Indian Science and Technology in the Eighteenth Century: Some Contemporary European Accounts c9.157

c9.157

The characters, too, by which the Brahmins distinguish their first meridian, are not perfectly consistent with one another. Sometimes it is described as bisecting Ceylon; and at other times, as touching it on the west side, or even as being as far west as Cape Comorin. Lanka, which is said to be a point in it, is understood, by Fr Du Champ, to be Ceylon. M. Bailly thinks that it is the lake Lanka, the source of the Gogra, placed by M. Rennel, as well as the middle of Ceylon, in Long. 80°, 42'; but, from a Hindoo map, in the Ayeen Akbery, vol.iii. p.25, Lanka appears to be an island, which marks the intersection of the first meridian of the map, nearly that of Cape Comorin, with the equator; and is probably one of the Maldivy islands. See also a note in the Ayeen Akbery, Ibid. p.36.