The Cambridge History of India, Vol. I: Ancient India v1.c26.237

v1.c26.237

In the book of Onesicritus occurred the first mention by a European writer of Ceylon. He heard of it under a name which the Greek represents as Taprobane. It lay, of course, far outside the horizon of the Greeks, but Onesicritus must have met people on the Indus who knew of the southern island by the report of merchants, or had perhaps fared thither themselves along the coast of Malabar, and spoke of Tāmraparṇī and of its elephants, bigger and more terrible in war than those which the Greeks had seen in India⁴. Taprobane was seven days’ journey, according to the sources followed by Eratosthenes, from the southernmost part of India (the Cōliaci = Cape Kōri)⁵. The strait separating Ceylon from India is only forty miles across, but it may have been true in practice that from the port whence the merchants put out to go to Ceylon and the port where they landed was a voyage of seven days. Onesicritus⁶ put it at 20 days; we cannot say now what fact underlay the misapprehension. When he said that the ‘size’ of Taprobane was 5000 *stadia* the ambiguity of the statement already provoked complaint in antiquity.