Cunningham's Ancient Geography of India c4.s2: 2. Sources of the Geography of Ancient India.

Cunningham's Ancient Geography of India c4.s2

Language: English

2. Sources of the Geography of Ancient India.

1.—Foreign.

1. Classical.

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Though a few references to India may be gathered from the Phœnician and Persian sources, they are not of any importance. Hence of the foreign accounts we have first to turn to that of the GREEKS. Their earliest notion of the earth was that it was a flat and round disc encircled by the mighty river—Ocean. Homer and his contemporaries knew very little beyond Greece, the Archipelago, Asia Minor, Egypt, Sicily and a part of Italy. But the colonizing spirit expanded their knowledge; and the first introduction of maps, at least in Greece, (for the Egyptians and Babylonians are said to have drawn maps long before—J. Keane, p. 5) and the discovery of an instrument to fix the latitude by Anaximander, a disciple of Thales, helped this expansion.

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∗ Fleet in J.A., 1901, p. 24 ff.; The Evolution of Geography by J. Keane, London, 1899; The Dawn of Modern Geography by C. R. Beazly. London, 1897; etc.

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HECATOEUS (500 B.C.), the first Greek geographer, knew of two continents only—Europe and Asia (a part of which was Africa). His "Survey of the World" is lost.

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HERODOTUS (484-431 B.C.), the Father of History, was a traveller. He rejected the flat theory of the earth, but gave none of his own. He knew something of the countries from Scythia to Abyssinia and from India to the Pillars of Hercules. But "his knowledge of India was meagre and most vague. He knew that it was one of the remotest provinces of the Persian Empire towards the East; but of its extent and exact position he had no proper conception." (M'Crindle's *Ancient India*, p. 1). Hence though his work can be utilised as a source of history for informing us of Skylax's Voyage, etc., it contributes little towards the geography of India.

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The *Indika* of KTESIAS (398 B.C.), the royal physician of Persia, is full of old wives' tales not to be trusted.

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ALEXANDER THE GREAT'S march through the Punjab and Sindh brought, for the first time, the direct Greek knowledge of India to the banks of the Sutlej. The great invader caused the whole of India to be described by men well acquainted with it (M'Crindle's *Invasion*, p. 6. f. n.). Some of the eminent men of science and letters who had accompanied him wrote invaluable memoirs which are now totally lost, but they furnished materials to subsequent writers—1. DIODORUS (100 B.C.—A.D. 100) who mixed history with fiction. 2. PLUTARCH, 3. STRABO, (60 B.C.—A.D. 19). 4. CURTIUS, (A.D. 100), who was 'deficient in the knowledge of Geography, Chronology and Astronomy' (M'Crindle's *Invasion*, p. 11), 5. ARRIAN (A.D. 200)—the best of Alexander's historians, and 6.

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JUSTINUS (not later than A.D. 500). As none of these abstractors had even a very slight personal knowledge of India, their works, though based on accounts written by persons who actually visited India, are not so much invaluable for geography as for history. A little vagueness due to want of personal knowledge and a few mutual contradictions diminish not a little of their usefulness as a source of the geography of the North-Western and Western districts of India. Hence it is that "few of the places mentioned in them have been identified with any real approach to certainty" (Fleet in *I.A.*, 1901, p. 24) and a greater number of identifications can only be made from Indian sources and not from them.

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MEGASTHENES (305 B.C.). His long stay in the very heart of India might probably have given his work great authority in topographical matters also; but, unluckily for us, it exists only in fragments preserved as quotations. In the existing fragments we can only find out his idea of the shape of India, names of some mountains and an important but doubtful catalogue of Indian races and tribes.

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About 240 B.C. ERATOSTHENES, who was placed in charge of the great library established by the Ptolemies at Alexandria, brought Mathematics to his aid and laid the first foundation of a really scientific geography. Accepting the theory which is said to have originated from Thales (600 B.C.) but the credit of which ought to go to Pythagoras, he took the *earth* to be *spherical* and as lying in the centre of the universe. Though he had various errors, Sir E. Bunbury has justly pointed out that his geography is not only much nearer to the truth than that adopted by Ptolemy three centuries later, but it is actually a better approximation than was arrived at by modern geographers till about two centuries ago. (*Hist. of Ancient Geography*, Vol. I, p. 635). He described India on the authority of Alexander's historians, Megasthenes, and the Register of Stathmi or Marches.

