Had you been a cartographer and geographer working for the British East India company in the 17th and 18th centuries, you would have found all over India thousands of Hebrew-like place names with similar meanings in both languages as well. The map excerpt on this page shows a small section of ancient Seuna-Desa (Zion Land) in what is now Maharashtra (to right). At the bottom right of the excerpt is the city of Paithan, on the banks of the river Godivari. The Indo-Hebrews named the part of the river passing through Paithan's territory Paithan (Pison, Phison), according to their traditions. In the upper left-hand corner is the city of Satana. According to the legends of the Yadavas (Indo-Hebrews), Satana would have made the folks in Sodom and Gomorah envious. The Seunas and the Satanas decided to resolve their moral and religious differences on the battlefield. The forces of "Satan" lost, but their defeat didn't dishearten them. Eventually, we came to think of "Satan" as a being who lost the battle but not the war. The bible tells us that such a peace treaty hasn't yet been signed between these two ancient enemies.

In that part of India, the holiest of holies for the Indians, the names of many towns end in the appendage gaon. In Hebrew, gaon means "genius; great rabbinical scholar." Also in this region is an area that was once the favorite of Yadava royalty: Nashik, the exact Hebrew name for "Royal Prince." Satan is near the district called Khandesh (Land of Cain). There is also a Kodesh. Kod and Khad are Sanskrit terms for "First," "The Beginning," or "God." In Hebrew, Khadesh = "The first day of a Jewish calendar month." Notice that all these names have similar meanings and religious connotations in both languages. I invite my readers to investigate this anomaly for themselves.

The similarity of these Indian and Hebrew names certainly traumatized European colonists. Unwilling to admit that the Jews had never sprouted spontaneously in the Arabian desert, or were from outer space as I read recently, but were from the East as the bible itself tells us, they merely erased these matters from their minds or convinced themselves that they were "coincidences," even though the "coincidences" numbered in the thousands and were peppered over every region in India.

A 19th Century British Scholar Explains Why the Western World Never Learned About the Indian Origins of the Jews.

Though not generally known in this day and age, Godfrey Higgins (1772-1833), archeologist, politician, humanitarian, social reformer, and author, was one of the most enlightened and educated men of early 19th century England. He was a well-known iconoclast, rationalist, and admirer of the Jews, who vehemently opposed any kind of persecution of this ancient religious group. He wrote two oversized volumes, totaling around 1600 pages of fine print, about the Jews' Indian origins. These two volumes, entitled Anacalypsis, are extremely rare. The last printing was done in 1965 by University Books, NY. It's a difficult book to read because the author painstakingly proved the minutest of details in his dissertation. Even good readers need several weeks to finish it.

The first printing consisted of only 200 copies, twenty of which he had to give away. Only a few of the remaining 180 copies were sold. For nearly thirty years, the religious communities of England and Europe quietly suppressed the book. It has since been reprinted three times, but including the first printing, the total copies printed never totaled over a thousand. Only occasionally can it be found in a library. Even so, many authors have quoted and plagiarized it. Not a few spiritual charlatans, such as fraudulent mystics, psychics, and the Presbyterian preacher who wrote the novel on which The Book of Mormon is based, used Anacalypsis to produce their respective heresies and agendas. The famous 19th century mystic and founder of Theosophy, Madam Blavatsky, took advantage of the world's nearly total ignorance of this magnificent document, using much of Higgin's information, to convince the gullible that she had acquired her "mystical knowledge" from "otherworldly" sources called "Akashic records."

Godfrey Higgins gave an opinion that I have always espoused, which explains in part why the similarities of peoples, languages, philosophies, and place names between India and the Middle East became lost to the memory of mankind after Christianity and Islam took over the West.

"The outlines of the history of the extended empires, which I have here exhibited, would have been more conspicuous had our makers of maps and histories recorded the names of the places as they must have appeared to them. But from their native religious prejudices and necessary ignorance of the nature of the history, it seemed to them absurd to believe, that there should be places or persons in the East having exactly the same names as places and persons in the West; and to avoid the feared ridicule of their contemporaries, which in fact in opposition to the plainest evidence, and which they themselves could not entirely resist, that they thought well-founded, they have, as much as possible disguised the names. Thus, that which otherwise they would have called David-pouri, they called Daud-poutr, Solomon, Soleiman; Johnguior, Jahanguior, etc., etc. In the same way, without any wrong intention, they have been induced to secrete the truth, in many cases, from themselves, by hastily adopting the idea that the old Jewish names of places have been given by the modern Saracens or Turks, the erroneousness of which a moment's unprejudiced consideration would have shewn...I shall here merely add, that...I have observed...a great similarity in the countries where the tribes of Judah were settled in the East and in the West. The Western country seems, as much as possible, to have been accommodated by the Eastern..." (Vol. I, pp. 437-438.)

"When Mahmud of Gazna, the first Mohammedan conqueror, attacked Lahore, he found it defended by a native Hindoo prince called Daood or David. This single fact is enough to settle the question of the places not being named by Mohamedans." (Vol. I; p. 432.)

"I beg my reader to look at the ruins of the ancient cities of India: Agra, Delhi, Oude, Mundore, etc., which have many of them been much larger than London, the last for instance, 37 miles in circumference, built in the oldest style of architecture in the world, the Cyclopean, and I think he must at once see the absurdity of the little Jewish mountain tribe (the "Lost Tribes") being the founders of such a mass of cities. We must also consider that we have almost all the places of India in Western Syria...I think no one can help seeing that these circumstances are to be accounted for in no other way than by the supposition that there was in very ancient times one universal superstition, which was carried all over the world by emigrating tribes, and that they were originally from Upper India." (Vol. I; p. 432.)

