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Cunningham's Ancient Geography of India c4.s2.t2: 1. Classical.

Cunningham's Ancient Geography of India c4.s2.t2

Language
English

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.).

Cites (2)