Francis Wilford

Francis Wilford (1761–1822) was an Indologist, Orientalist, fellow member of the Asiatic Society of Bengal, and constant collaborator of its journal – Asiatic Researches – contributing a number of fanciful, sensational, controversial, and highly unreliable articles on ancient Hindu geography, mythography, and other subjects.[1][2][3]

He contributed a series of ten articles about Hindu geography and mythology for Asiatic Researches, between 1799 and 1810, claiming that all European myths were of Hindu origin and that India had produced a Christ (Salivahana) whose life and works closely resembled the Christ of Bible. He also claimed to have discovered a Sanskrit version of Noah (Satyavrata) and attempted to confirm the historicity of revelation and of the ethnology of Genesis from external sources, particularly Hindu or other pagan religions. In his essay Mount Caucasus – 1801, he argued for a Himalayan location of Mt. Ararat, claiming that Ararat was etymologically linked with Āryāvarta – a Sanskrit name for India.[3][4][5]

  1. ^ Storey, C. A. (1999). Persian Literature. Routledge. ISBN 978-0-7007-1361-5.
  2. ^ Malik, Jamal (2000). Perspectives of mutual encounters in South Asian history, 1760–1860. BRILL. ISBN 978-90-04-11802-7.
  3. ^ a b Gilroy, Amanda (2000). Romantic geographies: discourses of travel, 1775–1844. Manchester University Press. ISBN 978-0-7190-5785-4.
  4. ^ "Shelley's Orientalia: Indian Elements in his Poetry" (PDF). atlantisjournal.org. p. 13. Archived from the original (PDF) on 14 April 2010. Retrieved 4 March 2012.
  5. ^ Cain, Jimmie E. (2006). Bram Stoker and Russophobia: evidence of the British fear of Russia in Dracula and The lady of the shroud. McFarland. pp. 18–19. ISBN 978-0-7864-2407-8.