Intercourse between India and the Western World from the Earliest Times to the Fall of Rome c12.65

c12.65

The eleventh book of his *Christian Topography* gives an account of his experiences. His narrative resembles in many respects that of the writer referred to above. Like him, Kosmas found Christianity making good headway in Ceylon and South India. In Ceylon was a “Persian,” *i.e.* Nestorian, Church, with a ritual of its own and a presbyter and deacon appointed in Persia. In the pepper country of Male (Malabar) was another, and a third as far north as Kalyan, with a Persian bishop. Christianity was spreading rapidly in Persia, Baktria, and Turkestan, and even in Sokotra, as Kosmas learnt from travellers, was a bishopric with a large following. In the northern part of India the White Huns already ruled, but the trade ports still prospered¹. Of these Kosmas especially notices Sindu (the Indus² mouth), Orathra (Surāṣṭra), Kalyān, Sibor (Simylla or Chaul), Male (Malabar), Mangaroutha (Mangalore), and the Pepper-country. Next, he says, comes Ceylon, and then China. China did a flourishing trade with India in silk, aloes, cloves and sandalwood, and beyond it, says Kosmas, lies a vast expanse of sea. It is interesting to notice how the knowledge of China had increased since the days of Ptolemy. A century after this, we find Hiuen Tsiang sailing back to China *viâ* Sumatra by a regular route. Ceylon had in the days of Kosmas attained great prosperity. As at the present moment, it was the great *entrepôt* of trade from China, India and the West. "Its position is central," says Kosmas, "and it is a great resort of ships from India, Persia and Ethiopia, and despatches many of its own." Its native name, he continues, is Sieladiba (*Siṃhala dvīpa*, the island of the Sinhalese or Lion people, whence the modern Ceylon), but the Indians call it Tapropane (*Tāmraparṇī*). It had two kings,—probably the Sinhalese king of Anurādhapura, and the Tamil ruler of the north,—and these two monarchs were frequently at war with one another. The Sinhalese monarch possessed a gigantic sapphire¹, "as large as a pine-cone, fire-coloured, and flashing far and wide in the sunshine, a matchless sight." It was placed in a temple which stood on an eminence. This famous jewel was no fiction upon the part of Kosmas. Hiuen Tsiang, a century later, writes of it: "Every night, when the sky is clear, and without clouds, can be seen at a great distance the glittering rays of the gem placed on the top of the *stūpa* of Buddha’s tooth; its appearance is like that of a shining star in the midst of space²." Marco Polo had heard of it, but calls it a ruby.