Intercourse between India and the Western World from the Earliest Times to the Fall of Rome c12.s1: Appendix I. Ceylon in the Classics
Intercourse between India and the Western World from the Earliest Times to the Fall of Rome c12.s1
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Appendix I. Ceylon in the Classics
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Besides the account given of Ceylon by Kosmas Indikopleustes, there are several notices of that island in the classics. Onesikritus, the pilot of Alexander, starts the legend that it was 5000 stadia long,—625 miles. Its actual length is 271½ miles. Strabo, Ptolemy, Pliny, and the writer of the *Periplus* repeat this, and often further exaggerate it. Pliny’s account is the fullest. It was seven days sail, he says, from the country of the Prasii (*i.e.* the Bengal ports), but the coast is treacherous and unsafe in the south-west monsoon. The sailors take birds to guide them to shore when out of sight of land. This, we have seen, is an old Buddhist custom. Pliny then goes on to tell the story of the freedman of Annius Plocamus who was wrecked on the coast, and captivated the Sinhalese king by shewing him Roman coins. The monarch then sent an embassy, headed by one Rachia (*Rājā*) to Claudius. This Rachia said that his father had often gone to trade with the Seres, beyond the Himalayas, where the “silent barter” of malobathrum and other goods went on, as described by the author of the *Periplus*. But as Pliny says that the Seres had “yellow hair and blue eyes,” it has been thought that he means the Cheras, a fair race living in the Mysore district². Pliny says the capital of Ceylon is Palaesimundus (perhaps *Palaisimanta*)³ a large city which may be Anurādhapura. He speaks of a great lake called Megisba, which may be one of the huge tanks, like Tissa Wēwa, of the Sinhalese monarchs. But he supposes it to be 375 miles round! The rest of Pliny’s account of Ceylon is a queer mixture of fact and fancy. The Sinhalese are depicted as an ideal race, living gentle, peaceful lives. The king is elected, and assisted by a council of thirty. The condemned criminal has a right of appeal to the people. All this panegyric, though quite untrue, may have been suggested by the gentle and peaceful nature of the Sinhalese, which, together with the influence of Buddhism, made Ceylon an unusually happy island. (See Emerson Tennant’s *Ceylon* London, 1859, vol. 1.)
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² Kennedy, J.R.A.S. 1904, p. 360 ff.
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³ Also in Ptolemy.