s Persian crosses deserve patient study and thoughtful care. Their inscriptions, settings and changing interpretations bring generations of Christian life into view. Faithfulness does not require making the stones say more than their evidence allows. A church can preserve its inheritance, listen carefully to its neighbours and proclaim Christ crucified with the candour and humility that such a message demands.