Chap. I.] 



THE GREEKS. 



553 



from tlie latter circumstance and tlie communication 

 subsequently maintained between the insular colony 

 and the mother country, that Megasthenes, who never 

 visited any part of India south of the Ganges, and who 

 was, probably, the first European Avho ever beheld 

 that renowned river ^, was nevertheless enabled to 

 collect many particulars relative to the interior of 

 Ceylon. He described it as being divided by a river 

 (the MahaweUi-ganga '?) into two sections, one infested 

 by wild beasts and elephants, the other producing gold 

 and gems, and inhabited by a people whom he called 

 Palseogoni ^, a hellenized form of Pali-Putra, " the sons 

 of the Pah," the first Prasian colonists. 



Such was the scanty knowledge regarding India 

 communicated to Europe by those Avho had followed 

 the footsteps of conquest into that remote region ; and 

 although eighteen centuries elapsed from the death of 

 Alexander the Great before another European power 

 soug-ht to establish its dominion in the East, a new 

 passion had been early implanted, the cultivation of 

 which was in the highest degree favourable to the ac- 

 quisition and diffusion of geographical knowledge. In 

 an age before the bh-th of history^, the adventurous 

 Phoenicians, issuing from the Eed Sea, in their ships, 



^ Robertson's Ancient India, sec. 

 ii. 



2 Schwakbeck's Megasthenes, 



Fraijm. xviii. ; SoLOUS Polthistor, 

 liii. '3 ; Flint, Ivi. ch. 24. ^Elian, 

 in compiling his Natura Animali- 

 um, has introduced the story told 

 by JNLegasthenes, and quoted by 

 Strabo, of cetaceous animals in the 

 seas of Ceylon with heads resembling 

 oxen and lions ; and this justifies the 

 conjecture that other portions of the 

 same work referring to the island may 

 have been simidtaneously borrowed 

 from the same soiu'ce. Schavan- 

 BECK, apparently on this gTound, has 

 included among the Fraymenta in- 

 certa those passages from yElian, 

 lib. xvi. ch, 17, 18; in which he says, 



VOL. I. 



and truly, that in Taprobane there 

 were no cities, but from five to seven 

 himdred villages built of wood, 

 thatched with reeds, and occasionally 

 covered with the shells of large tor- 

 toises. The sea coast then as now 

 was densely covered with palm-trees 

 (evidently coco-nut and I'almyra), 

 and the forests contained elephants 

 so superior to those of India that 

 they were shipped in large vessels 

 and sold to the King of Calinga 

 (Northern Circars). The island, he 

 says, is so large that " those in the 

 maritime districts never himted in 

 the interior, and those in the in- 

 terior had never seen the sea." 



^ A compendious accoimt of the 

 early trade between India and the 







