681 



ASIA. 



ASIA. 



662 



Sea by Hippalus (Hudson's 'Minor Geogr.,' vol. i. ; 'Periplus of the 

 Erythrean Sea') : this passage has been sometimes interpreted as if 

 the discovery of the monsoons was made about the time this ' Periplus' 

 was wrrtten, but there can be no doubt that navigators had availed 

 themselves of the periodical winds long before. 



The knowledge which the ancients acquired concerning the geo- 

 graphy of Asia is embodied in the systematic works of Strabo, of Pliny, 

 and of Ptolemseus of Alexandreia, the last of whom raised geography to 

 a science by basing it on astronomical principles. From these writers 

 it is evident that only those countries into which the Macedonian 

 conqueror had carried his arms were known with some degree of 

 correctness as to their general features, and that beyond them their 

 knowledge was limited to a few places traversed by commercial roads, 

 and to the harbours. Ptolemseus was acquainted with the road leading 

 over the high table-land in the centre of Asia to the Seres, as well as 

 that through Bactria to India. He also had some knowledge of the 

 north-western extremity of the Himalaya range (called by him Imaos 

 or Himaos) and of Cashmere. He was well acquainted with the coasts 

 of Arabia and Persia, and with those of India as far as Cape Comorin. 

 Tin; land of Ceylon, which at that time was the common resort of 

 the etutern and western navigators of the Indian Sea, was also pretty 

 well known to him, though the dimensions assigned to it are very 

 erroneous. In its neighbourhood he states there were found 1378 

 islets, by which probably the Laccadives and Maldives are meant ; 

 and he names Jabadia (Yavadwipa), that is ' Barley Island,' as Java 

 is called in Sanscrit on account of ite fertility. He is however less 

 acquainted with the coast of Coromandel, and still less with the coun- 

 tries to the east of the Bay of Bengal, where the Aurea Chersonesus 

 evidently represents the peninsula of Malacca, on which the port of 

 Zaba was situated, probably in the neighbourhood of Singapore. Then 

 follows the Sinus Magnus or the Gulf of Siam, after traversing which 

 by a voyage of 20 days, the emporium of Cattigara is arrived at, the 

 harbour of the Sinae, or Chinese, a place which must be sought for in 

 the neighbourhood of Canton ; and farther to the east with the Thinae 

 Metropolis (probably Canton) he arrives at the extreme boundary of 

 his geographical knowledge on the east side of Asia. 



Besides these works, the ' Periplus' of Nearchus, and another pro- 

 bably written in the second century, and attributed to Arrian, give a 

 more particular description of the coast of eastern Africa and of Asia. 

 Another ' Periplus ' likewise, which certainly is the work of Arrian, 

 contains a brief coast description of the Pontus Euxinus (Black Sea). 

 AJS to the geography of northern Asia, few additions seem to have been 

 made after the time of Herodotus and Alexander. In some respects 

 there seems to have been a retrograde movement, as the father of 

 history knew the Caspian to be a lake, which Strabo believed to 

 communicate with the northern ocean. Ptolemseus in his map restored 

 the Caspian to its true character of an inland sea, but he placed its 

 length from east to west instead of from north to south, as Herodotus 

 had done. 



II. Ana at known in the Middle Ayes. Though the Byzantine empire 

 did not fall before the invasions of the northern barbarians, it was 

 hemmed in on every side by powerful enemies. On its eastern 

 boundaries the kingdom of the Parthians was replaced by that of the 

 Persians under the dynasty of the Sassanida:, who, acting with all the 

 vigour of newly-founded governments, stopped the progress of the 

 Roman arms on that side. Consequently the accession of geographical 

 knowledge concerning Upper Asia was extremely scanty, but some 

 information was obtained of the countries to the north of the laxartes, 

 and of some parts of India. For the first we are indebted to an 

 embassy of the emperor Justinian II., who sent in 569 one of his 

 governors to one of the wandering tribes of the Turks in the steppes 

 on the west and south of the Altai Mountains and about the lake of 

 Saisan or Zaizang, with the view of inducing them to attack their 

 common enemy the Persians, without foreboding that the descendants 

 of this very people, after a lapse of nearly 900 years, would destroy 

 his own empire and choose Constantinople for their metropolis. 

 Nearly about the same time an Egyptian merchant, Cosmas, surnamed 

 Indicopleustes, who for a long time had carried on a trade with India 

 and repeatedly visited that country, composed his ' Topographia 

 Christiana,' in which he gives some new information respecting Ceylon, 

 called by him Selediva, instead of the ancient name of Taprobane, of 

 the commerce of that island with Tsinitza or China, and of the roads 

 through Upper Asia by which the silk manufactures of this country 

 were brought to Persia and Constantinople. 



But the channels of geographical information were soon closed. 

 The fanaticism of the newly-founded religion of Mohammed bore 

 down all resistance, and in a short time Egypt and the Asiatic pro- 

 vinces of the Byzantine empire, except Asia Minor, were subjected to 

 the Arabs and their caliphs ; the kingdom of the Sassanidse also was 

 incorporated in their widely-extended dominions. The intolerance 

 by which the Mohammedans in the first two centuries of the Hegira 

 (commencing A.D. 622) were distinguished, interrupted every sort of 

 commercial intercourse with India as well as with Upper Asia ; and the 

 distracted condition of the Byzantine empire, and the state of barbarism 

 in which the western nations of Europe were sunk during the earlier 

 part of the middle ages, wore such as to deprive them for more than 

 two centuries of any additional knowledge concerning the countries 

 of the East. From the close of the 6th century to the beginning of 



OEOO. DIV. VOL. i. 



the Crusades, no new facts were added to European knowledge of 

 Asia. 



