Ceylon; an Account of the Island Physical, Historical, and Topographical with Notices of Its Natural History Part 97

An exploit so adventurous and so triumphant, rendered Hippalus the Columbus of his age, and his countrymen, to perpetuate his renown, called the winds which he had mastered by his name.[1] His discovery gave a new direction to navigation, it altered the dimensions and build of the s.h.i.+ps frequenting those seas [2], and imparted so great an impulse to trade, that within a very brief period it became a subject of apprehension at Rome, lest the empire should be drained of its specie to maintain the commerce with India. Silver to the value of nearly a million and a half sterling, being annually required to pay for the spices, gems, pearls, and silks, imported through Egypt.[3] An extensive acquaintance was now acquired with the sea-coast of India, and the great work of Pliny, compiled less than fifty years after the discovery of Hippalus, serves to attest the additional knowledge regarding Ceylon which had been collected during the interval.

[Footnote 1: _Periplus, &c._, HUDSON, p. 32; PLINY, lib. vi, ch. 26. A learned disquisition on the discovery of the monsoons will be found in VINCENT's _Commerce of the Ancients_, vol. i. pp. 47, 253; vol. ii. pp.

49; 467; ROBERTSON's _India_, sec. ii.]

[Footnote 2: PLINY, lib. vi. ch. 24.]

[Footnote 3: PLINY, lib. vi. ch. 26. The nature of this rich trade is fully described by the author of the _Periplus of the Erythrean Sea_, who was himself a merchant engaged in it.]

Pliny, writing in the first century, puts aside the fabulous tales previously circulated concerning the island[1]; he gives due credit to the truer accounts of Onesicritus and Megasthenes, and refers to the later works of ERATOSTHENES and ARTEMIDORUS[2] the geographers, as to its position, its dimensions, its cities, its natural productions, and as to the ignorance of navigation exhibited by its inhabitants. All this, he says, was recorded by former writers, but it had fallen to his lot to collect information from natives of Ceylon who had visited Rome during his own time under singular circ.u.mstances. A s.h.i.+p had been despatched to the coast of Arabia to collect the Red Sea revenues, but having been caught by the monsoon it was carried to Hippuros, the modern Kudra-mali, in the north-west of Ceylon, near the pearl banks of Manaar.

Here the officer in command was courteously received by the king, who, struck with admiration of the Romans and eager to form an alliance with them, despatched an emba.s.sy to Italy, consisting of a Raja and suite of three persons.[3]

[Footnote 1: I have not thought it necessary to advert to the romance of JAMBULUS, the scene of which has been conjectured, but without any justifiable grounds, to be laid in Ceylon; and which is strangely incorporated with the authentic work of DIODORUS SICULUS, written in the age of Augustus. DIODORUS professes to give it as an account of the _recent discovery_ of an island to which it refers; a fact sufficiently demonstrative of its inapplicability to Ceylon, the existence of which had been known to the Greeks three hundred years before. It is the story of a merchant made captive by pirates and carried to aethiopia, where, in compliance with a solemn rite, he and a companion were exposed in a boat, which, after a voyage of four months, was wafted to one of the Fortunate Islands, in the Southern Sea, where he resided seven years, whence having been expelled, he made his way to Palibothra, on the Ganges, and thence returned to Greece. In the pretended account of this island given by JAMBULUS I cannot discover a single attribute sufficient to identify it with Ceylon. On the contrary, the traits which he narrates of the country and its inhabitants, when they are not manifest inventions, are obviously borrowed from the descriptions of the continent of India, given by CTESIAS and MEGASTHENES. PRINSEP, in his learned a.n.a.lysis of the Sanchi Inscription, shows that what JAMBULUS says of the alphabet of his island agrees minutely with the character and symbols on the ancient Buddhist lats of Central India. _Journ.

