________________
xxvi
INTRODUCTION.
We see, therefore, that, long before Jesus was born, India had become a familiar topic with the Western people. Alexander had brought Greece and India face to face; his officers wrote descriptions of different parts of his route, which have since perished, but they furnished materials to Strabo, Pliny and Arrian. Arrian gives a minute account of the sea-born trade of India. Megasthenes, on the other hand, has left a life-like picture of the Indian people.
THE CARAVAN ROUTES. The manuscript discovered by M. Notovitch gives us a clear account of Jesus from 12 to 26. It says that he went to India with a caravan of merchants. Are there any grounds to sup
pose that he did so?
We know as a fact that the carliest trade between the East and the West was carried on by caravans, and long after the sea-routes by the Red Sea and the Persian Gulf began to be used, the land trade continued to be more important than the sca-borne. The earliest of these caravan routes were those between Egypt, Arabia and Assyria, and these are referred to in the Bible. In Gen. II. 11-12, we are told of the land of Havilah, that there was gold there, and b'dellium and the onyx stone. Havilah is in Arabia Felix, to the north of Ophir, and the passage simply indicates the route through which the b'dellium or musk of India was received in Egypt in the time of Moses. The passage, Psalms XIV. 8: "All thy garments smell of myrrh, aloes and cassia, out of the ivory palaces, whereby they have made thee glad," is generally supposed to allude to the tablets and alabasters or scent-bottles in which perfumes were kept in ancient times. But it may also be translated "Out of the ivory palaces of the Mineans," a people of Arabia Felix, who, like their neighbors, the Sabaeans and the Gerrhaeans on the l'ersian
Jain Education International
For Private & Personal Use Only
www.jainelibrary.org
