HINDU PERIOD
Testament, where there is given the list of the articles of merchandise brought from Tarshish or Ophir in Solomon's ships "about 1000 B.C." Thus the word for "peacock" in the Hebrew text is tuki in Kings, tuki in Chronicles, while "the ancient, poetical, purely Tamil-Malayalam name of the peacock is tokei, the bird with the (splendid) tail."[1] Again, the Hebrew words ahalim or ahaloth for the fragrant wood called "aloes" in Proverbs vii. 17, etc., is derived from the Tamil-Malayalam form of the word aghil.
Without dwelling at any further length on the meaning of these Biblical allusions, I quote below the following interpretation put upon them by the learned bishop Dr. Caldwell, in his monumental work, A Comparative Grammar of the Dravidian Languages:—
It seems probable that Aryan merchants from the mouth of the Indus must have accompanied the Phoenicians and Solomon's servants in their voyages down the Malabar coast towards Ophir (wherever Ophir may have been) or at least have taken part in the trade. ... It appears certain from notices contained in the Vedas that the Aryans of the age of Solomon practised foreign trade in ocean-going vessels, but it remains uncertain to what parts their ships sailed.[2]
Bishop Caldwell's opinion is further supported by another erudite clergyman and scholar, the Rev.
- ↑ Dr. Caldwell, in his Grammar of the Dravidian Languages, p. 91. We may remember also in this connection the well-known reference in the Baveru-Jātaka to voyages made by Indian merchants to Babylon, in the second of which they took thither the first peacock for sale.
- ↑ Grammar of the Dravidian Languages, p. 122.
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