mulous light marks where the sunbeams are glittering on the waves upon the distant shore. From age to age a scene so lovely has imparted a colouring of romance to the adventures of the seamen who, in the eagerness of commerce, swept round the shores of India, to bring back the pearls and precious stones, the cinnamon and odours, of Ceylon. The tales of the Arabians are fraught with the wonders of "Serendib;" and the mariners of the Persian Gulf have left a record of their delight in reaching the calm havens of the island, and reposing for months together in valleys where the waters of the sea were overshadowed by woods, and the gardens were blooming in perennial summer.1 Geographical Position.- Notwithstanding the fact that the Hindus, in their system of the universe, had given prominent importance to Ceylon, their first meridian, "the meridian of Lanka," being supposed to pass over the island, they propounded the most extravagant ideas, both as to its position and extent; expanding it to the proportions of a continent, and at the same time placing it a considerable distance southeast of India.2 The native Buddhist historians, unable to confirm the exaggerations of the Brahmans, and yet reluctant to detract from the epic renown of their country by disclaiming the stupendous dimensions assigned to it, attempted to reconcile its actual extent with the fables of the eastern astronomers by imputing to the agency of earthquakes the submersions of vast regions by the sea. But evidence is wanting to corroborate the asser 1 REINAUD, Relation des Voyages | and his Mémoire sur l'Inde, p. 342; Arabes, &c., dans le neuvième siècle. WILFORD'S Essay on the Sacred Isles Paris, 1845, tom. ii. p. 129. of the West, Asiat. Researches, vol. x. p. 140. 2 For a condensed account of the dimensions and position attributed to Lanka, in the Mythic Astronomy of the Hindoos, see REINAUD'S Introduction to Abulféda, sec. iii. p. ccxvii., 3 SIR WILLIAM JONES adopted the legendary opinion that Ceylon "formerly, perhaps, extended much farther to the west and south, so as to tion of such an occurrence, at least within the historic period; no record of it exists in the earliest writings of the Hindus, the Arabians, or Persians; who, had the tradition survived, would eagerly have chronicled a catastrophe so appalling.1 Geologic analogy, so far as an inference is derivable from the formation of the adjoining coasts, both of India and Ceylon, is opposed to its probability; and not only plants, but animals, mammalia, birds, reptiles, and insects, exist in Ceylon, which are not to be found in the flora or fauna of the Indian continent. 2 include Lanca or the equinoctial point of the Indian astronomers."-Discourse on the Institution of a Society for enquiring into the History, &c. of the Borderers, Mountaineers, and Islanders of Asia.-Works, vol. i. p. 120. The Portuguese, on their arrival in Ceylon in the sixteenth century, found the natives fully impressed by the traditions of its former extent and partial submersion; and their belief in connection with it, will be found in the narratives and histories of De Barros and Diogo de Couto, from which they have been transferred, almost without abridgment, to the pages of Valentyn. The substance of the native legends will be found in the Mahawanso, c. xxii. p. 131; and Rajavali, p. 180, 190. The first disturbance of the coast by which Ceylon is alleged to have been severed from the main land is said by the Buddhists to have taken place B.C. 2387; a second commotion is ascribed to the age of Panduwasa, B. c. 504; and the subsidence of the shore adjacent to Colombo is said to have taken place 200 years later, in the reign of Devenipiatissa, B.C. 306. The event is thus recorded in the Rajavali, one of the sacred books of Ceylon: "In these days the sea was seven leagues from Kalany; but on account of what had been done to the teeroonansee (a priest who had been tortured by the king of Kalany), the gods who were charged with the conservation of Ceylon, became en - FORBES observes the coincidence that the legend of the rising of the sea in the age of Panduwasa, 2378 B.C., very nearly concurs with the date assigned to the Deluge of Noah, 2348.-Eleven Years in Ceylon, vol. ii. p. 258. A tradition is also extant, that a submersion took place at a remote period on the east coast of Ceylon, whereby the island of Giridipo, which is mentioned in the first chapter of the Mahawanso, was engulfed, and the dangerous rocks called the Great and Little Basses are believed to be remnants of it.-Mahawanso, c. i. A résumé of the disquisitions which have appeared at various times as to the submersion of a part of Ceylon, will be found in a Memoir sur la Géographie ancienne de Ceylan, in the Journal Asiatique for January, 1857, 5th ser., vol. ix. p. 12; see also TURNOUR's Introd. to the Mahawanso, p. xxxiv. 2 Some of the mammalia peculiar to the island are enumerated at Still in the infancy of geographical knowledge, and before Ceylon had been circumnavigated by Europeans, the mythical delusions of the Hindus were transmitted to the West, and the dimensions of the island were expanded till its southern extremity fell below the equator, and its breadth was prolonged till it touched alike on Africa and China.1 The Greeks who, after the Indian conquests of Alexander, brought back the earliest accounts of the East, repeated them without material diminution, and reported the island to be nearly twenty times its actual extent. Onesicritus, a pilot of the expedition, assigned to it a magnitude of 5000 stadia, equal to 500 geographical miles. Eratosthenes attempted to fix its position, but went so widely astray that his first (that is his most southern) parallel passed through it and the "Cinnamon Land," the Regio Cinnamomifera, on the east coast of Africa. He placed Ceylon at the distance of seven days' sail from the south of India, and he too assigned to its western coast an extent of 5000 stadia.1 Both those authorities are quoted by Strabo, who says that the size of Taprobane was not less than that of Britain.5 Dekkan are noticed by Mr. Walker 3 p. 160; birds found in Ceylon but not Artemidorus STRABO, lib. 2, c. i. s. 14. 