Asiat. Soc. Ben._, vol. vi. p. 476. WILFORD, in his _Essay on the Sacred Isles of the West, Asiat. Res._ x. 150, enumerates the statements of JAMBULUS which might possibly apply to Sumatra, but certainly not to Ceylon, an opinion in which he had been antic.i.p.ated by RAMUSIO, vol. i.

p. 176. La.s.sEN, in his _Indische Alterthumskunde_, vol. iii. p. 270, a.s.signs his reasons for believing that Bali, to the east of Java, must be the island in which JAMBULUS laid the scene of his adventures.

DIODORUS SICULUS, lib. ii. ch. lv., &c. An attempt has also been made to establish an ident.i.ty between Ceylon and the island of Panchoea, which Diodoras describes in the Indian Sea, between Arabia and Gedrosia (lib.

v. 41, &c.); but the efforts of an otherwise ingenious writer have been unsuccessful. See GROVER's _Voice from Stonehenge_, P. i. p. 95.]

[Footnote 2: PLINY, lib. xxii. ch. liii. iv. ch. xxiv. vii. ch. ii.]

[Footnote 3: "Legatos quatuor misit principe eoram Rachia."--PLINY, lib.

vi. c. 24. This pa.s.sage is generally understood to indicate four amba.s.sadors, of whom the princ.i.p.al was one named Rachias. CASIE CHITTY, in a learned paper on the early _History of Jaffna_, offers another conjecture that "Rachia" may mean _Arachia_, a Singhalese designation of rank which exists to the present day; and in support of his hypothesis he instances the coincidence that "at a later period a similar functionary was despatched by the King Bhuwaneka-Bahu VIII. as amba.s.sador to the court of Lisbon."--_Journal Ceylon Asiat. Soc.,_ p.

74, 1848. The event to which he refers is recorded in the _Rajavali_: it is stated that the king of Cotta, about the year 1540, "caused a figure of the prince his grandson to be made of gold, and sent the same under the care of _Sallappoo Arachy_, to be delivered to the King of Portugal.

The Arachy having arrived and delivered the presents to the King of Portugal, obtained the promise of great a.s.sistance," &c.--_Rajavali_, p.

286. See also VALENTYN, _Oud en Nieuw Oost-Indien_, ch. vi.; TURNOUR'S _Epitome_, p. 49; RIBEYRO'S _History_, trans, by Lee, ch. v. But as the emba.s.sy sent to the Emperor Claudius would necessarily have been deputed by one of the kings of the Wijayan dynasty, it is more than probable that the rank of the envoy was Indian rather than Singhalese, and that "Rachia" means _raja_ rather than _arachy_.

It may, however, be observed that Rackha is a name of some renown in Singhalese annals. Rackha was the general whom Prakrama Bahu sent to reduce the south of Ceylon when in arms in the 12th century (_Mahawanso_, ch. lxxiii.); and it is also the name of one of the heroes of the Paramas. WILFORD, _As. Res._, vol. ix. p. 41.]

The Singhalese king of whom this is recorded was probably Chanda-Mukha-Siwa, who ascended the throne A.D. 44, and was deposed and a.s.sa.s.sinated by his brother A.D. 52. He signalised his reign by the construction of one of those gigantic tanks which still form the wonders of the island.[1] From his envoys Pliny learned that Ceylon then contained five hundred towns (or more properly villages), of which the chief was Palaesimunda, the residence of the sovereign, with a population of two hundred thousand souls.

[Footnote 1: _Mahawanso_, ch. x.x.x. p. 218; TURNOUR'S _Epitome_, p. 21; AMMIa.n.u.s MARCELLINUS mentions another emba.s.sy which arrived from Ceylon in the reign of the Emperor Julian, l. xx. c. 7, and which consequently must have been despatched by the king Upa-tissa II. I have elsewhere remarked, that it was in this century that the Singhalese appear to have first commenced the practice of sending frequent emba.s.sies to distant countries, and especially to China. (See chapter on the Knowledge of Ceylon possessed by the Chinese.)]