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After the lapse of about two centuries flourished STRABO (60 B.C.—A.D. 19) whose object in writing a new geography was 'to correct the earlier works in light of the increase of knowledge' due to the foundation of the mighty Roman Empire. He "did not carry us much further than Eratosthenes. Indeed in some respects he is even inferior to his predecessor." He distorted the shape of various countries. But he conceived rightly, noticed the difficulty of correctly representing a curved surface on a plane and perceived that a projection must be to some extent erroneous. As for his account of India, he himself has admitted that it cannot be absolutely true. As an apology he has pointed out the difficulty of getting correct information about India owing to its great distance and to the fact that only a few have ever visited it, that those few have visited only a part of it, and that those again are ignorant men unqualified to write an account of the places they have visited. (Strabo in M'Crindle's *Ancient India*, pp. 17 and 9.)

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PLINY, the Naturalist, (A.D. 23-79) dealt with everything under the sun in his long array of books. Having no new theory of his own and having read (as he himself has said) more than 2,000 books, he became an industrious collector from every source. But "his love of the marvellous disposed him to accept far too readily even the most absurd fiction. He is also liable to the charge of occasional carelessness in his citation." (M'Crindle's *Ancient India*, p. 102). His notices of Asia are fuller and indicate an increasing trade between Europe and the East. And the discovery, made at this time by Hippalus (a navigator who made a study of the winds of the Indian Ocean), of the periodic nature of the monsoons enabling the European navigators to take a direct route to India and not a coasting course, became a valuable aid to the commercial relations with India. The hearsay tales of these rough sailors were mixed by Pliny with the accounts of Alexander's companions and of Megasthenes in his geography of India. (VI Book of his *Natural History*).

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The increase of trade with India created the demand of a guide-book which was produced in the form of the "PERIPLUS OF THE ERYTHRÆAN SEA" by an anonymous writer (first century A.D.). Erythræan sea was the whole expanse of the ocean reaching from the coast of Africa to the utmost boundary of ancient knowledge of the East. It was so called from the entrance into it by the straits of the Red Sea—the "Erythra" of the Greeks. This Periplus contains the best account of the commerce carried on from the Red Sea and the coast of Africa to the East Indies during the time that Egypt was a Roman province. It mentions river-mouths, ports etc., with distances from one another, exports, imports, and such other details as a merchant would most value. The author of the Periplus evidently sailed in person round the coast of India. But owing to the occasional shifting of sea-side emporia, we cannot now expect to find every place on the coast mentioned by him. As to inland details, he was not correct. Thus he placed Paithan at a distance of twenty days' journey to the south of Barygaza while it is 200 miles to the south-east of it. Thus we cannot trust it as a geographical source for inland knowledge, though we can take its mention of commercial products to be true.

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The greatest figure of this period is PTOLEMY, whose name marks the highest pitch of perfection in early geography. Klaudios Ptolemaios who flourished in Alexandria (circa A.D. 150) was a musician, mathematician, astronomer and geographer. His work on geography is a sequel to his great "Almagest." It is not a descriptive geography like that of Strabo, but is exclusively a mathematical or cosmical one. His object was to correct and reform the map of the world. So he explained the geometrical principles of geography and pointed out that the only scientific basis on which a map could be constructed must be made on astronomical observations. Hence in describing places he gives their longitudes (calculated from Ferro in the Canaries) and latitudes (parallel of Rhodes). These scientific features are the causes of his wide celebrity. But his system has many defects :—

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(1) He placed the equator at a considerable distance from its true geographical position and vitiated his Eastern longitudes by about seven degrees.

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(2) He took every degree of latitude and of longitude measured at the equator as equal to 500 stadia instead of 600 stadia (or 60 geographical miles). And thus if he had arrived at the conclusion that two places were 5000 stadia from each other, he would place them at a distance of ten degrees apart and thus, in fact, separate them by an interval of 6000 stadia.

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(3) As only a few astronomical observations were made in his time, he had to rely (and specially so in the case of India of which he had not even the slightest personal observation) upon second-hand information—reports of travellers, navigators and works of previous writers.

