A. India and the Old Testament

CHAPTER SEVEN INDIA AND THE WEST IN ANTIQUITY Geographically speaking, the terms "Asia," "East," and "India" were imprecise in the European imagination of antiquity. Before the age of the great discoveries, these terms were used so interchangeably that Egypt was sometimes pictured in maps as situated in Asia, which stood as a synonym for India.1 Sometimes Parthia included India as well. This means that when Matthew speaks about the magi from the East, it is possible that he means India; so also when the Acts of the Apostles describes the nationalities of the God-fearing Jews who were in Jerusalem for the Pentecost, he probably includes Indians among the people from Asia and Parthia (Acts 2:9-10). In spite of their lack of scientific knowledge of India, educated people in antiquity knew a great deal about the land and its people. A. India and the Old Testament India is mentioned in Esther 1:1 and 8:9 as the eastern boundary of the Persian Empire under Ahasuerus (c. fifth century B.C.) and in 1 Maccabees 6:37 in a reference to the Indian mahouts of Antiochus's war elephants (second century B.C.). Otherwise there are no explicit references to India in the Old Testament. However, archeological evidences of the Kulli culture of Baluchistan indicate that from c. 2800 B.C. there were contacts between Mesopotamia and the great cities of the Indus civilization.2 At the sites of ancient Sumerian cities of Kish, Lagash, and Ur, archeologists have discovered typical objects of the Indus civilization that indicate there existed a flourishing trade in spices between India and Mesopotamia. The presence of Indian ivory objects of foreign workmanship discovered in Mesopotamia suggests that they were imported from India. Since commerce by its nature is mutual, it is probable that the cultural interaction was mutual between these geographical regions. 1 Donald F. Lach, Asia in the Making of Europe, I (Chicago, 1965), 4. 2 Stuart Piggot, Prehistoric India to 1000 B.C. (Harmondsworth, 1950), 207-208; cited by Sedlar, 3. INDIA AND THE WEST IN ANTIQUITY 213 There are some indirect references to India in the Old Testament. According to 1 Kings 9:26-28, King Solomon's navy (c. 1000 B.C.), sailed to Ophir to fetch gold. Since Ophir is Sopheir/Sophara in the LXX, since Sophir means India in Coptic, and since gold was plentiful in the mountains north of Punjab in Northwest India, it is generally accepted that Ophir was a port in India. Sedlar writes: In favor of Ophir as India are the facts that the geographer Ptolemaios (Ptolemy) notes an " Abiria" (Ophir?) at the mouth of the Indus, that Buddhist writings refer to the coast around Bombay as " Sovira" (possibly Ptolemaios' "Supara"), and that the Jewish historian Josephos (first cen. A.O.) identifies the Biblical " Sopheir" with the Indian " Land ofGold."3 Certain other Indian products, such as ivory, the peacock, and the monkey going to King Solomon's court suggests that they must have originated in India. I Kings 10:22 explicitly states that every third year King Solomon's navy, together with King Hiram's, brought him " gold, silver, ivory, apes, and peacocks." The Old Testament words for peacock tuki, for ivory shen habbim, and for the ape kof all seem to be derived from their Indian counterparts tokei, ab, and kapi respectively. 4 Indian textiles and fragrances also seem to have made their way to the world of the Old Testament: Proverbs 7:17, Ps. 45:8, and Song of Solomon 4:14 refer to the Indian fragrant wood called aloes (Heb. ahalim by a term derived from Sanskrit agaru and from cognates in Tamil and Malayalam; the Greek sandalon is a derivative of the Sanskrit/Malayalam chandana;5 ancient Babylonian texts refer to linen as sindhu (sindon in Greek, meaning "Indian"); Isaiah 3:23 refers to sad in for fine linen.6 Rice was brought to European ports from South India; the word rice is a shortened form of the Spanish arroz, derived from the Arabic aruz; the Greek oruza and the Latin oryza are perhaps derived from Arabic or from the Tamil arisi.7 As Sedlar argues, "the juxtaposition of three or four products known to be found in India, together with the sailing of Solomon's ships to "Ophir," lends weight to the supposition that sea-commerce with 3 Sedlar, 5. 4 Robert Caldwell, A Comparative Grammar of the Dravidian or South-Indian Family of Languages (London, 1913), 88-89; Max Milller, The Science of Language (New York, 1891), I: 188-191. 5 Caldwell, 89. 6 J. Kennedy, 'The Early Commerce of Babylon with India," /RAS (1898), p. 252; J. Sa~ce, Hibbert Lectures (1887). H. G. Rawlinson, Indian Historical Studies (London: Longmans, 1913),165-166. .

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