They spoke of a lake called Megisba, of vast magnitude, and giving rise to two rivers, one flowing by the capital and the other northwards, towards the continent of India, which was most likely an exaggerated account of some of the great tanks, possibly that of Tissaweva, in the vicinity of Anaraj.a.poora. They described the coral which abounds in the Gulf of Manaar; and spoke of marble, with colours like the sh.e.l.l of the tortoise; of pearls and precious stones; of the luxuriance of the soil, the profusion of all fruits except that of the vine, the natural wealth of the inhabitants, the mildness of the government, the absence of vexatious laws, the happiness of the people, and the duration of life, which was prolonged to more than one hundred years. They spoke of a commerce with China, but it was evidently overland, by way of India and Tartary, the country of the Seres being visible, they said, beyond the Himalaya mountains.[1] The amba.s.sadors described the mode of trading among their own countrymen precisely as it is practised by the Veddahs in Ceylon at the present day[2]; the parties to the barter being concealed from each other, the one depositing the articles to be exchanged in a given place, and the other, if they agree to the terms, removing them unseen, and leaving behind what they give in return.

It is impossible to read this narrative of Pliny without being struck with its fidelity to truth in many particulars; and even one pa.s.sage, to which exception has been taken as an imposture of the Singhalese envoys, when they manifested surprise at the quarters in which the sun rose and set in Italy, has been referred[3] to the peculiar system of the Hindus, in whose maps north and south are left and right; but it may be explained by the fact of the sun pa.s.sing overhead in Ceylon, in his transit to the northern solstice; instead of hanging about the south, as in Italy, after acquiring some elevation above the horizon.

[Footnote 1: "Ultra montes Emodos Seras quoque ab ipsis aspici notos etiam commercio."--PLINY, lib. vi. c. 24.]

[Footnote 2: See the chapter on the Veddahs, Vol. II. Part II. ch. iii.]

[Footnote 3: See WILFORD'S _Sacred Islands of the West, Asiat. Res_., vol. x. p. 41.]

The rapid progress of navigation and discovery in the Indian seas, within the interval of sixty or seventy years which elapsed between the death of Pliny and the compilation of the great work of Ptolemy is in no instance more strikingly exhibited than on comparing the information concerning Taprobane, which is given by the latter in his "System of Geography,"[1] with the meagre knowledge of the island possessed by all his predecessors. From his position at Alexandria and his opportunites of intercourse with mariners returning from their distant voyages, he enjoyed unusual facilities for ascertaining facts and distances, and in proof of his singular diligence he was enabled to lay down in his map of Ceylon the position of eight promontories upon its coast, the mouths of five princ.i.p.al rivers, four bays, and harbours; and in the interior he had ascertained that there were thirteen provincial divisions, and nineteen towns, besides two emporiums on the coast; five great estuaries which he terms lakes[2], two bays, and two chains of mountains, one of them surrounding Adam's Peak, which he designates as Maloea--the name by which the hills that environ it are known in the _Mahawanso_. He mentions the recent change of the name to Salike (which La.s.sen conjectures to be a seaman's corruption of the real name Sihala[3]); and he notices, in pa.s.sing, the fact that the natives wore their hair then as they do at the present day, in such length and profusion as to give them an appearance of effeminacy, "[Greek: mallois gynaikeiois eis hapan anadedemenos]."[4]

