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 principal 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 Lassen conjectures to be a seaman's corruption of the real name Sihala[3]); and he notices, in passing, 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]
1: PTOLEMY, Geog. lib. vii. c. 4, tab. xii, Asiæ. 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 assumed 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 circumference. Once apprised of this mistake, and reckoning Ptolemy's longitudes and latitudes 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 shipping."—Pp. 47, 53, See also SCHOELL, Hist, de la Lit. Grecque, l. v. c. lxx.
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: limên]. 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.
3: May it not have an Egyptian origin "Siela-Keh," the land of Siela?
4: The description of Taprobane given by Ptolemy proves that the island had been thoroughly circumnavigated 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 principal 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 Anarajapoora, 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 assigned 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 Bassa, occupies nearly the position of the Basses, 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: elephantôn 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 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 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 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.
