Well, a great deal has been written to find out where this Ophir was; but there can be no doubt that it was in India. The names for apes, peacocks, ivory and algum-trees are foreign words in Hebrew, as much as gutta-percha or tobacco are in English. Now, if we wished to know from what part of the world gutta-percha was first imported into England, we might safely conclude that it came from that country where the name, gutta-percha, formed part of the spoken language.[190] If, therefore, we can find a language in which the names for peacock, apes, ivory, and algum-tree, which are foreign in Hebrew, are indigenous, we may be certain that the country in which that language was spoken must have been the Ophir of the Bible. That language is no other but Sanskrit.
Apes are called, in Hebrew, koph, a word without an etymology in the Semitic languages, but nearly identical in sound with the Sanskrit name of ape, kapi.
Ivory is called either karnoth-shen, horns of tooth; or shen habbim. This habbim is again without a derivation in Hebrew, but it is most likely a corruption of the Sanskrit name for elephant, ibha, preceded by the Semitic article.[191]
Peacocks are called in Hebrew tukhi-im, and this finds its explanation in the name still used for peacock on the coast of Malabar, togëi, which in turn has been derived from the Sanskrit śikhin, meaning furnished with a crest.
All these articles, ivory, gold, apes, peacocks, are indigenous in India, though of course they might have been found in other countries likewise. Not so the algum-tree, at least if interpreters are right in taking algum or almug for sandalwood. Sandalwood is found indigenous on the coast of Malabar only; and one of its numerous names there, and in Sanskrit, is valguka. This valgu(ka) is clearly the name which Jewish and Phœnician merchants corrupted into algum, and which in Hebrew was still further changed into almug.
Now, the place where the navy of Solomon and Hiram, coming down the Red Sea, would naturally have landed, was the mouth of the Indus. There gold and precious stones from the north would have been brought down the Indus; and sandalwood, peacocks, and apes would have been brought from Central and Southern India. In this very locality Ptolemy (vii. 1) gives us the name of Abiria, above Pattalene. In the same locality Hindu geographers place the people called Abhîra or Âbhîra; and in the same neighborhood MacMurdo, in his account of the province of Cutch, still knows a race of Ahirs,[192] the descendants, in all probability, of the people who sold to Hiram and Solomon their gold and precious stones, their apes, peacocks, and sandalwood.[193]
If, then, in the Veda the people who spoke Sanskrit were still settled in the north of India, whereas at the time of Solomon their language had extended to Cutch and even the Malabar coast, this will show that at all events Sanskrit is not of yesterday, and that it is as old, at least, as the book of Job, in which the gold of Ophir is mentioned.[194]
Most closely allied to Sanskrit, more particularly to the Sanskrit of the Veda, is the ancient language of the Zend-avesta,[195] the so-called Zend, or sacred language of the Zoroastrians or Fire-worshippers. It was, in fact, chiefly through the Sanskrit, and with the help of comparative philology, that the ancient dialect of the Parsis or Fire-worshippers was deciphered. The MSS. had been preserved by the Parsi priests at Bombay, where a colony of fire-worshippers had fled in the tenth century,[196] and where it has [pg 206] risen since to considerable wealth and influence. Other settlements of Guebres are to be found in Yezd and parts of Kerman. A Frenchman, Anquetil Duperron, was the first to translate the Zend-avesta, but his translation was not from the original, but from a modern Persian translation. The first European who attempted to read the original words of Zoroaster was Rask, the Dane; and after his premature death, Burnouf, in France, achieved one of the greatest triumphs in modern scholarship by deciphering the language of the Zend-avesta, and establishing its close relationship with Sanskrit. The same doubts which were expressed about the age and the genuineness of the Veda, were repeated with regard to the Zend-avesta, by men of high authority as oriental scholars, by Sir W. Jones himself, and even by the late Professor Wilson. But Burnouf's arguments, based at first on grammatical evidence only, were irresistible, and have of late been most signally confirmed by the discovery of the cuneiform inscriptions of Darius and Xerxes. That there was a Zoroaster, an ancient sage, was known long before Burnouf. Plato speaks of a teacher of Zoroaster's Magic (Μαγεία), and calls Zoroaster the son of Oromazes.[197]
This name of Oromazes is important; for Oromazes [pg 207] is clearly meant for Ormuzd, the god of the Zoroastrians. The name of this god, as read in the inscriptions of Darius and Xerxes, is Auramazdâ, which comes very near to Plato's Oromazes.[198] Thus Darius says, in one passage: “Through the grace of Auramazda I am king; Auramazda gave me the kingdom.” But what is the meaning of Auramazda? We receive a hint from one passage in the Achæmenian inscriptions, where Auramazda is divided into two words, both being declined. The genitive of Auramazda occurs there as Aurahya mazdâha. But even this is unintelligible, and is, in fact, nothing but a phonetic corruption of the name of the supreme Deity as it occurs on every page of the Zend-avesta, namely, Ahurô mazdâo (nom.). Here, too, both words are declined; and instead of Ahurô mazdâo, we also find Mazdâo ahurô.[199] Well, this Ahurô mazdâo is represented in the Zend-avesta as the creator and ruler of the world; as good, holy, and true; and as doing battle against all that is evil, dark, and false. “The wicked perish through the wisdom and holiness of the living wise Spirit.” In the oldest hymns, the power of darkness, which is opposed to Ahurô mazdâo has not yet received its proper name, which is Angrô mainyus, the later Ahriman; but it is spoken of as a power, as Drukhs or deceit; and the principal doctrine which Zoroaster came to preach was that we must choose between these two powers, that we must be good, and not bad. These are his words:—
“In the beginning there was a pair of twins, two [pg 208] spirits, each of a peculiar activity. These are the Good and the Base in thought, word, and deed. Choose one of these two spirits; Be good, not base!”[200]