2: It has been conjectured, and not without reason, that it may possibly have been from Ceylon and certainly from Southern India that the fleets of Solomon were returning when "once in every three years came the ships of Tarshish, bringing gold and silver, ivory, apes, and peacocks."—I Kings, x. 22, II Chron., xx. 21. An exposition of the reasons for believing that the site of Tarshish may be recognised in the modern Point de Galle will be found in a subsequent chapter descriptive of that ancient emporium. See also [Note A] at the end of this chapter.
Egypt, under the Ptolemies, became the seat of that opulent trade which it had been the aim of Alexander the Great to divert to it from Syria. Berenice was built on the Red Sea, as an emporium for the ships engaged in Indian voyages, and Alexandria excelled Tyre in the magnitude and success of her mercantile operations.
The conquest of Egypt by Augustus, so far from checking, served to communicate a fresh impulse to the intercourse with India, whence all that was costly and rare was collected in wanton profusion, to minister to the luxury of Rome. A bold discovery of the same period imparted an entirely new character to the navigation of the Indian Ocean. The previous impediment to trade had been the necessity of carrying it on in small vessels, that crept cautiously along the windings of the shore, the crews being too ignorant and too timid to face the dangers of the open sea. But the courage of an individual at length solved the difficulty, and dissipated the alarm. Hippalus, a seaman in the reign of Claudius, observing the steady prevalence of the monsoons[1], which blew over the Indian Ocean alternately from east to west, dared to trust himself to their influence, and departing from the coast of Arabia, he stretched fearlessly across the unknown deep, and was carried by the winds to Muziris, a port on the coast of Malabar, the modern Mangalore.
1: Arabic "maussam." I believe the root belongs to a dialect of India, and signifies "seasons." VINCENT fixes the discovery of the monsoons by Hippalus about the year A.D. 47, although it admits of no doubt that the periodical prevalence of the winds must have been known long before, if not partially taken advantage of by the seamen of Arabia and India. Periplus, &c., vol. ii, pp. 24—57.
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 ships 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.
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.
2: PLINY, lib. vi. ch. 24.
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 circumstances. A ship 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 embassy to Italy, consisting of a Raja and suite of three persons.[3]
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 Æthiopia, 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 analysis 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 anticipated by RAMUSIO, vol. i. p. 176. LASSEN, in his Indische Alterthumskunde, vol. iii. p. 270, assigns 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 identity 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.