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(4) In general shape his countries are narrowed at the north and enormously extended as they approach the south ; so that the eastern parts of Asia are carried a long way beyond their true distance from Europe and Africa.

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(5) As the result of the above defects, the shape of India is utterly distorted in his map. His results would place Paithan in the Bay of Bengal, make Ceylon an enormous island, make the Ganges flow into the sea somewhere near Canton, make the Mahânadî river run over Siam and Cambodia, carry Pâtaliputra to the east of a line from Tonquin to Pekin, etc.

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Thus we see that unless we have a thorough adjustment of Ptolemy's results for India, it is with but little confidence that we can use it, with only our present means of applying information given in it, towards reconstructing the geography and political divisions of Ancient India.

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It is needless to mention the other classical writers [translated by M'Crindle in his *Ancient India*], though they supply some historical information, they do little more than mentioning a few distorted Indian geographical names wihout the specification of any distance or direction. Nor was the old classical culture destined to live long after Ptolemy and the author of PEUTINGER TABLES (A.D. 222.).

2. Early Christian.

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The spread of Christianity ruined the old "pagan" culture. The *Hebrew* theory of flat earth surrounded by the ocean and having massive pillars at the edges on which the heaven rests like a roof banished the Greek spheroidal view. While the old classical structure was undermined, little was done to further any knowledge. The only work of this period in which we have any interest is *The Christian Topography of the Universe* [M'Crindle's translation of the complete work published by the Hakluyt Society, 1897] by the Egyptian monk COSMAS, nicknamed INDICOPLEUSTES (Indian traveller), who travelled from Egypt to India and Ceylon (A.D. 547). Reviling the impious old pagans for their spheroidal view, he depicts the world in his map—the earliest Christian map—as a flat rectangular island surrounded by the sea beyond which are other regions. He had no idea of what geography is and his work contributed little to the historical geography of India. All that we can learn from him is the name of certain western and South Indian places and their trade.

3. Arabic.

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As Arabic enterprise extended their commercial relations far beyond the limits of Ptolemy's world, their knowledge was wider than his and far sounder for many regions in the east and south (Eastern Asia, Africa). In geography, as in astronomy, they had worked on the *old Greek lines*, but on them they had built up their own structures by independent researches on mathematical calculations and reports of travellers. But Arabic geography never got beyond a certain point. It never threw up a truly great writer like Strabo or Ptolemy. What they did was to *preserve the Greek tradition* and to improve it, while Europe was degrading into barbarism owing to ecclesiastical authority. "Men like Massoudy (A. D. 956), Al Beruni or Edrisi (11th century) had a better and more adequate conception than any Christian before A.D. 1300. The construction of maps and globes reached a considerable proficiency in their hand while the Christian ones are almost ridiculous." Besides the above writers, Sulaiman (A. D 851), Abu Zaid (A. D. 916), Ibn Kurdadba (A. D. 912), Al Itakhri (A. D. 951) and Al Kazwini (A. D. 1275) have written about India. But the distortion of Indian names in their works perplexes much. Alberuni's knowledge of Sanskrit enabled him to give a transcript as faithful as the use of the Semitic alphabet allowed him. But his geographical account of India is not a new account; it is mainly a synopsis [chaps. 25, 29] of the Hindu accounts—*Bhuvana-kosa* and *Kûrmavibhâga*. He has only added a few notes on them. His original contribution [chap. 18] is the account of 16 itineraries which seem to have been communicated to him by the military and civil officers of Mahmûd. Here he mentions directions and distances in *farsakh* (=3 miles approx.) [IBN BATUTA in Sindh, *J.R.A.S.*, 1887, p. 401 ff. and a map in 1889; RASHIDUDDIN's geographical notices of India—Col. Yule in *J.R.A.S.*, 1869-70, p. 340 ff.].

4. Chinese.

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Having discovered the use of the magnet as early as the third century A. D., the Chinese could make extensive sea-voyages. They are even alleged to have discovered what is now known as the North America in A. D. 500 (Beazly's *Dawn of Modern Geography*, pp. 489-90; 493). The conversion of this nation into Buddhism which was introduced into their country in A. D. 67 (Takakusu's Itsing, Introduction) caused a series of pilgrims to visit India—the land of Buddha—and write invaluable accounts of it.

