सामान्यविवेचन व दिग्दर्शन.
२५
It is not necessary however, to discuss, here, all the controverted points of this question; for even if Ophir should be proved to be in Arabia, the names for apes and peacocks, would still point to San- skrit, and could have been brought to Ophir from no other country but India. These names as found in the Old Testament, are by all competent Hebrew Scholars admitted not to be of Semitic growth. They are foreign words in Hebrew, and they do not receive any light either from the dialects of Arabia, including the Hemiyaritic inscriptions, or from the languages spoken on the Mozambique Coast of Africa, where according to some autho- rities, Ophir was situated. Some of these names have been traced back to Sanskrit and to the lan- guages spoken on the Malabar Coast of the Dekhan; and though it must be admitted that as foreign words they have suffered considerable corruption in the mouths of ignorant sailors, yet, allowing the same latitude of phonetic change, it has been impossible to trace them back to any other family of speech' If, therefore, there could seem to exist any stringent evidence that Ophir was a entrepót, not in India but in Arabia, the spreading of Sanskrit names to Arabia before they reached Palestine would only serve to incaease the anti- quity of Sanskrit, as spoken in these parts of India from whence alone the natural products of her lan- guage and of her soil could have been exported. And if we consider that there is no other language which can claim these names as her own-that there is no countryin which all the articles brought by the fleet of Ezion-geber, whether frem Ophir, or elsewhere, are indeginous-that sandal-wood, 3. mere
