Note 15 — CHAPTER 1

Asiatic Researches, vol. vi. p. 497. Wilford appears to have borrowed largely from that ancient store-house (as the Hindu would call it) of learning, Sir Walter Raleigh’s History of the World. He combines, however, much of what that great man had so singularly acquired and condensed, with what he himself collected, and with the aid of imagination has formed a curious mosaic. But when he took a peep into “the chorographical description of the Terrestrial Paradise,” I am surprised he did not separate the nurseries of mankind before and after the flood. There is one passage, also, of Sir Walter Raleigh which would have aided his hypothesis, that Eden was in Higher Asia, between the common sources of the Jihun and other grand rivers: the abundance of the Ficus Indica, or bar-tree, sacred to the first lord, Adnath or Mahadeva.

“Now for the tree of knowledge of good and evil, some men have presumed further; especially Gorapius Bocanus, who giveth himself the honour to have found out the kind of this tree, which none of the writers of former times could ever guess at, whereat Gorapius much marvelleth.”

——“Both together went

Into the thickest wood; there soon they chose

The fig tree; not that kind for fruit renowned,

But such as at this day, to Indians known

In Malabar or Decan, spreads her arms

Branching so broad and long, that in the ground

The bended twigs take root, and daughters grow

About the mother tree, a pillar’d shade

High overarched, and echoing walks between.

There oft the Indian herdsman, shunning heat,

Shelters in cool and tends his pasturing herds.”

——“Those leaves

They gathered, broad as Amazonian targe.”

Paradise Lost, Book ix. 1100 ff.

Sir Walter strongly supports the Hindu hypothesis regarding the locality of the nursery for rearing mankind, and that “India was the first planted and peopled countrie after the flood” (p. 99). His first argument is, that it was a place where the vine and olive were indigenous, as amongst the Sakai Scythai (and as they still are, together with oats, between Kabul and Bamian); and that Ararat could not be in Armenia, because the Gordian mountains on which the ark rested were in longitude 75°, and the Valley of Shinar 79° to 80°, which would be reversing the tide of migration. “As they journeyed from the East, they found a plain, in the land of Shinar, and they dwelt there” (Genesis, chap. xi. ver. 2). He adds, “Ararat, named by Moses, is not any one hill, but a general term for the great Caucasian range; therefore we must blow up this mountain Ararat, or dig it down and carry it out of Armenia, or find it elsewhere in a warmer country, and east from Shinar.” He therefore places it in Indo-Scythia, in 140° of longitude and 35° to 37° of latitude, “where the mountains do build themselves exceeding high”: and concludes, "It was in the plentiful warm East where Noah rested, where he planted the vine, where he tilled the ground and lived thereon. Placuit vero Noacho agriculturæ studium in qua tractanda ipse omnium peritissimus esse dicitur; ob eamque rem, sua ipsius lingua, Ish-Adamath:^[A] hoc est, Telluris Vir, appellatur, celebratusque est. The study of husbandry pleased Noah (says the excellent learned man, Arius Montanus) in the order and knowledge of which it is said that Noah excelled all men, and therefore was he called in his own language, a man exercised in the earth." The title, character, and abode exactly suit the description the Jains give of their first Jiniswara, Adinath, the first lordly man, who taught them agriculture, even to “muzzling the bull in treading out the corn.”

Had Sir Walter been aware that the Hindu sacred books styled their country Aryavarta,^[B] and of which the great Imaus is the northern boundary, he would doubtless have seized it for his Ararat. [Needless to say, these speculations are obsolete.]

A. In Sanskrit, Īsh, ‘Lord,’ ādi, ‘the first,’ matti, ‘Earth.’ [The derivation is absurd: matti, ‘clay,’ is modern Hindi.] Here the Sanskrit and Hebrew have the same meaning, ‘first lord of the earth.’ In these remote Rajput regions, where early manners and language remain, the strongest phrase to denote a man or human being is literally ‘earth.’ A chief describing a fray between his own followers and borderers whence death ensued, says, Meri matti māri, ‘My earth has been struck’: a phrase requiring no comment, and denoting that he must have blood in return.

B. Āryāvarta, or the land of promise or virtue, cannot extend to the flat plains of India south of the Himavat; for this is styled in the Purānas the very reverse, kukarma des, or land of vice. [Āryāvarta is the land bounded by the Himalaya and Vindhya, from the eastern to the western seas (Manu, Laws, ii. 22).]