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As the Greeks and the early Arabs visited India either in the track of some invader or as merchants, their accounts chiefly inform us of the military glories of nations or of kings little known or altogether unknown in Indian literature which is deficient in the historical sense, or of the trades of places which have long ago been deserted or buried in the silts of rivers and are no longer remembered. Hence though these sources give much information, they do not contribute much to the study of geography. Rather it requires much research to elucidate these foreign accounts.

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But the case is different with the Chinese. These pilgrims, saturated with Indian ideas, visited their holy land and described the sacred monuments of places which have been immortalized in Sanskrit or Pali literature, some of which still retain their celebrity, while the ruins of some others still exist enabling us to understand their Chinese description. This fact explains the importance of the Chinese sources.

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Of the various Chinese accounts, those of SUNG-YUN and HWI SENG (A.D. 600; translated in Beal's *Records of the Western World*, Vol. I; and in *Bull. de l'Ecole Fr. d'Extrême-Orient*, Hanoi, 1903) and of O-KUNG (A.D. 800; translated in the *Journal Asiatique*, 1895) are very short, describing a few places of North-Western India (Kabul Valley, the Punjab and Kashmir).

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ITSING landed at Tâmralipti, the then port on the Bay of Bengal, in A.D. 673 and visited Nâlandâ, Gridhra-kûta, Buddhagayâ, Vaisâlî, Kusînagara, Kapilavâstu, Srâvastî, the Deerpark, Cock Mountain, and left India from Tâmralipti. [Translated by Dr. Takakusu, C. P. S. Oxford, 1896]. His account was not accessible to [Sir] Alexander Cunningham.

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Still more important are the accounts of FA-HIAN (A.D. 399-414) and HWEN THSANG (A.D. 629-45) or YUAN-CHWANG (as Mr. Watters prefers to spell it). FA-HIAN entered India from the North-West, travelled over the whole of the Aryâvarta and left it at the port of Tâmralipti. His record (*Fo-Kue-Ki*) is truthful, clear and straight-forward. Though a devout Buddhist, he was a sensible and not often a hysterical pilgrim-traveller. The earlier part of his work is strictly geographical. But when he reached India, religion had the better of his geography. Still his geographical notices are valuable for their precision, as he generally fixed the position of every place that he visited by its bearing and distance from that which he left

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Yüan Chwang also entered India from the North-West, travelled through the whole of it and left it by the same route. His records—*Si-Yu-Ki*—are fuller than even that of Fa-Hian and it is almost impossible to exaggerate their importance.

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In utilising materials from these sources a student should note that:—

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I. In giving the direction of a place from another Fa-Hian mentions only the four principal cardinal points. [Hence his E. may mean N.E. or S.E.; and so with the other points.] Yüan Chwang also generally does the same; and very seldom does he give the direction as due N.E., etc. But still there are other points of the compass beyond these eight.

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II. In stating the distance of a place from another, Fa-Hian states it in the *yojana* and Yüan Chwang in the *yojana* and the *li* measure. Dividing the known-distance-in-miles by the number of *yojanas* which the distance covers according to these pilgrims, Cunningham asserted that a *yojana* of Yüan Chwang is 6·75 miles while that of Fa-Hian is 6·71 miles.

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Mr. V. Smith takes a *yojana* of Yüan Chwang to be 6·5 miles and one of Fa-Hian to be 7·25 miles.

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M. Julien and probably Dr. Stein take 8 miles as equal to one *yojana* of Yüan Chwang, while in the opinion of Mr. Giles a *yojana* of Fa-Hian varies from 5 to 9 miles.

