Pre-Nicene romances
Prior to the 5th century, we basically have pseudo-historical romance (Acts of Thomas), hearsay from Eusebius’ (Hebrew copy of Gospel of Matthew discovered by Pantaneus) and the Chronicle of Seert (a 9th-11th century text claiming that David of Basra evangelized India in the 4th century).
Post-Nicene
All Indian Christian churches hold post-Nicene theological views which derive from an earlier church in Ctesiphon or Nisibis which in turn derives from an earlier church in Edessa/Osrhoene. Indian Christian liturgy is post 4th century and Indian Christians first show up in the historical record around the 6th century AD (Cosmas Indicopluestes).
The first archaeological evidence dates to the 7th century AD. So they likely arrived in India around the 4th or 5th century.
Taxila cross
The so-called “Taxila cross” (which resembles a simple, geometric + sign rather than a crucifix) is itself an anachronism, as the cross was not even used as a Christian symbol prior to the late second century AD.
It didn’t become a dominant symbol in Christendom until the 4th century.
The first true/unambiguous Christian cross in the Northwest is the “Processional Cross of Herat,” which dates to around the same time as the crosses from Malabar (Kottayam, Alangad) and Konkan (e.g. Agassaim) regions.
Sirkap chapel
St Thomas chapel in Sirkap at north end of the town - with a square sink used for baptism and a drainage- the wheat cross is from a service held before I got there
The “chapel” in question wasn’t a chapel before 1935.
Aramaic absence
Aramaic was the Achaemenid lingua franca and was used alongside Greek by Mauryans in the NW (e.g. Taxila Bilingual Fragment, Laghman I & II, Pul-i-Darunta, Kandahar Aramaic inscription) prior to the birth of Christianity. No Christian Aramaic inscriptions have been found.
Ophir
Some 19th century historians claimed that Ophir may refer to part of India, yet this view is also mistaken.
The LXX (Septuagint, Greek translation) reads “Σωφιρα/Σωφηρα” where the Masoretic text reads ʾÔp̄îr/ʾÔfîr. Flavius Josephus (mistakenly) suggested that this “Sōphira” may refer to the Malay Peninsula (Suvarṇadvīpa/Chryse).
During the 16th-18th centuries, Western scholars associated this “ʾÔp̄îr”/“Sōphira” with Armenia, Phrygia, Iberia, Peru and even the Solomon Islands, but during the 19th and early 20th century the predominant consensus was that “Sōphira” was located in India.
People during the 19th century assumed that the word tukîyîm (a hapax legomenon with uncertain meaning) referred to peacocks based on its gloss in Aramaic targums, the addition of “καὶ ταώνων” in a few late mansucripts and codices of the LXX, and its translation in Jerome’s Vulgate (“aurum, et argentum, et dentes elephantorum, et simias, et pavos.”).
Since the peacock comes from India, these scholars further etymologized this term as deriving from the Tamil word tōkai (“tail, plume”), which can be poetically extended to refer to “woman” or “peacock.”
Moreover, they assumed that qôp̄îm/qôfîm, the Hebrew word for ape, stemmed from Sanskrit kapí and that the same was true for Akkadian uqūpu and Egyptian gjf (𓎼𓇋𓆑)/gwf 𓎼𓅱𓆑)/gꜣf(𓎼𓄿𓆑).
Given this consensus regarding an Indian origin as well as the Greek reading “Sōphira”, what better choice than the ancient port city of Śūrpāraka/Śroṇāparāntaka (modern Nālā Sopārā)?
This quickly grew to become the majority view in academia at the time, with a minority of scholars at the time suggesting a connection with Ābhīra. Needless to say, these views have been revised over the last century.
Peacock
The identification of the hapax legomenon “tukîyîm” with peacocks is contested and the proposed etymology from Tamil tōkai is met with even greater skepticism.
It has been dismissed as “wholly unproven” by scholars such as Walter Eugene Clark. Aristotle mentions the peacock in his “History of Animals,” which was composed in the 4th century BC, indicating that peacocks were present in the Aegean at the time.
Moreover, the Bāverujātaka seems to allude to Indian merchant peacock trade with Babylon. Therefore, the presence of peacocks in the Levant seems plausible at the time of composition of 1st Kings (~5th century BC) and 1st Chronicles (~4th century BC); however, these “tukîyîm” are not described as coming from Sōphira.
Unlike gold, almug wood, etc. (which are described as coming from Sōphira/ʾÔp̄îr), the “tukîyîm” are direcly associated only with “Taršiš,” which is typically identified with Tartessos in Andalusia, Spain. Phoenician colonies in the Iberian Peninsula (e.g. Cádiz, Málaga, Almuñécar, etc.) have been attested as far back as the 8th century BC, if not even earlier.
The Phoenician settlement at Cádiz may even extend as far back as the 11th century BC, predating the Bible itself.
kapi
Moreover, due to the attestation of gjf/gwf/gꜣf in the Egyptian Middle Kingdom period (~20th–18th c. BC), the view that the Ancient Egyptian word for “long-tailed ape” is a loan from Sanskrit can be excluded on the basis of chronological considerations. If at all there is a relation beween Sanskrit kapí and the Egyptian term for long-tailed monkey, it is likely via common substrate.
Red sea location
Nowadays, we know with fair certainty that Ophir (ʾÔp̄îr, Sōphira) is likely a port town along the Horn of Africa or, more likely, the Red Sea Coast of Arabia. It was not a port city in India and certainly not a port city in the Malay Peninsula.
OPHIR. - A region most probably in Arabia (as it is mentioned between Sheba and Havilah in Gn 1029), famous for the excellence of its gold, which was brought to Solomon by his Red Sea navy (1 K 928)… Besides S. Africa, various places in India have been fixed upon, such as the mouth of the Indus, Supara in Goa, and ‘Mount Ophir’ in Johore. Nothing convincing has been sald in support of any of these views. For instance, we are reminded that the peacocks are con-fined to India and Malaya; but it is nowhere said that the peacocks came from Ophir, and even if they did, they may well have been brought thither by further Eastern trade quite independently of Solomon’s Phoenician navigators. On the whole, the view that Ophir was in Arabia (known to the Phœnicians as auriferous, Ezk 272) is the simplest and most in accordance with the scanty data.