Circumstances however arose which led the Mohammedans of the 

 caliphat to abate their intolerance and to adopt a more enlightened 

 policy. Science began to be cultivated, arts to flourish, and commerce 

 to be promoted among them. Geography had its full share of the 

 advantages resulting from this favourable change. As every true 

 Mohammedan was bound by his religious tenets to visit at least once 

 in his life the Kaaba of Mecca, travelling became more frequent among 

 the Arabians than it ever has been in any other nation ; and as the 

 love of letters increased and became more general, the number of their 

 geographical works, travels, and voyages increased in the same pro- 

 portion. Many of their works are undoubtedly still unknown, others 

 are still inaccessible to European readers, but some have been trans- 

 lated. The most important are the ' Oriental Geography,' translated 

 by W. Ouseley, London, 1800, which was written in the beginning of 

 the 10th century; the 'Travels of Ibn Haukal the Arabian,' written 

 about 50 years later; the ' Geography of Edrisi ' (1153), arranged, like 

 that of Ptolemseus of Alexandreia, according to climates ; the ' Geo- 

 graphy of Abulfeda ' (1345); the ' Geography of Ibn el Wardi ' (1371); 

 and the 'Travels of Ibn Batuta' (1324-1354), translated by Professor Lee 

 of Cambridge, London, 1829. Ibn Batuta was doubtless the greatest 

 traveller that ever lived. He visited Timbuctoo and the Ural Moun- 

 tains, Adam's Peak in Ceylon, the eastern coast of China, and Tanger 

 in Africa (which was his birth-place), and traversed all the countries 

 between these extreme points. 



The Arabs seem also at an early period to have renewed the com- 

 mercial intercourse with India by the Red Sea and the Gulf of Persia, 

 and to have soon extended their navigation beyond the extreme limits 

 attained by the Greeks of Alexandreia. They were prompted to despise 

 the dangers of such a perilous navigation as much by zeal for propa- 

 gating their creed as by the love of gain, and they succeeded in con- 

 verting the inhabitants of the peninsula of Malacca and some of the 

 islands of the Indian Archipelago. There are extant two works on 

 the countries about the seas of China, written as it is thought by Ibn 

 Wahab and Abu Seid about the end of the 9th century. The latter 

 composed only a commentary on the writings of the former. Though 

 it is possible that neither of these voyagers reached Canfu (Canton), 

 they collected very interesting information on the southern provinces 

 of China, its productions and manufactures ; some historical facts 

 which they mention respecting an insurrection in these districts in 

 A.D. 878 are confirmed by the annals of the Chinese empire, a coinci- 

 dence which shows the authenticity of these works. 



But the Arabs did still more for geography by establishing it as a 

 science on mathematical and astronomical principles, and thus follow- 

 ing up the work of Ptolemseus. The Caliph Al Mamun (813-833) 

 ordered a degree of the meridian to be measured, and this task was 

 executed by the three brothers Ben Shaker' in the great plain to the 

 north-east of Damascus, between Palmyra and Racca on the banks of 

 the Euphrates. In subsequent attempts at the projection of maps 

 the Arabs soon became sensible of the want of actual astronomical 

 observation. This led them to the erection of observatories, and to 

 the compilation of astronomical tables. Two works of this kind still 

 exist : one composed about A.D. 1345, in the observatory built at 

 Maraghah, near the lake of Urumiyeh, and the other in 1449 at Samar- 

 cand ; the data contained in them, especially in the latter collection, 

 formed till lately the principal basis on which our maps of the countries 

 to the south of the Caspian Sea, and to the north of the mountains of 

 Cabul and of the Hindu-Koosh range, were constructed. 



Among the nations of Asia none perhaps has done more to increase 

 the stock of geographical knowledge concerning this great division of 

 the globe than the Chinese. The historical records of their empire 

 prove clearly that 200 years before our era the Chinese were anxious 

 to collect geographical information concerning the extensive provinces 

 and tributary kingdoms of their dominions, and they have continued 

 this work to the present day. Neither opportunities nor inducements 

 were wanting for that purpose. An empire of such magnitude as the 

 Chinese always has been, which frequently comprehended half the 

 surface of Asia, renders the exact knowledge of the condition of its 

 provinces and of their inhabitants a matter of necessity to the 

 government. Besides the information thus collected by means of 

 the administration of the different provinces, the emperor was in the 

 habit of sending ambassadors to the tributary princes and nations, 

 and to those who from time to time sent presents to the court of 

 the Celestial Empire. These ambassadors were instructed to gather 

 useful information concerning the countries they were sent to, and to 

 include it in their reports of the embassies : the reports were after- 

 wards deposited in the archives of government. From such materials 

 the geographies of the Chinese empire were composed and published 

 in print, the art of printing having come into general use among the 

 Chinese in the 10th century. These works contain very abundant 

 information concerning Tartary, Corea, Tibet, Turkistan, and Bucharia 

 or Bokhara ; and even valuable notices on Siberia, Persia, and India, 

 as well as on Siam, Tonkin, Java, Formosa, and Japan. The most 

 copious geographical and ethnographical information about the 

 eastern countries of Asia in the middle ages, before the establishment 

 of the Mongol empire, is contained in the historical library of Ma-tu- 

 an-lin, the most learned man of his time, who in his work entitled 



2 o 



