Series | Eurasian Studies
Edited book | L’arte armena e oltre. Nuovi contributi
Chapter | Le cosiddette ‘croci di San Tommaso’. Una nota archeologica
Le cosiddette ‘croci di San Tommaso’. Una nota archeologica
Abstract
The question of Christian presence in mainland South Asia, although historically certain, is not archaeologically attested for the period before the Portuguese contact phase. Elsewhere the archaeological evidence is clear: in the Iranian and Central Asian area, in the Karakoram-Himalaya, but also along the Indian Ocean routes. The so‑called ‘St. Thomas crosses’, a traditional key point for the issue, can hardly be considered as supporting evidence for an early presence of Christian communities at least in South India. Research on these phases will have to move in other directions in the future, both by exploring the rich regional epigraphic corpus and by planning archaeological fieldwork.
Submitted: April 6, 2022 | Accepted: Nov. 4, 2022 | Published July 28, 2023 | Language: it
Keywords Persian Crosses • Christian communities • Saint Thomas • Kerala • Mylapore • Tabula Quilonensis • South Asia
Copyright © 2023 Luca M. Olivieri. This is an open-access work distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction is permitted, provided that the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. The license allows for commercial use. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
Permalink http://doi.org/10.30687/978-88-6969-694-7/002
