;.52 



MEDIEVAL HISTOEY. 



[Part V. 



authority Aristotle (if he be the autlior of the treatise 

 " De Mimdo ") must have written, survive only in 

 fragments, preserved by the later historians and geo- 

 graphers. 



From their compilations, however, it appears that 

 the information concerning Ceylon collected by the Mace- 

 donian explorers of India, was both meagre and erro- 

 neous. O^fESiCEiTUS, as he is quoted by Strabo and 

 Phny, propagated exaggerated statements as to the dimen- 

 sions of the island ^, and the number of herbivorous ceta- 

 cea ^ found in its seas ; the elephants he described as far 

 surpassing those of continental India both in courage 

 and in size.^ 



Megasthenes, twenty years after the death of Alex- 

 ander the Great, was accredited as an ambassador from 

 Seleucus Nicator to the court of Sandracottus, or 

 Chandra-Gupta, the King of the Prasii, from whose 

 country Ceylon had been colonised two centuries before 

 by the expedition under Wijayo.^ It was, perhaps, 



in the same passage lias Kardu in 

 place of Ararat. See Walton's 

 Polyqlot, vol. i. p. 31 ; Bastow, Bibl. 

 Diet. 1847, Tol. i. p. 71. 



According to the 3Ia1uiwanso, the 

 epithet of Sihale-dwipa, the island of 

 lions, was conferred npon Ceylon by 

 the followers of Wijaj'O, B.C. 543 

 (llahaunnso, ch. vii. p. 51), and from 

 this was fomied, by the Arabian sea- 

 men, the names Silan-dip and Seran- 

 dib. The occnrrence of the latter 

 word, therefore, in the ''Samaritan 

 Pentateuch," if its antiquity be refer- 

 able to the reigTi of Rehoboam, would 

 be inexplicable ; whereas no anachron- 

 ism is involved by its appearance in 

 the " Samaritan vei'sion,^^ which was 

 not ■s^Titten till many centimes after 

 the Wijayan conquest. 



There is another manuscript, wi'itten 

 on bombycine, in the Bodleian Libra- 

 ry, No. 345, described as an Arabic 

 version of the Pentateuch, written 

 between the years 884 and 885 of 



the Hejira, a.d. 1479 and 1480, and 

 ascribed to Aba Said, son of Abul 

 Hassan, " in eo continetur versio 

 Arabica Pentateuchi quae ex textu 

 Hebrteico-Saniaritano non ex verstone 

 ilia qticd dialecto quadam pecidtari 

 Samaritanis qumidam vernacxda So'ip- 

 ta est.'" — Cat. Orient. 3ISS. vol i. p. 2. 

 In this manuscript, also, the word 

 Sarendip, instead of Ai-arat, occurs in 

 the passage in Genesis descriptive of 

 the resting of the ark. 



^ These early errors as to the size 

 and position of Ceylon will be foimd 

 explained elsewhere. See Vol. I. P. i. 

 ch. i. p. 81. 



2 Strabo, xv. p. 691. The animal 

 referred to by the informants of One- 

 sicritus was the dugong, whose form 

 and attitudes gave lise to the fabled 

 mermaid. See ^ltan, lib. xvi. ch. 

 xviii., who says it has the face of a 

 woman and spines that resemble hair. 



3 Pliny, lib. vi. ch. 24. 



•1 See Vol. I. P. m. ch. iii. p. 336. 



