It is admitted that grave objections may be raised, and have been urged with some force, against carrying these presumed analogies too far; and sceptics are ready to exclaim with Fluellen, “there is a river in Macedon, and there is also, moreover, a river at Monmouth * * * there is salmons in both.” But, while some have endeavoured to trace the indications of a direct Indian connection between the inhabitants of the Euxine shores and India, on the ground of such names as Acesines,* Hypanis,* Kophes, or Kobus,* Typhaonia,* Phasis,* Caucasus, and such like, being found in both one country and the other; and while the resemblance between the worship of Odin and Buddha has been strongly urged by similar advocates;* it may, on the other hand, and with great reason, be asserted that these names are not local in India, and that they have generally been grafted on some Indian stock, offering a mere partial likeness, either through the ignorance of the Greeks, or with the view of flattering the vanity of Alexander, by shifting further to the eastward the names and attributes of distant places, already removed almost beyond mortal ken and approach, and lying far away—
“Extra flammantia mœnia mundi.”*
In the grossness of their indiscriminate adulation, they were at all times ready to ascribe to that conqueror the obscure achievements of mythical heroes, whose glory was inseparably connected with certain streams and mountains, which even they, in the plenitude of their power, had found it no easy matter to traverse and surmount. Strabo, indeed, informs us that the Argonautic monuments were industriously destroyed by Alexander's generals, from a ridiculous alarm lest the fame of Jason might surpass that of their master. Parmenio is especially mentioned both by him and Justin, as one whose jealousy was prompted to destroy several temples erected in honour of Jason, “in order that no man's name in the east might be more venerable than that of Alexander.”*
Hence, it has been justly remarked, even by early writers, open to the influence of reason and philosophy, and guided by the results of an extended observation, that the Greeks have transposed these localities upon very slender foundations, and that many of the barbaric names have been Hellenised.”*
We find frequent instances of the same tendency to corruption in
our own Oriental nomenclature, but with even greater perversions.
Thus, we have heard our ignorant European soldiery convert Shekh-
But when we apply the same argument to the cases under consideration, we shall see it has no force; for here there has been no room for the corruptions and flatteries to which allusions have been made; nor did it ever occur to the Greeks to enter upon the same comparisons which are engaging our attention. When we carry these identifications yet further, we shall find names with which the Greeks were not even acquainted; and it is not between streams, towns, and mountains, that the similitudes exist, but between peoples in the one country and places in the other,—the latter known, the former unknown, to ancient historians and geographers,—who have, therefore, left the field open for moderns alone to speculate in.
Now, it is not merely in the two instances already adduced that these striking monuments of connection attract our observation; but, when we also find the Maidi next to the Sindi and Kerketæ,* a tribe of Arii or Arichi,* an island of Aria or Aretias,* a river Arius,* a tribe of Maetes or Mæotai,* a town of Madia,* a town of Matium,* a tribe of Matiani,* a town of Mateta,* a tribe of Kottæ,* a country of Kutaïs,* a city of Kuta,* a city of Kutaia,* a tribe of Kolchi,* a district of Kolchis,* a Kolchian sea,* a tribe of Koli,* the mountains of Koli,* a district of Koli,* a province of Iberia,* a tribe of Iberes,* a tribe of Bounomai,* a district of Minyas,* a city of Male,* a tribe of Baternæ,* a river of Bathys,* a port and town of Bata;* when we find all these names in close juxtaposition, reminding us in their various forms of our own Meds, Káthis, Koles, Abhírs, Mínas, Mallinas, and Bhatis, tribes familiar to us as being, at one time, in and near the valley of the Indus; and when we consider, moreover, that all these different names, including the Sindi and Kerketæ, were congregated about the western region of the Caucasus, within a space scarcely larger than the province of lower Sind, and when again we reflect upon the curious coincidence, that Pliny* calls the former province “Scythia Sendica,” while Ptolemy* calls the latter “Indo-Scythia;” that even as late as the fifth century, the judicious ecclesiastical historian, Socrates,* as well as the accurate geographer, Stephanus,* continued to call the former by the name of “India,” it is very difficult to resist the conviction, that these cumulative instances of combinations and affinities cannot be altogether accidental, or the mere result of diligent and ingenious exploration.
But, even allowing that all these miscellaneous instances of resemblance, brought forward in the preceding paragraph, are indeed purely fortuitous,—and it is willingly acknowledged that there is “ample room and verge enough” for a sharp eye, a nice ear, and a playful fancy, in the selection of such alliterative illustrations,— even if we reject them altogether as the products of a wild and dreamy imagination, and since they add little to the cogency of our argument, they may be resigned as such without a murmur, still it is impossible to yield the Sindi, the Kerketæ, or even the Maidi, to the cavils of such an illiberal and hostile spirit of criticism, for, with respect to them, it must be confessed by all but the most obstinately sceptical, that they, at least, stand boldly and prominently forth, as undoubted evidences of actual Indian occupancy on the shores of the Euxine.
It is not the purport of this Note to show how these coincidences could possibly have arisen; how nations, separated by so many mountains, seas, forests, and wastes, could have preserved any signs whatever of original identity, much less of such close approximation in names, as has been here adduced. Ukert, the strongest opponent of this supposed connection between the Caucasus and India, mentions that the ancients are express in asserting that the Indians never sent out of their country any armies or colonies;* but migrations might easily have arisen from other causes, and a hint has been thrown out above, that in this particular instance, the expatriation might perhaps not have been altogether voluntary.
In another part of this work I have traced, step by step, the progress of one Indian family from the banks of the Indus to the remotest shores of Europe; and in the following Note upon the Meds, I have shown several instances of compulsory transportations to countries nearly as remote; so that this branch of the enquiry need not engage our attention further in this place, the object of showing the probable existence of a tribe of Kerks, both on the Indus and Euxine, having, it is hoped, already been sufficiently proved to the satisfaction of every candid and unprejudiced mind.*