Chap. I.] 



HIPPALUS. 



555 



fluence, and departing from the coast of Arabia, lie 

 stretched fearlessly across the unknown deep, and was 

 carried by the winds to Muziris, a port on the coast of 

 Malabar, the modern Mangalore. 



An exploit so adventurous and so triumj^hant, ren- 

 dered Hippalus the Columbus of his age, and his 

 countrymen, to perpetuate his renown, called the winds 

 which he had mastered by his name.^ His discovery 

 gave a new chrection to navigation, it altered the di- 

 mensions and build of the ships frequenting those seas '^, 

 and imparted so great an impulse to trade, that witliin 

 a very brief period it became a subject of apprehension 

 at Eome, lest the empire should be drained of its specie 

 to maintain the commerce with India. Silver to the 

 value of nearly a milhon and a half sterhng, being 

 annually required to pay for the spices, gems, pearls, and 

 silks, imported through Egypt.^ An extensive acquain- 

 tance was now acquired w^itli the sea-coast of India, and 

 the great work of Phny, compiled less than fifty years 

 after the discovery of Hippalus, serves to attest the ad- 

 ditional knowledge regarding Ceylon which had been 

 collected during the interval. 



Phny, writing in the first century, puts aside the 

 fabulous tales previously circulated concerning the 

 island^; he gives due credit to the truer accounts of 

 Onesicritus and Megasthenes, and refers to the later 



1 Periplus, ^-c, Hudson, p. 32 ; 

 Plixt, lib. \\. ch. 26. A learned 

 disquisition on the discovery of the 

 monsoons will be foimd in Vin- 

 cent'^ Commerce of the Ancients, 

 vol. i. pp. 47, 253 ; vol. ii. pp. 49, 

 467 ; Robertson's India, sec. ii. 



2 Pliny, lib. vi. ch. 24. 



3 Pliny, lib. \i. ch. 26. The 

 nature of this rich trade is fully 

 described by the author of the Peri- 

 2)Ius of the Erythrean Sea, who was 

 himself a merchant engaged in it. 



''■ I have not thought it necessary 

 to adA'ert to the romance of Jambttlus, 

 the scene of which has been conjec- 



tured, but without any justifiable 

 gTOuuds, to be laid in Ceylon ; and 

 which is strangely incoi-porated with 

 the authentic work of DiODOKirs 

 SicuLTJS, written in the age of Au- 

 gustus. DiODORUS professes to give 

 it as an account of the recent dis- 

 covm~y of an island to which it refers ; 

 a fact sufficiently demonstrative of 

 its inapplicability to Ceylon, the ex- 

 istence of which had been known to 

 the Greeks three himdred years be- 

 fore. It is the stoiy of a merchant 

 made captive by pirates and carried 

 to ^Ethiopia, where, in compliance 

 with a solemn rite^ he and a Qom- 



o o 2 



