The Ancient Geography of India. I. The Buddhist Period, including the Campaigns of Alexander, and the Travels of Hwen-Thsang c9.5

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.