Francis Wilford and other Orientalists of the 18th century in syncretising Sanskrit with Classical and Biblical narratives, establishing transcultural correspondences by means of often "crude" conjectural etymologies. Albeit, Wilford's reputation did not win the "scientific respectability" for his proposed theories, his work[s] did exert a lasting influence in early 18th century antiquarians and Romanic poets like S.T. Coleridge, Robert Southey, Percy Shelley, and Tom Moore. Wilford claimed to have discovered the Sanskrit version of the story of Noah (who had three sons – Japheth, Ham, and Shem) named "Satyavrata" (in Sanskrit) and his three sons "Jyapeti", "Charma", and "Sharma" from a Vedic
Japheth ever mentioned anywhere else in the Bible, leading scholars to suppose that the history is a late composition, attached to Genesis to serve as an introduction to that book and to the Torah. Japheth (in Hebrew, Yaphet) is a transliteration of the Greek Iapetos, the ancestor of the Hellenic peoples. His sons and grandsons associate him with the geographic area of the eastern Mediterranean and Asia - Ionia/Javan, Rhodes/Rodanim, Cyprus/Kittim, and other points in the region of Greece and Asia Minor - approximating to one of the three kingdoms into which the generals of Alexander the Great divided his empire