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INTRODUCTION.
shown that India's gold and silver, precious stones, spices and silks had always attracted people of other countries to her. The Hindu and Jain Scriptures bear ample testimony to this-which to the average Christian reader are but myths, while the Bible is to him a veritable record of truth. We will proceed from his standpoint, and prove conclusively that the most valuable and complete notices of the ancient trade of India are in the Bible.
Moses about 1500 B. C., in Genesis 11. 11-12, describing the first head, Pison, of the river of Eden says: "That is it which compasseth the whole land of Havilah, where there is gold. * * * There is b'dellium and the onyx stone." B'dellium is the gum resin of two varieties, both natives of Sindh in India; cinnamon mentioned in Proverbs vII. 17, and Song of Solomon IV. 1.4, is the product of Ceylon. In Numbers XXIV. 6, Balaam compares the camp of Israel to "A garden by the riverside as the trees of lign-alocs which the Lord hath planted, and as cedar trees beside the waters." This lign-aloes is the most precious of all perfumes known in Sanskrit, Agaru, and in the Hebrew Ahalim and Ahaloth. In the Song of Solomon (Circa B. C. 1000) IV. 13-14, mention is made, besides of myrrh, aloes, cinnamon, frankincense and calamus, of camphire saffron and spikenard, in this and also in 1. 14, camphire, the Hebrew copher, is the Egyptian hennah, a native of East India. The saffron, in the Hebrew karkan, the Sanskrit kunkuma, is a native of Kashmir, and spikenard is exclusively a native of Nepal and Bhotan at great elevations. The costus of Psalms XIV. 8, translated by Cassia in the English Bible, is also exclusively a native of Kashmir. These three famous products of the Himalayas, with b'dellium, the vine, pomegranate, lign-aloes, salep, hemp and musk, and
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