The Ancient Geography of India. I. The Buddhist Period, including the Campaigns of Alexander, and the Travels of Hwen-Thsang c9: Ceylon.

The Ancient Geography of India. I. The Buddhist Period, including the Campaigns of Alexander, and the Travels of Hwen-Thsang c9

Language: English

Ceylon.

c9.1

The famous island of Ceylon is not reckoned amongst the kingdoms of India, and it was not visited by the pilgrim on account of political disturbances. But as he gives a description of it from the account of the monks whom he met at *Kánchipura*, and as it is closely connected with India both religiously and politically, my work would not be complete without some notice of this interesting island.

c9.2

In the seventh century of our era Ceylon was known by the name of *Seng-kia-lo*, or *Sinhala*, which was said to be derived from the lion-descended *Sinhala*, whose son Vijaya is fabled to have conquered the island on the very day of Buddha's death, in B.C. 543. Its original name was *Pao-chu*, or "Isle of Gems," in Sanskrit *Ratna-dwípa*. Its existence was first made known to the European world by the expedition of Alexander, under the name of *Taprobane*. The popular Pâli form is *Támba-paṇṇi*, or "red-handed," in allusion to the "red palms" of the hands of Vijaya's sick companions, who, on landing from their vessel, touched the red ground with their hands. The true form, however, would appear to be *Túmba-panni*,* or "red-leaved," from the Sanskrit *Támra-parni*. Lassen also gives *Tambra-pani*, or the "great pond," or "pond covered with the red lotus," as a probable derivation. In later times it was known to the western world as *Simundu*, or *Palai-Simundu*, which Lassen thinks may have been derived from Pâli-*Simanta*, or "head of the holy law." As Pliny applies the latter name to the city containing the royal palace, it has been supposed to be only another appellation for the capital *Anarajapura*, or *Anuragrammon*, of Ptolemy. No explanation is offered of *Andrasimundu*, which Ptolemy gives as the name of a promontory on the western coast of Ceylon, opposite Anarajapura. From its position it may be only another name for *Palasimundu*.

c9.3

∗ Turnour's 'Mahawanso,' p. 50.

c9.4

Ptolemy calls the island *Salike*, which, as Lassen suggests, would appear to be only a sailor's corrupt form of *Sinhalaka*, or *Sihalaka*, shortened to *Silaka*. Ammianus calls it *Serendivus*, which is the same as the *Sieladiba* of Kosmas, both being derived from *Sihala-dwípa*, which is the Pâli form of *Sinhala-dwípa*, or "Sinhala's island." Abu Rihân gives the form of *Singal-dib*, or *Sirindib*, which is the *Serendib* of European sailors. From the same source came the Arabic *Zilan*, and our own Ceylon. Amongst the Hindus the most familiar name is *Langka-dwípa*, which is also mentioned in the ‘Mahâwanso’ under the Pâli form of *Lanka-dipa*.*

c9.5

According to Hwen Thsang, the circuit of the island was 7000 *li*, or 1167 miles,† which is nearly double the truth,—its actual size, according to Sir Emerson Tennent, being 271½ miles in length from north to south, and 137½ miles from east to west, or about 650 miles in circuit. Its dimensions are so uniformly exaggerated by the classical authors that I cannot help suspecting some misconception as to the value of a local measure. Kosmas, on the authority of Sopater, who had actually visited the island, gives its size as 300 *gaudia*, *γαυδία*, in length, and the same in breadth. This name Sir Emerson Tennent identifies with that of a local measure, named *gaou*,* which he estimates at about 3 miles, thus making the island 900 miles long, and as many broad. But the *gaudia* may just as likely be the well-known *gao-kos* of India. This was the distance at which the lowing of a cow could be heard, that is 1000 *dhanus*, or bows, equal to 6000 feet, or 1·136 of a mile. The 300 *gaudia* would thus be equal to 340 miles, which is only 70 miles in excess of the real length of the island. Pliny makes the length 10,000 stadia, or 1149 English miles. Ptolemy assigns nearly 15 degrees of latitude, or about 1000 miles, which is slightly reduced by Marcianus to 9500 stadia, or 1091½ English miles. Now the earlier Chinese pilgrim, Fa-Hian, who visited Ceylon in A.D. 412, or about one century before Sopater, states the size of the island at 50 *yojanas* in length by 30 in breadth,† or about 350 miles by 210 miles. If, as we may fairly suppose, both travellers derived their dimensions from the statements of the people of the country, the 300 *gaudia* of Sopater may be taken as the equivalent of 50 *yojanas*, which gives 6 *gaudia* to the *yojana*, and makes the native measure rather more than one English mile, or exactly equal to the *gao-kos* of India.

