550 



MEDIAEVAL HISTORY. 



[Part V. 



by name till the companions of Alexander the Great, 

 retm^ning from his Indian expedition, brought back 

 accounts of what they had been told of its elephants 

 and ivory, its tortoises and marine monsters.^ 



So vague and uncertain was the information thus 

 obtained, that Strabo, writing upwards of two cen- 

 turies later, manifests irresolution in stating that 

 Taprobane was an island ^ ; and Pomponius Mela, who 

 wrote early in the first century of the Christian era, 

 quotes as probable the conjecture of Hipparchus, that 

 it was not in reality an island, but the commencement 

 of a south-eastern continent ^ ; an opinion which Pliny 

 records as an error that had prevailed previous to his 

 own time, but wliich he had been enabled to correct by 

 the information received from the ambassador who had 

 been sent from Ceylon to the Emperor Claudius.* 



In the treatise De Mundo^ which is ascribed to Aris- 

 totle ^, Taprobane is mentioned incidentally as of less 

 size than Britain ; and this is probably the earhest his- 



those assigned to it in China, in 

 Siam, in Hindustan, Kashmir, Persia, 

 and otlier countries of the East. The 

 learned ingenuity of Bochaet ap- 

 plied a Hebrew root to expound the 

 origin of Taprobane {Geocjr. Sac. lib. 

 ii. ch. xxviii.) ; but the later re- 

 searches of TiTRNOim, BtTRNOTTF, and 

 Lassen have traced it with certainty 

 to its Pali and Sanskrit origin. 



^ GossELiN, in his Recherches sur 

 la Geographie des Anciens, torn. iii. 

 p. 291, says that Onesicritus, the 

 pilot of Alexander's fleet, " avoit 

 visite la Taprobane pendant un 

 nouveau voyage qu'il eut ordre de 

 faire." If so, he was the first Euro- 

 pean on record who had seen the 

 island ; but I have searched unsuc- 

 cessfully for any authority to sustain 

 this statement of Gosselin. 



^ Strabo, 1. ii. c. i. s. 14, c. v. s. 14, 



ilvni (j)a<n vrjrjov ; 1. XV. C. i. S. 14. OviD 



was more confident, and smig of — 



" Syene 



Aut ubi Taprobancn Indica cingit aqua." 

 F.pist, ex I'onio, i. 80. 



^ " Taprobanen aut gTandis admo- 

 dum insida aut prima pars orbis al- 

 terius Hipparcho dicitur."- — P. Mela, 

 iii. 7. "Dubitare poterant jmiiores 

 num revera insula esset quam illi pro 

 veterum Taprobane habebant, si nemo 

 eousque repertus esset qui earn cir- 

 cumnavigasset : sic enim de nostra 

 quoque Brittania dubitatum est es- 

 setne insula antequam illani circum- 

 navigasset Agi-icola." — Disscrtatio de 

 jEtate et Auctore PeripU 3Iaris En/- 

 thrcei ; Hudson, Gfograpli'uc J'etcr. 

 Scrip. Grcec. Min., vol. i. p. 97. 



4 Pliny, 1. vi. c. 24. 



^ I have elsewhere disposed of the 

 alleged allusions of Sanclioniathon to 

 an island which was obviously meant 

 for Ceylon. (See Note (A) end of 

 this chapter.) The authenticity of 

 the treatise De 3Iundo, as a pro- 

 duction of Akistotle, is somewhat 

 doubtful (ScHCELL, Litcrat. Grecque, 

 liv. iv. c. xl.) ; and it might add to the 

 suspicion of its being a modern com- 

 position, that Aristotle should do 

 no more than meutiou the name and 



