The whole supposition of Burnouf and De Bunsen, and writers of the school to which they belong, is based upon a most exaggerated and indeed fictitious estimate of the Indian contribution to the sum of human knowledge. It assumes that India was the cradle of all wisdom, and that from that favoured land of primeval light went forth from time to time the apostles of religion and the expounders of all philosophy. Yet history reveals not the slightest trace of any such propaganda westward before the coming of Christ, and though centuries after we have slight notices of Indian travellers to the West, we do not find a missionary among them. We have historic evidence, however, of the Western races reaching India certainly before the coming of Christ, and probably long before the birth of the founder of Buddhism, and we can hardly suppose that races with enterprise and intelligence sufficient to discover and conquer the Hindus would appear only before them as beggars to receive their alms. We forget that the wave of Aryan humanity that poured downward into India really deflected from the path of progress, and that under climatic and other unfavourable conditions, and through intermixture with inferior races, it stagnated, while that which proceeded westward improved the more the farther it advanced. We have a tolerably clear idea of the civilisation of Western Asia in the time of Solomon, whose navy is supposed to have traded with India. It comprehended capitals with magnificent buildings, public works, and well-guarded highways; commerce protected and encouraged; law administered; religion observed, and learning cultivated. What Indian civilisation meant at the same period we can only conjecturally infer from the literature that is extant, but we have clearer glimpses of it five centuries later as the home of a mixed race, geographically severed from the rest of the world, living in village settlements, which only here and there were large enough to be called towns, divided into clans whose wealth consisted chiefly in pasture and tillage lands, and flocks and herds.[38] A kingdom in the sense in which Solomon would have used the word did not exist. In respect of civilisation Palestine was far ahead of India, and in respect of religious development, its theology, though greatly tainted with heathen superstitions, was sufficiently pure and strong to save the Hebrew from requiring instruction at the wattle huts of a race that confounded God with His works. If Ophir be the name of an Indian port, then Solomon’s navy brought back from it gold, and ivory, and curious things indicated by Sanskrit words for which the Hebrew chronicler could find no equivalent. The sailors may have picked up a few fables and riddles and proverbs, but surely in regard to religion and philosophy, the superior and stronger race would be more likely to impart of their abundance to the lower and weaker than to enrich themselves out of their poverty.