55'2 



MEDIAEVAL HISTORY. 



[PART V. 



authority Aristotle (if he be the author of the treatise 

 " De Mundo ") 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. OXESICRITUS, as he is quoted by Strabo and 

 Pliny, propagated exaggerated statements as to the dimen- 

 sions of the island 1 , and the number of herbivorous ceta- 

 cea 2 found in its seas ; the elephants he described as far 

 surpassing those of continental India both in courage 

 and in size. 3 



MEGASTHEXES, twenty years after the death of Alex- 

 ander the Great, was accredited as an ambassador from 

 Seleucus Mcator to the court of Sandracottus, or 

 Chandra-Gupta, the King of the Prasii 4 , from whose 

 country Ceylon had been colonised two centuries before 

 by the expedition under Wijayo. 5 It was, perhaps, 



in the same passage lias Kardu in 

 place of Ararat. See WALTON'S 

 Pohjqlot, vol. i. p. 31 ; BASTOW, Jiibl. 

 Diet. 1847, vol. i. p. 71. 



According to the Mahawanso, the 

 epithet of Sihale-dwipa, the island of 

 lions, was conferred upon Ceylon by 

 the followers of "VVijayo, B.C. 543 

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

 this was formed, by the Arabian sea- 

 men, the names Silan-dip and Seran- 

 dib. The occurrence of the latter 

 word, therefore, in the "Samaritan 

 Pentateuch," if its antiquity be refer- 

 able to the reign of Rehoboam, would 

 be inexplicable ; whereas no anachron- 

 ism is involved by its appearance in 

 the " Samaritan version," which was 

 not written till many centuries after 

 the "Wijayan conquest. 



There is another manuscript, written 

 on bombycine, in the Bodleian Libra- 

 ry, No. 345, described as an Aa-abic 

 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 Abu 

 Hassan, "in eo continetur versio 

 Arabica Pentateuchi quae ex textu 

 Hebrseico-Samaritano non ex versions 

 ilia qiue dialecto quadam peculiari 

 Samaritanis quondam vernacula Scrip- 

 ta est."Cat. Orient. MSS. vol. i. p. 2. 

 In this manuscript, also, the word 

 Sarendip, instead of Ararat, occurs in 

 the passage in Genesis descriptive of 

 the resting of the ark. 



1 These early errors as to the size 

 and position of Ceylon will be found 

 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 rise to the fabled 

 mermaid. See ./ELIAI?, lib. xvi. ch. 

 xviii., who says it has the face of a 

 woman and spines that resemble hair. 



4 PLTKY, lib. vi. ch. 24. See ILtp 

 of India, p. 330, where it is put down 

 Prachi. 



5 See Vol. I. P. m. ch. iii. p. 336. 