[Footnote 1: PTOLEMY, _Geog_. lib. vii. c. 4, tab. xii, Asiae. In one important particular a recent author has done justice to the genius and perseverance of Ptolemy, by demonstrating that although mistaken in adopting some of the fallacious statements of his predecessors, he has availed himself of better data by which to fix the position of Ceylon; so that the western coast in the Ptolemaic map coincides with the modern Ceylon in the vicinity of Colombo. Mr. COOLEY, in his learned work on _Claudius Ptolemy and the Nile_, Lond. 1854, has successfully shown that whilst forced to accept those popular statements which he had no authentic data to check, Ptolemy conscientiously availed himself of the best materials at his command, and endeavoured to fix his distances by means of the reports of the Greek seamen who frequented the coasts which he described, constructing his maps by means of their itineraries and the journals of trading voyages. But a fundamental error pervades all his calculations, inasmuch as he a.s.sumed that there were but 500 stadia (about fifty geographical miles) instead of sixty miles to a degree of a great circle of the earth; thus curtailing the globe of one sixth of its circ.u.mference. Once apprised of this mistake, and reckoning Ptolemy's longitudes and lat.i.tudes from Alexandria, and reducing them to degrees of 600 stadia, his positions may be laid down on a more correct graduation; otherwise "his Taprobane, magnified far beyond its true dimensions, appears to extend two degrees below the equator, and to the seventy-first meridian east of Alexandria (nearly twenty degrees too far east), _whereas the prescribed reduction brings it westward and northward till it covers the modern Ceylon_, the western coasts of both coinciding at the very part near Colombo likely to have been visited by s.h.i.+pping."--Pp. 47, 53, See also SCHOELL, _Hist, de la Lit. Grecque_, l.

v. c. lxx.

[Ill.u.s.tration]]

[Footnote 2: It is observable that Ptolemy in his list distinguishes those indentations in the coast which he described as _bays_, [Greek: kolpos], from the estuaries, to which he gives the epithet of "lakes,"

[Greek: limen]. Of the former he particularises two, the position of which would nearly correspond with the Bay of Trincomalie and the harbour of Colombo. Of the latter he enumerates five, and from their position they seem to represent the peculiar estuaries formed by the conjoint influence of the rivers and the current, and known by the Arabs by the term of "_gobbs_." A description of them will be found at Vol. I.

Part I. ch. i. p. 43.]

[Footnote 3: May it not have an Egyptian origin "Siela-Keh," the _land_ of _Siela_?]

[Footnote 4: The description of Taprobane given by Ptolemy proves that the island had been thoroughly circ.u.mnavigated and examined by the mariners who were his informants. Not having penetrated the interior to any extent, their reports relative to it are confined to the names of the princ.i.p.al tribes inhabiting the several divisions and provinces, and the position of the metropolis and seat of government. But respecting the coast, their notes were evidently minute and generally accurate, and from them Ptolemy was enabled to enumerate in succession the bays, rivers, and harbours, together with the headlands and cities on the seaborde in consecutive order; beginning at the northern extremity, proceeding southward down the western coast, and returning along the east to Point Pedro. Although the majority of the names which he supplies are no longer susceptible of identification on the modern map, some of them can be traced without difficulty--thus his _Ganges_ is still the Mahawelli-ganga; his _Maagrammum_ would appear, on a first glance, to be Mahagam, but as he calls it the "metropolis," and places it beside the great river, it is evidently Bintenne, whose ancient name was "Maha-yangana" or "Ma-ha-welli-gam." His _Anurogrammum_, which he calls [Greek: Basileion], "the royal residence," is obviously Anaraj.a.poora, the city founded by Anuradha five hundred years before Ptolemy was born (_Mahawanso_, ch. vii. p. 50, x. 65, &c.). It may have borne in his time the secondary rank of a village or a town (_gam_ or _gramma_), and afterwards acquired the higher epithet of Anuradha-_porra_, the "city" of Anuradha, after it had grown to the dimensions of a capital. The province of the _Modutti_ in Ptolemy's list has a close resemblance in name, though not in position, to Mantotte; the people of Rayagam Corle still occupy the country a.s.signed by him to the _Rhogandani_--his _Naga dibii_ are identical with the Nagadiva of the _Mahawanso_; and the islet to which he has given the name of _Ba.s.sa_, occupies nearly the position of the Ba.s.ses, which it has been the custom to believe were so called by the Portuguese--"Baxos" or "Baixos," _sunken rocks_. It is curious that the position in which he has placed the elephant plains or feeding grounds, [Greek: elephanton nomoi], to the south-east of Adam's Peak, is the portion of the island about Matura, where, down to a very recent period, the Portuguese, the Dutch, and the English successively held their annual battues, not only for the supply of the government studs, but for export to India. Making due allowance for the false dimensions of the island a.s.sumed by Ptolemy, but taking his account of the relative positions of the headlands, rivers, harbours, and cities, the accompanying map affords a proximate idea of his views of Taprobane and its localities as propounded in his Geography.