c9.6

∗ Turnour's ‘Mahawanso,’ pp. 2, 3, 49.

c9.7

† Julien's ‘Hiouen Thsang,’ iii. 125. See Map No. I.

c9.8

∗ ‘Ceylon,’ i. 567. He identifies the *γαυδία* with the *gaou* now in use, which is “the distance that a man can walk in an hour.” But how about the word *hour*, which has a strong European smack about it? Was not the original *gaou* the distance that a man could walk in 1 *ghari*, or 24 minutes, the well-known Indian division of time? If so, the length of the *gaou*, at 3 miles to the hour, would be 1·2 miles, which agrees very closely with the actual length of the *gao-kos*, as noted above. The *gaou* is valued by Wilson at 4 *kos* ; *vide* his *Glossary* in *voce*.

c9.9

† Beal’s ‘Fah-Hian,’ c. xxxvii. p. 148. But he makes the length from east to west, instead of from north to south.

c9.10

In his interesting and valuable work on Ceylon, Sir Emerson Tennent has suggested that the port of Galle may be the *Tarshish** of the Bible, “which lay in the track between the Arabian Gulf and *Ophir*,” and that *Ophir* itself is Malacca, or the Aurea Chersonesus, because “*Ophir*, in the language of the Malays, is the generic name for any gold mine.” But this view seems to me to be quite untenable, as the names of all the articles brought back by Solomon’s fleet are pure Sanskrit. Sir Emerson states that they are “identical with the Tâmil names by which some of them are called in Ceylon to the present day.” These names are *sen-habim*, or “teeth of elephants,” *kophim*, or “apes,” and *tuküm*, or “parrots.” But these are the pure Sanskrit words *ibha*, *kapi*, and *ṣuka*, with the mere addition of the Hebrew plural termination. It is true that these Sanskrit names have been naturalized in the south of India, but they have not displaced the original Tâmil appellations, which still remain the terms in common use, namely, *yâné* for elephant, *kuranga* for monkey, and *mayil* for peacock, or *kilip-pillai* for parrot. Now, if the fleet of Solomon obtained these Sanskrit names in Ceylon, then we must admit that the Aryan race had pushed their conquests to the extreme south of India some centuries before the time of Solomon, that is about 1200 or 1500 B.C. But at this very time, as we learn from their own records, the Aryas had not yet crossed the Narbada, nor even penetrated to the mouth of the Ganges. It does not therefore seem possible that any of their names could have been obtained either in Ceylon or in the south of India so early as the time of Solomon. Even according to their own annals,* the Ceylonese were barbarians until the landing of Vijaya, in B.C. 543; and there is no satisfactory evidence of any Aryan connection or intercourse before the time of Mahendra, the son of Asoka, in B.C. 242.

c9.11

The writer of the article *Ophir* in Smith’s ‘Dictionary of the Bible’ argues in favour of Arabia, by assuming that “ivory, apes, and peacocks” were not imported from Ophir, but from Tarshish, and that gold and *algum* trees only were imported from Ophir. By this assumption he gets rid of the Indian names for the elephant, monkey, and parrot; but there still remains the name of *algum* wood, which Professor Lassen derives from the Sanskrit *valgu*, or sandal-wood. He admits that Arabia does not now produce gold, but thinks that it may once have done so, or if not, that it at least possessed gold by importation, as the Queen of Sheba presented much gold to Solomon.

c9.12

This subject has already been discussed in my account of Vaḍari, or Eder, in Western India; but I may here again state my opinion that the Ophir of the Bible, which is rendered Σώφειρ and Σουφίρ by Josephus and the Septuagint,† is most probably the *Sauvíra* of Hindu geography, or south-western Râjputana, which amongst the people of the west would have been pronounced *Hobir*, just as *Sindhu* became Indus, and as *sapta* became *haft* and ἑπτα. According to Pliny the country to the north of the Gulf of Khambay formerly produced both gold and silver, which it does even at the present day. Specimens of gold from the Aravali mountains may be seen in the India Museum, and the same range is the only part of India in which silver is found in any quantity. Western India also was colonized by the Aryan race at least two thousand years before Christ, and the Aryan language had become the common speech of the country long before the time of Solomon. I would therefore identify the *Ophir* or *Sophir* of Scripture with the Indian *Sauvíra* of the Hindus, where the captains of Solomon's fleet could have obtained the fine pure gold for which Ophir was famed, and where they would have obtained ivory, apes, and peacocks (or parrots) called by the very names which they have preserved to us in the Bible.