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Now Yüan Chwang has himself stated (Watters, Vol. I, p. 141-2) that a *yojana* is a day's march for a Royal army; that there are three kinds of *yojanas* of 16 *li* (found in Sacred Writings), of 30 *li* (common reckoning in India) and of 40 *li* (old Chinese account). He has also stated that a *yojana* consisted of eight *krosas* (a *krosa* being originally the distance that the lowing of a cow can be heard). He has also given figures to change a *krosa* into "bows", "cubits", "fingers" and "barley-corns." Making calculations from these materials Fleet tried to prove that there were three kinds of *yojanas*:—1. MAGADHA YOJANA (used by the Buddhists) of 16000 *hastas* or 4·54 miles:

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II. GENERAL YOJANA of 32000 *hastas* or 9·09 miles : III. A THIRD YOJANA (which was according to Yüan Chwang 1⅓ of the general *yojana*) of 12·12 miles. This third *yojana* was, according to Fleet, the original *yojana* (from *yuj*, to yoke)—the yoking distance—the distance along which a pair of bullocks could draw a fully laden cart. This *yojana* was taken by the Chinese pilgrims as equal to 100 “*li*”s. [*J.R.A.S.*, 1906, p. 1011.]

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In making the above calculations Fleet took a *hasta* = ½ yard. But Major Vost has shewn from Medieval and Ancient Chinese and other sources that the *hasta* was formerly taken to be a little larger than is done now. [*J.R.A.S.*, 1903, p 65.] Hence taking his calculations the three *yojanas* will be—I = 5·288 miles or 5·3 miles very nearly ; II = 10·6 miles very nearly ; III = 14·2 miles very nearly.

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Thus 100 “*li*”s or a *yojana* denoted the distance occupied in making a *day’s journey*. The said day’s journey averaged very closely about fourteen miles. But being actually determined in each case by such considerations as the nature of the country traversed and the distance between the villages, *sarais*, *dharmsâlâs* and other convenient halting places, it might easily be anything from twelve to sixteen miles and in exceptional cases might have even a wider range in either direction.

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III. Again, as Fa-Hian gives distances in *yojanas* only and not in fractions of it, his one *yojana* may be any distance more than ½ *yojana* and less than 1½ *yojanas*. Yüan Chwang also uses round numbers, such as 500 “*li*”s, 600 “*li*”s, etc. Hence we may allow a certain margin and take his 500 “*li*”s as any distance above 450 and below 550 “*li*”s. Thus the distances of both the Chinese pilgrims can be taken only as approximations.

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IV. Yüan Chwang’s dimensions of various countries are generally taken to be exaggerations. It became a common practice of Cunningham to take his thousands as hundreds. But as Yüan Chwang has not stated these details in the decimal system of notation, he is not justified to do so. Nor can we condemn his details of this kind in general terms without considering how they can be applied. For as he usually stated these details in thousands of "li"s any one of them may be 50 miles too great or too little. Again re-entering angles may increase a perimeter very considerably, while reducing the area inside it. Conventional ideas as to the size of a country may also have caused some errors in his details. [J. R. A. S., 1907, p. 641 ff.]

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V. As the names of a country and its capital are sometimes identical [and even when not identical Yüan Chwang has not mentioned them both] and as Yüan Chwang has not always precisely stated whether by a certain place-name he means a capital or a country, the distances and directions given by him cannot precisely be traced on the map, though the best way would be to take them as from each capital to the next one

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VI. The peculiarity of Chinese phonetics caused Yüan Chwang to insert vowels between Skr. conjuncts and to use "k" for Skr. k, kh, g, gh; ch for Skr. ch, chh, j, jh; t (cerebral) for the cerebrals th, d, dh, ks, str; t (dental) for the dentals t, th, d, dh; p for p, ph, b, bh; l for r, l; f for b and u. Hence the difficulty in finding out the true Skr. form.

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VII. Again cases of discrepancy between the Records (of the Western World, written by the pilgrim himself) and the Life (of the pilgrim composed by a friend of him) and some apparent mutual contradictions and a few various readings show that the writings of Yüan Chwang have not been correctly transmitted to us.

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We thus see that even the very best of the foreign sources are not fully satisfactory and though the results arrived at from them are of great value, they cannot be taken as anything more than mere approximations.

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The Chinese source also includes various notes on India—in Chinese histories and specially in the Chinese translations of Indian works. M. Sylvain Lévi and his pupils have drawn the attention of Indologists to these notes.

Cites (2)

Ἰνδική — Λούκιος Φλάουιος Ἀρριανός, Ancient Greek
Naturalis historia — C. Plinius Secundus, Latin