_Post-scriptum._ Since the above was written, and the map it refers to was returned to me from the engraver, I have discovered that a similar attempt to identify the ancient names of Ptolemy with those now attached to the supposed localities, was made by Gosselin; and a chart so constructed will be found (No. xiv.) appended to his _Recherches sur la Geographie des Anciens_, t. iii. p. 303. I have been gratified to find that in the more important points we agree; but in many of the minor ones, the want of personal knowledge of the island involved Gosselin in errors which the map I have prepared will, I hope, serve to rectify.--J.E.T.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: TAPROBANE OR SALIKE, _(CEYLON) according to_ Ptolemy and Pliny.

_N.B. The modern Names are given in Italics.

By Sir J. Emerson Tennent._]

The extent and accuracy of Ptolemy's information is so surprising, that it has given rise to surmises as to the sources whence it could possibly have been derived.[1] But the conjecture that he was indebted to ancient Phoenician or Tyrian authorities whom he has failed to acknowledge, is sufficiently met by the consideration that these were equally accessible to his predecessors. The abundance of his materials, especially those relating to the sea-borde of India and Ceylon, is sufficient to show that he was mainly indebted for his facts to the adventurous merchants of Egypt and Arabia, and to works which, like the _Periplus of the Erythroean Sea_ (erroneously ascribed to ARRIAN the historian, but written by a merchant probably of the same name), were drawn up by practical navigators to serve as sailing directions for seamen resorting to the Indian Ocean.[2]

[Footnote 1: HEEREN, _Hist. Researches_, vol. ii. Appendix xii.]

[Footnote 2: La.s.sEN, _De Taprob. Ins._ p. 4. From the error of Ptolemy in making the coast of Malabar extend from west to east, whilst its true position is laid down in the _Periplus_, VINCENT concludes that he was not acquainted with the _Periplus_, as, anterior to the invention of printing, cotemporaries might readily be ignorant of the productions of each other (VINCENT, vol. ii. p. 55). Vincent a.s.signs the composition of the _Periplus_ to the reign of Claudius or Nero, and Dodwell to that of M. Aurelius, but Letronne more judiciously ascribes it to the period of Severus and Caracalla, A.D. 198,210, fifty years later than Ptolemy. The author, a Greek of Alexandria and a merchant, never visited Ceylon, though he had been as far south as Nelkynda (the modern Neliseram), and the account which he gives from report of the island is meagre, and in some respects erroneous. ARRIANI _Periplus Maris Eryth.;_ HUDSON, vol.

i. p. 35; VINCENT, vol. ii. p. 493.]

So ample was the description of Ceylon afforded by Ptolemy, that for a very long period his successors, AGATHEMERUS, MARCIa.n.u.s of Heraclea, and other geographers, were severally contented to use the facts originally collected by him.[1] And it was not till the reign of Justinian, in the sixth century, that COSMAS INDICO-PLEUSTES, by publis.h.i.+ng the narrative of Sopater, added very considerably to the previous knowledge of the island.

[Footnote 1: AGATHEMERUS, _Hudson Geog._, l. ii. c. 7,8.; MARCIa.n.u.s HERACLEOTA, _Periplus, Hudson,_ p. 26. STEPHa.n.u.s BYZANTINUS, _in verbo_ "Taprobane." Instead of the expression of PTOLEMY that Taprobane [Greek: ekaleito palai Simoundon], which MARCIa.n.u.s had rendered [Greek: Palaisimioundou], STEPHa.n.u.s transposes the words as if to guard against error, [Greek: palai men ekaleito Simoundou], &c. The prior authority of PTOLEMY, however, serves to prolong the mystery, as he calls the capital Palaesimundum.]

