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).]
[16]. Hindu, or Indu-kush or koh, is the local appellation; ‘mountain of the moon.’ [Hindu-kush is said to mean ‘Hindu-slayer’ or ‘Indian Caucasus.’]
[17]. Solar and lunar.
[18]. Meru, ‘the hill,’ is used distinctively, as in Jaisalmer (the capital of the Bhatti tribe in the Western Desert), ‘the hill of Jaisal’; Merwara, or the ‘mountainous region’; and its inhabitants Meras, or ‘mountaineers.’ Thus, also, in the grand epic the Ramayana (Book i. p. 236), Mena is the mountain-nymph, the daughter of Meru and spouse of Himavat; from whom sprung two daughters, the river goddess Ganga and the mountain-nymph Parbati. She is, in the Mahabharata, also termed Saila, the daughter of Sail, another designation of the snowy chain; and hence mountain streams are called in Sanskrit silletee [?]. Saila bears the same attributes with the Phrygian Cybele, who was also the daughter of a mountain of the same name; the one is carried, the other drawn, by lions. Thus the Greeks also metamorphosed Parbat Pamer, or ‘the mountain Pamer,’ into Paropamisan, applied to the Hindu Koh west of Bamian: but the Parbat pat Pamer, or ‘Pamer chief of hills,’ is mentioned by the bard Chand as being far east of that tract, and under it resided Hamīra, one of the great feudatories of Prithwiraja of Delhi. Had it been Paropanisan (as some authorities write it), it would better accord with the locality where it takes up the name, being near to Nyssa and Meru, of which Parbat or Pahar would be a version, and form Paronisan, ‘the Mountain of Nyssa,’ the range Nishadha of the Puranas. [The true form is Paropanisos: the suggested derivation is impossible.]
[19]. Haya or Hi, in Sanskrit, ‘horse’—El, ‘sun’: whence ἵππος and ἕλιος. Ηλ appears to have been a term of Scythian origin for the sun; and Hari, the Indian Apollo, is addressed as the sun. Hiul, or Jul, of northern nations (qu. Noel of France?), is the Hindu Sankrānti, of which more will be said hereafter. [The feast was known as Hvil, Jul, or Yule, and the suggested derivation is impossible.]
[20]. Mallet’s Northern Antiquities.