The extent and accuracy of Ptolemy's information was so surprising, that it has given rise to surmises as to the sources whence it could possibly have been derived. 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-bord 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 Erythraean 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 that the position in which he has placed the elephant plains or feeding grounds, ελεφάντων νομαι, 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 assumed 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 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, had been made by Gosselin; and a chart so constructed will be found (No. xiv.) | appended to his Recherches sur la Géographie 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. 1 HEEREN, Hist. Researches, vol. ii. Appendix xii. 2 LASSEN, 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 assigns 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, So ample was the description of Ceylon afforded by Ptolemy, that for a very long period his successors, AGATHEMERUS, MARCIANUS of Heraclea, and other geographers, were severally contented to use the facts originally collected by him. And it was not till the reign of Justinian, in the sixth century, that COSMAS INDICO-PLEUSTES, by publishing the narrative of Sopater, added very considerably to the previous knowledge of the island. As Cosmas was the last Greek writer who treats of Taprobane2, it may be interesting, before passing to his 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. AGATHEMERUS, Hudson Geog, 1. ii. c. 7, 8.; MARCIANUS HERACLEOTA, Periplus, Hudson, p. 26. STEPHANUS BYZANTINUS, in verbo "Taprobane." Instead of the expression of PTOLEMY that Taprobane έκαλείτο παλαι Σιμο určov, which MARCIANUS had rendered Пaxaoovvcov, STEPHANUS transposes the words as if to guard against error, παλαι μεν έκαλείτο Σι Hovvcov, &c. The prior authority of PTOLEMY, however, serves to prolong the mystery, as he calls the capital Palæsimundum. 2 There is another curious work which, notwithstanding certain doubts as to its authorship, contains internal evidence entitling 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 title " Περὶ τῶν τῆς Ἰνδιάς καὶ τῶν Βρακμάνων" 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 tra | vellers 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 tuæ 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 ProLEMY 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 was not allowed to visit the interior. A 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 foot pegs thousand other islands lie adjacent to 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 Besada or Vesada, 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 accustom 66 ed 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 shaggy, 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 CAMERARIUS, but in 1665 Sir EDWARD BISSE, Baronet, and Clarenceux King-at-Arms, reproduced the Greek original, supposing it to be an unpublished manuscript, with a Latin translation. It is incorporated in one of the MSS. of the Pseudo-Callisthenes recently edited by MÜLLER, lib. iii. ch. vii. viii.; DIDOT, Script. Græc. Bib., vol. xxvi. Paris, 1846. ing 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 principalities, whose kings did homage to the paramount sovereign north of the Mahawelliganga. Buddhism was the national religion, but toleration was shown to all others, to the worship of the Brahmans as well as to the barbarous superstition 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. Anarajapoora, the capital, had expanded into extraordinary dimensions, it was adorned with buildings and monuments; surpassing in magnitude those of any city in India, and had already attracted pilgrims and travellers from China and the uttermost countries of the East. 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. 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 1 GIBBON, ch. xl.; ROBERTSON's India, b. i. |