As Cosmos is the last Greek writer who treats of Taprobane[1], it may be interesting, before pa.s.sing to his account of the island, to advert to what has been recorded by the Singhalese chroniclers themselves, as to its actual condition at the period when Cosmas described it, and thus to verify his narrative by the test of historical evidence. It has been shown in another chapter that between the first and the sixth centuries, Ceylon had undergone all the miseries of frequent invasions: that in the vicissitudes of time the great dynasty of Wijayo had expired, and the throne had fallen into the hands of an effeminate and powerless race, utterly unable to contend with the energetic Malabars, who acquired an established footing in the northern parts of the island. The south, too wild and uncultivated to attract these restless plunderers, and too rugged and inaccessible to be overrun by them, was divided into a number of petty princ.i.p.alities, whose kings did homage to the paramount sovereign north of the Mahawelli-ganga. Buddhism was the national religion, but toleration was shown to all others,--to the wors.h.i.+p of the Brahmans as well as to the barbarous superst.i.tion of the aboriginal tribes. At the same time, the productive wealth of the island had been developed to an extraordinary extent by the care of successive kings, and by innumerable works for irrigation and agriculture provided by their policy. Anaraj.a.poora, the capital, had expanded into extraordinary dimensions, it was adorned with buildings and monuments, surpa.s.sing in magnitude those of any city in India, and had already attracted pilgrims and travellers from China and the uttermost countries of the East.

[Footnote 1: There is another curious work which, notwithstanding certain doubts as to its authors.h.i.+p, contains internal evidence ent.i.tling it, in point of time, to take precedence of COSMAS. This is the tract "_De Moribus Brachmanorum_", ascribed to St. Ambrose, and which under the t.i.tle [Greek: "Peri ton tez Indiaz kai ton Brachmanon"]

has been also attributed to Palladius, but in all probability it was actually the composition of neither. Early in the fifth century Palladius was Bishop of Helenopolis, in Bithynia, and died about A.D.

410. He spent a part of his life in Coptic monasteries, and it is possible that during his sojourn in Egypt, meeting travellers and merchants returning from India, he may have caused this narrative to be taken down from the dictation of one of them. Cave hesitates to believe that it was written by PALLADIUS, "haud facile credem," &c. (_Script.

Eccles. Hist. Lit._); and the learned Benedictine editors of AMBROSE have excluded it from the works of the latter. They could scarcely have done otherwise when the first chapter of the Latin version opens with the declaration that it was drawn up by its author at the request of "PALLADIUS." "Desiderium mentis tuae Palladi opus efficere nos compellit," &c. Neither of the two versions can be accepted as a translation of the other, but the discrepancies are not inconsistent, and would countenance the conjecture that the book is the production of one and the same person. Much of the material is borrowed from PTOLEMY and PLINY but the facts which are new could only have been collected by persons who had visited the scenes they describe. The compiler says he had learned from a certain scholar of Thebes that the inhabitants of Ceylon were called _Macrobii_, because, owing to the salubrity of the climate, the average duration of life was 150 years. The petty kings of the country acknowledged one paramount sovereign to whom they were subject as satraps; this the Theban was told by others, as he himself not allowed to visit the interior. A thousand other islands lie adjacent to Ceylon, and in a group of these which he calls Maniolae (probably the Attols of the Maldives,) is found the loadstone, which attracts iron, so that a vessel coming within its influence, is seized and forcibly detained, and for this reason the s.h.i.+ps which navigate these seas are fastened with pegs of wood instead of bolts of iron.

Ceylon, according to this traveller, has five large and navigable rivers, it rejoices in one perennial harvest, and the flowers and the ripe fruit hang together on the same branch. There are palm trees; both those that bear the great Indian nut, and the smaller aromatic one (the areka). The natives subsist on milk, rice, and fruit. The sheep produce no wool, but have long and silky hair, and linen being unknown, the inhabitants clothe themselves in skins, which are far from inelegantly worked.

