Tradition holds that the apostle Thomas came ashore on the Malabar coast around AD 52 and, at Palayur, met Brahmin priests casting water toward the sun as an offering. He is said to have thrown water into the air that hung there as a sign, and many were baptised. It endures as the founding memory of one of the oldest Christian communities on earth.
Read the fuller tradition →Saint Thomas Christian tradition; Medlycott, India and the Apostle Thomas (1905) — public domain.
Sources & further reading