Chap. II.] INDIAN, AKABIAN, PEESIAN AUTIIOEITIES. 



583 



two Mahometans\ who travelled in India and China 

 in tlie beginning of the ninth century. The book pro- 

 fesses to give an account of the countries lying between 

 Bassora and Canton ; and in its unpretending style, and 

 useful notices of commerce in those seas, it resembles 

 the record, which the merchant Aerian has left us hi 

 the Periplus, of the same trade as it existed seven 

 centuries previously, in the hands of the Greeks. 

 The early portion of the book, which was written 

 A.D. 851, was taken down from the recital of Soley- 

 man, a merchant who had frequently made the voy- 

 ages he describes, at the epoch when the commerce 

 of Bagdad, under the Khahfs, was at the height of its 

 prosperity. The second part was added sixty years 

 later, by Abou-zeyd Hassan, an amateur geographer, 

 of Bassora (contemporary with Massoudi), from the 

 reports of mariners returning from China, and is, to 

 a great extent, an amphfication of the notices supphed 

 by Soleyman. 



SoLEYMAN describes the sea of Herkend, as it lay 

 between the Laccadives and Makhves'^, on the west, 

 and swept round eastward by Cape Comorin and 

 Adam's Bridge to Ceylon, thus enclosing the precious 

 fishery for pearls. In Serendib, his earliest attention 

 was devoutly directed to the sacred footstep on Adam's 

 Peak ; in his name for which, '''' Al-rolioun" we trace the 

 Buddhist name for the district, Eohuna, so often occur- 

 ring in the Mahawanso.^ Tliis is the earhest notice of 



1 It was first published by Renatt- 

 DOT iu 1718, and from the luiique 

 MS. now in the Bibliotheque ini- 

 periale of Paris, and again by IIeinaitd 

 in 1845, with a valuable discourse 

 prefixed on the nature and extent of 

 the Indian trade prior to the tenth 

 century. — Relation des Voyages faits 

 par Ics Arabes ct les Persatis dans 

 Vlnde et Chine dans le ix^ Sihcle, ^'c. 



2 vols. 18mo. Paris, 1845. 



^ The " Divi" of Ammianus Mar- 

 cellinus, who along with the Singha- 

 lese '' Sclendivi" sent ambassadors 

 to the Emperor Julian, 1. xxii. 

 c. 7. 



^ A portion of the district near 

 Taugalle is known to the present day 

 as '* lloima."—3Iahaivanso, ch, ix. 

 p. 57 ; ch. xxii. p. 130; &c. 