Finding some Indian merchants there who had come in a small vessel to trade, the Theban attempted to go into the interior, and succeeded in getting sight of a tribe whom he calls Besadae or Vesadae, his description of whom is in singular conformity with the actual condition of the Veddahs in Ceylon at the present day. "They are," he says, "a feeble and diminutive race, dwelling in caves under the rocks, and early accustomed to ascend precipices, with which their country abounds, in order to gather pepper from the climbing plants. They are of low stature, with large heads and s.h.a.ggy uncut hair."

The Theban proceeds to relate that being arrested by one of the chiefs, on the charge of having entered his territory without permission, he was forcibly detained there for six years, subsisting on a measure of food, issued to him daily by the royal authority. This again presents a curious coincidence with the detention and treatment of Knox and other captives by the kings of Kandy in modern times. He was at last released owing to the breaking out of hostilities between the chief who held him prisoner and another prince, who accused the former before the supreme sovereign of having unlawfully detained a Roman citizen, after which he was set at liberty, out of respect to the Roman name and authority.

This curious tract was first published by CAMERABIUS, but in 1665 Sir EDWARD BISSE, Baronet, and Clarenceux King-at-Arms, reproduced the Greek original, supposing it to be an unpublished ma.n.u.script, with a Latin translation. It is incorporated in one of the MSS. of the _Pseudo-Callisthenes_ recently edited by MuLLER, lib. iii. ch. vii.

viii.; DIDOT. _Script Groec. Bib_., vol. xxvi. Paris, 1846.]

With the increasing commercial intercourse between the West and the East, Ceylon, from its central position, half way between Arabia and China, had during the same period risen into signal importance as a great emporium for foreign trade. The transfer of the seat of empire from Rome to Constantinople served to revive the over-land traffic with India; and the Persians for the first time[1] vied with the Arabs and the merchants of Egypt, and sought to divert the Oriental trade from the Red Sea and Alexandria to the Euphrates and the Tigris.

[Footnote 1: GIBBON, ch. xl.; ROBERTSON'S _India_, b.i.]

Already, between the first and fifth centuries, the course of that trade had undergone a considerable change. In its infancy, and so long as the navigation was confined to coasting adventures, the fleets of the Ptolemies sailed no further than to the ports of Arabia Felx[1], where they were met by Arabian vessels returning from the west coast of India, bringing thence the productions of China, s.h.i.+pped at the emporiums of Malabar. After the discovery of the monsoons, and the accomplishment of bolder voyages, the great entrepot of commerce was removed farther south; first, from Muziris, the modern Mangalore, to Nelkynda, now Neliseram, and afterwards to Calicut and Coulam, or Quilon. In like manner the Chinese, who, whilst the navigation of the Arabs and Persians was in its infancy, had extended their voyages not only to Malabar but to the Persian Gulf, gradually contracted them as their correspondents ventured further south. HAMZA says, that in the fifth century the Euphrates was navigable as high as Hira, within a few miles of Babylon[2]; and Ma.s.sOUDI, in his _Meadows of Gold_, states that at that time the Chinese s.h.i.+ps ascended the river and anch.o.r.ed in front of the houses there.[3] At a later period, their utmost limit was Syraf, in Farsistan[4]; they afterwards halted first at Muziris, next at Calicut[5], then at Coulam, now Quilon[6]; and eventually, in the fourth and fifth centuries, the Chinese vessels appear rarely to have sailed further west than Ceylon. Thither they came with their silks and other commodities, those destined for Europe being chiefly paid for in silver[7], and those intended for barter in India were trans-s.h.i.+pped into smaller craft, adapted to the Indian seas, by which they were distributed at the various ports east and west of Cape Comorin.[8]

[Footnote 1: Aden was a Roman emporium; [Greek: Rhomaikon emporion Adanen].--PHILOSTORGIUS, p. 28.]