CEYLON AS KNOWN TO THE GREEKS AND ROMANS.
Although mysterious rumours of the wealth and wonders of India had reached the Western nations in the heroic ages, and although travellers at a later period returning from Persia and the East had spread romantic reports of its vastness and magnificence, it is doubtful whether Ceylon had been heard of in Europe[1] even by name till the companions of Alexander the Great, returning from his Indian expedition, brought back accounts of what they had been told of its elephants and ivory, its tortoises and marine monsters.[2]
1: Nothing is more strikingly suggestive of the extended renown of Ceylon and of the different countries which maintained an intercourse with the island, than the number and dissimilarity of the names by which it has been known at various periods throughout Europe and Asia. So remarkable is this peculiarity, that LASSEN has made "the names of Taprobane" the subject of several learned disquisitions (De Taprobane Insula veter. cogn. Dissert. sec. 2, p. 5; Indische Alterthumskunde, vol. i. p. 200, note viii. p. 212, &c.); and BURNOUF has devoted two elaborate essays to their elucidation, Journ. Asiat. 1826, vol. viii. p. 129. Ibid., 1857, vol. xxxiii. p. 1.
In the literature of the Brahmans, Lanka, from having been the scene of the exploits of Rama, is as renowned as Ilion in the great epic of the Greeks. "Taprobane," the name by which the island was first known to the Macedonians, is derivable from the Pali "Tamba panni." The origin of the epithet will be found in the Mahawanso, ch. vii. p. 56. and it is further noticed in the present work, Vol. I. P. 1. ch. i. p. 17, and P. III. ch. ii. p. 330.—It has likewise been referred to the Sanskrit "Tambrapani;" which, according to LASSEN, means "the great pond," or "the pond covered with the red lotus," and was probably associated with the gigantic tanks for which Ceylon is so remarkable. In later times Taprobane was exchanged for Simundu, Palai-simundu, and Salike, under which names it is described by PTOLEMY, the author of the Periplus, and by MARCIANUS of Heraclæa. Palai-simundu, LASSEN conjectures to be derived from the Sanskrit Pali-simanta, "the head of the sacred law," from Ceylon having become the great centre of the Buddhist faith (De Taprob., p. 16; Indische Alter. vol. i. p. 200); and Salike he regards merely as a seaman's corruption of "Sinhala or Sihala," the name chosen by the Singhalese themselves, and signifying "the dwelling place of lions." BURNOUF suggests whether it may not be Sri-Lanka, or "Lanka the Blessed."
Sinhala, with the suffix of "diva," or "dwipa" (island), was subsequently converted into "Silan-dwipa" and "Seren-diva," whence the "Serendib" of the Arabian navigators and their romances; and this in later times was contracted into Zeilan by the Portuguese, Ceylan by the Dutch, and Ceylon by the English. VINCENT, in his Commentary on the Periplus of the Erythræan Sea, vol. ii. p. 493, has enumerated a variety of other names borne by the island; and to all these might be further added those assigned to it in China, in Siam, in Hindustan, Kashmir, Persia, and other countries of the East. The learned ingenuity of BOCHART applied a Hebrew root to expound the origin of Taprobane (Geogr. Sac. lib. ii. ch. xxviii.); but the later researches of TURNOUR, BURNOUF, and LASSEN have traced it with certainty to its Pali and Sanskrit origin.
2: GOSSELIN, in his Recherches sur la Géographie des Anciens, tom. iii. p. 291, says that Onesicritus, the pilot of Alexander's fleet, "avoit visité la Taprobane pendant un nouveau voyage qu'il eut ordre de faire." If so, he was the first European on record who had seen the island; but I have searched unsuccessfully for any authority to sustain this statement of GOSSELIN.
So vague and uncertain was the information thus obtained, that STRABO, writing upwards of two centuries later, manifests irresolution in stating that Taprobane was an island[1]; and POMPONIUS MELA, who wrote early in the first century of the Christian era, quotes as probable the conjecture of HIPPARCHUS, that it was not in reality an island, but the commencement of a south-eastern continent[2]; an opinion which PLINY records as an error that had prevailed previous to his own time, but which he had been enabled to correct by the information received from the ambassador who had been sent from Ceylon to the Emperor Claudius.[3]
1: STRABO, l. ii. c.i.s. 14, c.v.s. 14, [Greek: einai phasi nêson]; l. xv. c.i.s. 14. OVID was more confident, and sung of—
" ... Syene
Aut ubi Taprobanen Indica cingit aqua."