4 The text of Strabo showing this measure makes it in some places 8000. (Strabo, lib. 5); and Pliny, quoting Eratosthenes, makes it 7000. 5 STRABO, lib. ii. c. v. s. 32. Aristotle appears to have had more correct information, and says Ceylon was not so large as Britain.-De Mundo, The round numbers employed by those authors, and by the Greek geographers generally, who borrow from them, serve to show that their knowledge was merely collected from rumours; and that in all probability they were indebted for their information to the stories of Arabian or Hindu sailors returning from the Eastern seas. Pliny learned from the Singhalese Ambassador who visited Rome in the reign of Claudius, that the breadth of Ceylon was 10,000 stadia from west to east; and Ptolemy fully developed the idea of his predecessors, that it lay opposite to the "Cinnamon Land," and assigned to it a length from north to south of nearly fifteen degrees, with a breadth of eleven, an exaggeration of the truth nearly twenty-fold.' Agathemerus copies Ptolemy; and the plain and sensible author of the "Periplus" (attributed to Arrian), still labouring with the delusion of the magnitude of Ceylon, makes it stretch almost to the opposite coast of Africa.2 These extravagant ideas of the magnitude of Ceylon were not entirely removed till many centuries later. The Arabian geographers, Massoudi, Edrisi, and Aboulfeda, had no accurate data by which to correct the errors of their Greek predecessors. The maps of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries repeated their distortions; and Marco Polo, in the fourteenth century, gives the island the usual exaggerated dimensions, yet informs us that it is now but one half the size it had been at a former period, the rest having been engulphed by the sea.4 1 PTOLEMY, lib. vii. c. 4. 2 ARRIAN, Periplus, p. 35. Marcianus Heracleota (whose Periplus has been reprinted by HUDSON, in the same collection from which I have made the reference to that of Arrian) gives to Ceylon a length of 9500 stadia with a breadth of 7500.—MAR. | HER. p. 26. 3 For an account of Ceylon as it is figured in the Mappe-mondes of the Middle Ages, see the Essai of the VICOMTE de Santarem, Sur la Cosmographie et Cartographie, tom. iii. p. 335, &c. 4 MARCO POLO, e Viagge, &c. p. 2, c. 148. A later authority than Marco Polo, PORCACCHI, in his Isolario, or Description of the most celebrated Islands in the World," which was 66 Such was the uncertainty thrown over the geography of the island by these erroneous and conflicting accounts, that grave doubts came to be entertained of its identity, and from the fourteenth century, when the attention of Europe was re-directed to the nascent science of geography, down to the close of the seventeenth, it remained a question whether Ceylon or Sumatra was the Taprobane of the Greeks. 1 published at Venice in A.D. 1576, laments his inability even at that time to obtain any authentic information as to the boundaries and dimensions of Ceylon; and, relying on the representations of the Moors, who then carried on an active trade around its coasts, he describes it as lying under the equinoctial line, and possessing a circuit of 2100 miles. Ella gira di circuito, secondo il calcole fatto da Mori, che modernamente l'hanno nauigato d'ogn' intorno due mila et cento miglia et corre maestro e sirocco; et per il mezo d'essa passa la linea equinottiale et è el principio del primo clima al terzo paralello.' - L'Isole piu Famose del Monde, descritte da THOMASO PORCACCHI, lib. iii. p. 30. 1 GIBBON states, that "Salmasius and most of the ancients confound the islands of Ceylon and Sumatra." -Decl. and Fall, ch. xl. This is a mistake. Saumaise was one of those who maintained a correct opinion; and, as regards the "ancients," they had very little knowledge of Further India, to which Sumatra belongs; but, so long as Greek and Roman literature maintained their influence, no question was raised as to the identity of Ceylon and Taprobane. Even in the sixth century Cosmas Indicopleustes declares unhesitatingly that the Sielediva of the Indians was the Taprobane of the Greeks. It was only on emerging from the general ignorance of the Middle Ages that the doubt was first promulgated. In the Catalan Map of A.D. 1375, entitled Image du Monde, Ceylon is omitted, and Taprobane is represented by Sumatra (MALTE BRUN, Hist. de Geogr., vol. i. p.318); in that of Fra Mauro, the Venetian monk, A.D. 1458, Seylan is given, but Taprobane is added over Sumatra. A similar error appears in the Mappe-monde, by RUYCH, in the Ptolemy of A.D 1508, and in the writings of the geographers of the sixteenth century, GEMMA FRISIUS, SEBASTIAN MUNSter, RAMUSIO, JUL. SCALIGER, Ortelius, and MERCATOR. The same view was adopted by the Venetian NICOLA DA CONTI, in the first half of the fifteenth century, by the Florentine ANDREA CORSALI, MAXIMILIANUS TRANSYLVANUS, VARTHEMA, and PIGAFETTA. The chief cause of this perplexity was, no doubt, the difficulty of reconciling the actual position and size of Ceylon with the dimensions and position assigned to it by Strabo and Ptolemy, the latter of whom, by an error which is elsewhere explained, extended the boundary of the island far to the east of its actual site. But there was a large body of men who rejected the claim of Sumatra, and DE BARROS, SALMASIUS, BOCHART CLUVERIUS, CELLARIUS, ISAAC VOSSIUS and others, maintained the title of Ceylon. A Mappe-monde of A.D. 1417, preserved in the Pitti Palace at Florence, compromises the dispute by designating Sumatra Tuprobane Major. The controversy came to an end at the beginning of the eighteenth century, when the overpowering authority of DELISLE resolved the doubt, and confirmed the modern Ceylon as the Taprobane of antiquity. WILFORD, in the Asiatic Researches (vol. x. p. 140), still clung |