NATURE 



^11 



THURSDAY, AUGUST 4, 1910. 



CIIRISTIAX TOPOGRAPHY. 

 The Christian Topography of Cosmos Indicoplcustcs. 



Edited, with Geographical Notes, by E. O. Winstedt. 



Pp. x + 376 + xiv plates. (Cambridge: University 



Press, 1909.) Price 12S. 6d. net. 

 '""T'HE '"Christian Topography" of Kosmas Indiko- 



-1- pleustes is a very peculiar work. As a monu- 

 ment of literary style it is precious, for it shows us 

 what terrible rubbish, what wandering and discursive 

 twaddle, people were already writing in the sixth 

 century, when the mental degeneration of the Middle 

 .\ges (more properly called the "Dark .Xges ") had 

 hardly yet set in. As a geographical landmark it is 

 also precious, for the author, twaddlemonger as he 

 was, went to various parts of the East beyond the 

 ken of the ordinary man of the time, and his descrip- 

 tions of the Somali coast, of Coromandel, and of 

 Ceylon, which he apparently visited himself, in the 

 sixth century, are in the highest degree interesting and 

 valuable. Finally, as a work of unintentional 

 humour, it is beyond price. Of course, the humour 

 of it would not be apparent to all, and it is perhaps 

 irreverent (to the sixth century, which is now some- 

 what venerable) to direct the reader's attention to 

 lliis Icature of this peculiar work. Yet, since the 

 editor himself indulges in a hearty laugh over the 

 poor old "Christian Topographer," perhaps the re- 

 viewer may be allowed to do so too. At any rate, he 

 sins in the most authoritative company, and if the 

 editor treats his subject (as Mr. Winstedt does) some- 

 tliing after the style of Mark Twain and the Yankee 

 at the Court of King .Arthur, the reviewer must not be 

 censured if he frivolously suspects the Syndics of the 

 Cambridge University Press of having produced a 

 humorous book. 



For, really, Mr. Winstedt 's introduction to Kosmas 

 is pitched in rather too humorous a tone. .Such a 

 quotation as "they didn't know evervthing down in 

 Judee " (p. 15) is a fault of taste, and one can 

 imagine the bewilderment of a French or German 

 sciiolar at such an unintelligible sentence as "when 

 he can momentarily get free from the obsession of his 

 King Charles' head — the ' great cosmographer 

 Moses ' " ! (p. 9). Mr. Winstedt presumably intended 

 this book to be of use to international science, but if 

 so, why has he so ill-advisedly interlarded his other- 

 wise most learned and interesting introduction with 

 comic relief only comprehensible to Englishmen or 

 .\mericans who know their Dickens and Mark Twain ? 



Kosmas is funny enough of himself without any 

 editorial attempt to make him funnier bv means of 

 jarring modern jests, and Mr. \\'instedt may be per- 

 mitted to enjoy, as he does without spoiling things, 

 the good man's explanation of whv the Creation took 

 six days when the Deity could ex hypothcsi have 

 done it at a single coup if He had liked; the reason 

 is that the angels were such weak-minded creatures 

 that if He had created" everything all at once they 

 would not have understood it at all, so He took six 

 days about it for their sake, in order that thev might 

 NO. 2127, VOL. 84] 



fully comprehend how it was done. This, of course, 

 in all seriousness and devoutness. But it shows how 

 weak-minded people were themselves alreadv becom- 

 ing as early as the sixth century. To .-i civilised man 

 of three centuries before, the idea would have seemed 

 aS comic as it does to us. 



The stupidity of the Dark .-\ges is already in full 

 blast in the mind of Kosmas the Indian-farer. 



"What scholar (as the editor quotes from Marion 

 Crawford's ' With the Immortals ') has not laughed 

 at the idea of Kosmas, the Alexandrian, that the sun 

 retired behind a mountain to spend the night? And 

 that the earth, the ocean, and the fabulous mountain 

 were all included and enclosed in a luminous oblong 

 box of the exact shape of the tabernacle of Moses?" 



He undoubtedlv had Moses "on the brain" (though 

 we demur to the use of the expression " King 

 Charles' head" in a scientific work); for him Moses 

 was the "great cosmographer." Religious precon- 

 ceptions and misunderstood texts were jumbled up in 

 his mind with fragments of the old knowledge and the 

 results of his own travel experiences to produce this 

 extraordinarv farrago which he called "Christian 

 Topography," a title which, as the editor says, is 

 excellent, "as it cannot possibly convey any particular 

 meaning to anybody." Photius calls the book a- 

 commentary on the Octateuch. It 



" might as well be called that as anything else, since 

 Cosmas quotes and comments on a considerable por- 

 tion of the Octateuch. That, however, was not the 

 main object of his work. His intention was to refute 

 the theory that the earth was round, and to prove 

 that Moses' tabernacle in the wilderness was a model' 

 of the universe." 



This was his theorv, which he illustrated from his owrr 

 trav'cls, and it is the account of the travels that forms 

 the serious interest of the book to us nowadays as 

 giving a most interesting account of the East in the 

 sixth century, and invaluable information as to the 

 geographical ideas of the time. Kosmas observed the 

 habits and customs of the peoples he visited, and noted 

 the animals and plants of their countries, with care. 

 He also drew pictures of the latter, in which un- 

 doubtedly he gave some freedom to his imagination. 

 These pictures, copied and re-copied, have come down 

 to us in the later MSS. of his book, no doubt, some- 

 what changed en route, but still characteristic. 

 Several of them are reproduced by Mr. Winstedt. The 

 picture of a man picking coco-nuts (plate xiv) is 

 tspecially interesting. Pictures of his weird concep- 

 tion of the universe are, of course, given (plate vi), 

 and the diagram by which he sought to throw con- 

 tempt upon the horrid theory of .Antipodes. The way 

 in which the men of the Middle Ages resolutely set 

 themselves to abjure and ban the theory of spherical 

 worlds, which their civilised ancestors had already 

 promulgated, is curious and characteristic. Kosmas 

 quotes Scripture at length against the wicked pagans 

 who believe in a round world, and his further quota- 

 tion from .Athanasius's " F"estal Letters " in support of 

 the current Christian view has chanced to be the 

 means of preserving to us almost all that survives of 

 the Greek text of that work. 



Another thing of value that has been preserved in 



F 



