CHAP. I.] 



PTOLEMY. 



561 



The extent and accuracy of Ptolemy's information 

 is so surprising, that it has given rise to surmises as 

 to the sources whence it could possibly have been de- 

 rived. 1 But the conjecture that he was indebted to 

 ancient Phoenician or Tyrian authorities whom he has 

 failed to acknowledge, is sufficiently met by the con- 

 sideration that these were equally accessible to his pre- 

 decessors. The abundance of his materials, especially 

 those relating to the sea-borde of India and Ceylon, is 

 sufficient to show that he was mainly indebted for his 

 facts to the adventurous merchants of Egypt and 

 Arabia, and to works which, like the Periplus of the 

 Erythrcean Sea (erroneously ascribed to AERIAN the 

 historian, but written by a merchant probably of the 

 same name), were drawn up by practical navigators to 

 serve as sailing directions for seamen resorting to the 

 Indian Ocean. 2 



that the position in which he has 

 placed the elephant plains or feeding 

 grounds, iXtQavTwv vopoi, to the 

 south-east of Adam's Peak, is the 

 portion of the island about Matura, 

 where, down to a very recent period, 

 the Portuguese, the Dutch, and the 

 English successively held their an- 

 nual battues, not only for the supply 

 of the government studs, but for ex- 

 port to India. Making due allowance 

 for the false dimensions of the island 

 assumed by Ptolemy, but taking his 

 account of the relative positions of 

 the headlands, rivers, harbours, and 

 cities, the accompanying map affords 

 a proximate idea of his views of 

 Taprobane and its localities as pro- 

 pounded in his Geography. 



Post-scriptum. Since the above 

 was written, and the map it refers to 

 was returned to me from the engraver, 

 I have discovered that a similar 

 attempt to identify the ancient 

 names of Ptolemy with those now at- 

 tached to the supposed localities, was 

 made by Gosselin ; and a chart so 

 constructed will be found (No. xiv.) 

 appended to his Reclierches sur la, 



Geographic des Anriens, t. iii. p. 

 303. I have been gratified to find 

 that in the more important points 

 we agree ; but in many of the minor 

 ones, the want of personal knowledge 

 of the island involved Gosselin in er- 

 rors which the map I have prepared 

 will, I hope, serve to rectify. J.E.T. 



1 HEEREN, Hist. Researches, vol. 

 ii. Appendix xii. 



8 LASSEN, De Taprob. Ins. p. 4. 

 From the error of Ptolemy in mak- 

 ing the coast of Malabar extend from 

 west to east, whilst its true position 

 is laid down in the Periplus, VIN- 

 CENT concludes that he was not ac- 

 quainted with the Periplus, as, an- 

 terior to the invention of printing, 

 cotemporaries might readily oe igno- 

 rant of the productions of each other 

 (VINCENT, vol. ii. p. 55). Vincent 

 assigns the composition of the Pe- 

 riplus to the reign of Claudius or 

 Nero, and DodweU to that of M. 

 Aurelius, but Letronne more judi- 

 ciously ascribes it to the period of 

 ] Severus and Caracalla, A.D. 198, 210, 

 > fifty years later than Ptolemy. The 

 author, a Greek of Alexandria and 

 I a merchant, never visited Ceylon, 