"...the natives of Cashmere as well as those of Afghanistan, pretending to be descended from the Jews, give pedigrees of their kings reigning in their present country up to the sun and the moon, and along with this, they shew you the Temples still standing, built by Solomon, statues of Noah, and other Jewish Patriarchs...the traditions of the Afghans tell them, that they are descended from the tribe of Ioudi or Yuda, and in this they are right, for it is the tribe of Joudi noticed by Eusebius to have existed before the Son of Jacob in Western Syria was born, the Joudi of Oude, and from which tribe the Western Jews with the Brahmin (Abraham) descended and migrated. (Vol. I; p. 740.)

"In the valley of Cashmere, on a hill close to the lake, are the ruins of a temple of Solomon. The history states that Solomon, finding the valley all covered with water except this hill, which was an island, opened the passage in the mountains and let most of it out, thus giving to Cashmere its beautiful plains. The temple which is built on the hill is called Tucht Suliman. Afterwards Forster says, 'Previously to the Mahometan conquest of India, Kashmere was celebrated for the learning of the Brahmins and the magnificent construction of its temple.' Now what am I to make of this? Were these Brahmans Jews, or the Jews Brahmins? The inadvertent way in which Forster states the fact precludes all idea of deceit...

"The Tuct Soliman of Cashmere in the time of Bernier, was described by him to be in ruins, and to have been a temple of the idolaters and not of the Mohamedans. The Mohamedans reported that it was built by Solomon, in very ancient times. All this at once does away with the pretence that it was a building of the modern Mohamedans; and is a strong confirmation of the Jewish nature of the other names of the towns - Yuda-poor, Iod-pore, etc., etc. Bernier goes on to say...that the name of Mousa or Moses is common among the natives, that Moses died at Cashmere, and that they yet show the ruins of his tomb near the town. This is curious when connected with the fact, that the Jews of Western Syria say, no one ever knew where he was buried." (Vol. I; p. 771.)

An article in the April, 1997 issue of the Jewish magazine Moment discusses the possibility that a heavy Jewish presence once dominated India.

"A tribe of Sunni Moslems called the Pathans, now living in parts of Pakistan, number at least 15 million. The Pathan language bears traces of biblical Hebrew, and the Pathans themselves claim lineage from King Saul. They are said to follow, in varying degrees of observance, some 21 'Jewish' customs, including lighting candles on Friday night, wearing a four-cornered prayer garment, and performing circumcision on the eighth day.

Then there are the Kashmiris from Northern India, who number about five million; although they too are predominantly Sunni Moslems, many bear biblical-sounding names like Cleb (Caleb), Israel, Hahana, and Lavni..." (Searching for the Lost Tribes, by Winston Pickett, p. 51.)

Aramaic, a language as similar to Hebrew as Spanish is to Portuguese, originated in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Both Afghanistan and Pakistan were once part of India. Afghanistan seceded from Indian in the 1700s. Pakistan was cut out of India when the two nations were partitioned after World War II. Aramaic also is the source of modern Hebrew's square alphabet, used in Israel today. The Hebrew square alphabet and the truth that Hebrew is just an Aramaic dialect confirm the Indian origin of the Jews.

Those Christian and Jewish authorities who don't want it to be true that ten to thirty million Jews once lived in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Northwestern India say that it is just a "coincidence" that so many tribes and places there have biblical names. Others insist that the Moslems christened all those tribes and places. As Godfrey Higgins tells us, many of those tribes and places had already received their so-called "biblical names" millenniums before Islam was a gleam in Mohammed's eyes and many centuries before those same names started showing up in the Middle East. Some of Israel's tribal and place names also started appearing in Afghanistan, Kashmir, and Northwestern India when Sargon II and Nebuchadnezzar exiled most of the Jews to that part of the world. The confusion about the origin of those tribal and place names will always exist as long as we stubbornly refuse to give the Indo-Hebrews their rightful place in history. The Aryans and Indo-Hebrews began to overrun parts of India and the Middle East around 2000 BC, perhaps more than a thousand years previously if there is any truth to the story about the progeny of Noah.

Somehow, our brainwashed minds blank out the face that the Ancient Egyptian and Akkadian names for Hebrew, Habiru and Apiru were derived from Indo-Hebrew dialects and meant "Sons of Ophir." The truth about the origins of the Hebrews has been screaming in our faces for thousands of years, but our benumbed minds have chosen not to hear it.

What Inferences Can You Draw From the Following List?

Linguistic Similarities Between Hebrew and Kashmiri

Holger Kersten wrote in Jesus Lived in India,

"The relation between ancient Israel and Kashmiri can most clearly be demonstrated linguistically. Kashmirian is different from all the other Indian languages, the origins of which are Sanskrit. The development of the language of Kashmir has been greatly influenced by the Hebrew. Abdul Ahad Azad writes, 'The language of Kashmir derives from Hebrew.' According to tradition, in ancient times Jewish peoples settled here, whose language changed into the Kashmirian of today. There are many Hebrew words that are quite obviously connected with the language of Kashmir." (pp. 68-69.)