OLDEST RECORDS OF SEA-ROUTE TO CHINA FROM WESTERN ASIA. 351 



Turning again to Valentijn's great book on the Dutch East Indies 

 (1727), under a notice of Bimlipatara, we find the following :— 



' In the beginning of February there used to ply, as long as the trade 

 lasted, for the first despatch to Pegu, a little ship with such goods as were 

 in demand, and which were taken on board at Masulipatam. . . . From 

 that place it used to run along the coast up to 18° N. latitude, and then 

 crossed seawards ' [in fact it took its aphetcrion, but somewhat further 

 south than the ancients] ' so as to hit the land on the other side about 16°, 

 and then, on an oif-shoi-e wind, sailed very easily to the Peguan river of 

 Syriang ' • [Syriam, below Rangoon]. 



The Periplus carries us to the mouth of the Ganges, where there was 

 a mart so-called (Gange), and to the beginning of the Continent of Ghryse, 

 i.e. Indo- China, but gives no further detail. For this we go to Ptolemy. 

 He gives us the coast o? Argiiro (' Silvei'-land ') and Ghrijse GhersonnSsus, 

 with Ghryse GJwra behind it, 'the Golden Penin.sula' and 'the Golden 

 Region ' In Arr/i'irc we have undoubtedly Arakan, but I have been able 

 to trace no Indian suggestion of the name, or of the mines which are said 

 in Ptolemy to have existed in it. The Golden Cliersonnese is specifically 

 the protuberant Delta of the Irawadi, Pegu, the SuvarnaBhumi or Golden 

 Land of ancient India, whilst the Golden Region behind is Burma, the 

 oldest province of which above Ava is still formally styled in State docu- 

 ments Sona-parcmfa — ' Golden Frontier.' Ptolemy's GhalJcitis also, or 

 ' Copper Region,' approximates carionsly to the Tampa dipa or ' Copper 

 Island ' of the Burmese State phraseology, a region which embraces Ava 

 and the ancient capital Pagan. 



Proceeding further, the navigator reaches the city of K6U or Kalis, 

 leaving behind him the islands of Bazalcota, 'Good Fortune' (J Xyndov 

 fo/yuorof:) and the group of the Barusae. Here at K6U, which [ take 

 to be a port of the Malay Peninsula, the course of the first-century 

 Greek and of the ninth-century Arab come together ; and before going 

 further it is desirable to take up the route of the latter. 



The Arabs discriminated a variety of ' seas ' that were passed on the 

 route to China. Fii-st, of course, the starting-points being Obollah at the 

 head of the Persian Gulf, or Siraf on its northern shore, is that sea {Bahr 

 Furs). Then the Sea of Ldr {Bahr Lurcuci) — i.e., of the Greek Larilce 

 of which we have spoken. This sea washed the shores of Sainiilr, Sahara, 

 Tilnd, Sinddn, and Kamhdi/a. The last is well known ; of Saimiir and 

 Sahara we have already spoken, as well as of Thdna (or Tanna, as the 

 Gazetteer spells it) near Bombay ; it was visited by Marco Polo in the 

 end of the thirteenth century. Sinddn is famous as the port where the 

 Parsi immigration first landed in India, and has become, by an odd cor- 

 ruption, in our sea-nomenclature ' St. John's.' 



The Sea of Liir was reckoned to terminate at certain numerous islands 

 known as the Dihas, of which Sennidib (Ceylon) was the last and greatest ; 

 a view of things set forth in that passage of Ammianus which speaks of 

 the rumours of Julian's accession (a.d. 801) as reaching even to the Divi 

 and the Serendivi. Here began the ' Sea of Horkand,' a name which we 

 cannot hesitate to identify with the Jthogandani whom Ptolemy places in 

 the south of Taprobane, a name which long survived in the form oi Bohana 

 or Rohuna, occui'ring often in the Mahfivvanso, as a province of which 

 Mahagamo, the Maagrammon of Ptolemy, was the capital, and which the 

 early Mahommedans applied in the form al-Ralidn to Adam's Peak. 



' Valcntijn, ' Choromaiuli-l,' vol. v. pp. 44, 45. 



