He was killed be ruhme, Syriac for “with a spear”. Centuries later, these consonants (Syriac usually writes no vowels) were reinterpreted as rendering brahma, “(by) a Brahmin”. No location for the execution is given, but the sixteenth-century Portuguse colonizers decided that it was on the Mylapore beach outside Madras, where a Jain and a Shaiva temple were demolished to make way for the San Thome cathedral in commemoration of the apostle’s martyrdom.
