[James C. Bennett]

A much more reasonable explanation is that jain missionaries sent out by various West Indian kings in the 400s and 500s made it to Wales, Cornwall and Brittany.

LOL, see #20. BTW, did you intend to mean East Indian (Subcontinent) kings?

[muawiyah]

Jains in the 5th and 6th centuries are reputed to be most dominant in what is now Mumbai and Gujarat states. Even down to modern times there've been jain noble families in Gujarat.

If you're on foot that's a long way to anything in Eastern India ~ and BTW, that particular area ~ Greater india would have just then been moving into locales as far removed from the Indian core as Sumatra and coastal regions of what is now Malaysia. The oldest building in Penang was discovered not long ago and it appears to be a tax office built about 700 AD, give or take a couple of centuries.

Today's jains, though, live in East Anglia, New Jersey and Fairfax county VA (bwahahahaha).

[muawiyah]

BTW, not to get off on these other topics but odds are good that almost any Hindi speaker in India learned his English from a teacher who spoke it with a Welsh accent ~

That started out back in the early days of the Raj when starving Welshmen were happy to take jobs as school teachers in India!

Personally I think that's entirely too simple an idea because, after all, there are other philological connections.

[muawiyah]

I try to keep my locations consistent with what they were thought of at the time. Since Columbus had not returned with news of the “West Indies’ until 1493 no such place existed in the 400s.