The Ancient Geography of India. I. The Buddhist Period, including the Campaigns of Alexander, and the Travels of Hwen-Thsang c9.12

c9.12

This subject has already been discussed in my account of Vaḍari, or Eder, in Western India; but I may here again state my opinion that the Ophir of the Bible, which is rendered Σώφειρ and Σουφίρ by Josephus and the Septuagint,† is most probably the *Sauvíra* of Hindu geography, or south-western Râjputana, which amongst the people of the west would have been pronounced *Hobir*, just as *Sindhu* became Indus, and as *sapta* became *haft* and ἑπτα. According to Pliny the country to the north of the Gulf of Khambay formerly produced both gold and silver, which it does even at the present day. Specimens of gold from the Aravali mountains may be seen in the India Museum, and the same range is the only part of India in which silver is found in any quantity. Western India also was colonized by the Aryan race at least two thousand years before Christ, and the Aryan language had become the common speech of the country long before the time of Solomon. I would therefore identify the *Ophir* or *Sophir* of Scripture with the Indian *Sauvíra* of the Hindus, where the captains of Solomon's fleet could have obtained the fine pure gold for which Ophir was famed, and where they would have obtained ivory, apes, and peacocks (or parrots) called by the very names which they have preserved to us in the Bible.