Francis Wilford

Who is Francis Wilford?

Francis Wilford was an Indologist, Orientalist, fellow member of the Asiatic Society of Bengal, and a 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.

He contributed a series of ten articles about Hindu geography and mythology for Asiatic Researches - associated with Asiatic Society of Bengal -, between 1799 and 1810, claiming that all European myths were of Hindu origin and that India had produced a Christ whose life and works closely resembled the Christ of Bible. He also claimed to have discovered a Sanskrit version of Noah 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.