CHAPTER IV
THE NESTORIANS OF THE FAR EAST
The remarkable enterprise of the Syrian missions promoted by the impulse of the Nestorian movement is registered in the scattering of metropolitan sees over a vast area of Central and Eastern Asia. Impelled by two forces, the persecution of the orthodox Church in combination with the Byzantine Empire which drove them into exile, and the zeal for spreading the gospel which converted their banishment into a benediction, the Nestorians went much further than was necessary merely to secure immunity from molestation; and wherever they went they planted the standard of the cross. So we find metropolitan bishoprics in Syria, Armenia, and Arabia; at Elam, Nisibis, Bethgerma, and Carach in Persia; at Halavan or Halach on the confines of Media; at Mara in Korassan; at Hara in Camboya; at Raja and Tarbistan on the Caspian; at Dailen, Samarcand, and Mavaralnabar; at Tauket or Taugut—a country of Great Tartary; in Casgar, in Turkistan, in India, in China. From many of these centres all traces of ancient Christianity have long since disappeared, swept away in the deluge of Mongolian invasions, stamped out by Mohammedan tyranny, or, if spared for a time, generally only left to perish in crass ignorance and spiritual inanition. But in some few places it still lives on among numerous adherents.
The most important of the old Syrian churches existing in our own day is the community of ancient Christians
510
