1869.] Proceedings of the Asiatic Society. 179 



geographer lived at the end of the fourth century ; his work is but 

 rarely consulted, because his descriptions do not materially add to our 

 knowledge of ancient India. Mr. Clay says — 



The lovely land of the Indi with the description of which Diony- 

 sius closes his " Voyage round the World," as being the most eastern 

 of inhabited countries, includes only so much of the India of our geo- 

 graphy as lies between the rivers Indus and Ganges : but the existence 

 of an unexplored land to the east of the latter river was doubtless 

 understood by him, since he, in the commencement of his poem repre- 

 sents the world as encircled by an Ocean ; — he also mentions a ll Golden 

 island" lying in the Eastern Ocean, from which the first rising of the 

 sun may be observed — this island, by the way, is reached by the tra- 

 veller " in a well-found ship" from Thule, across the Scythian or Arctic 

 sea. 



India, says Dionysius, is a country shaped like a rhombus, having 

 the Caucasus for its northern boundary and the Erythraean sea on the 

 south, in which direction it is terminated by the lofty sea-washed 

 promontory of Kolias,* called Aornis,f opposite to which lies the 

 island of Taprobane,J of fabulous extent, inferior in size only to the 

 island of the Britons; where the elephant of the East roams indigen- 

 ous, and whose surrounding waters are peopled with gigantic monsters, 

 with dreadful bristling backs, and carvernous jaws, down which the 

 poet says he would like to see all his enemies sailing. 



The Caucasus which Dionysius makes the northern boundary of 

 India, is a continuation of the long range of Taurus by which, he has 

 before told us, Asia is intersected from Pamphylia eastwards. Other 

 o-eoo-raphers call the portions of it east of the Indus Imaus§ and 

 Emodes ; the latter being to the extreme east and terminated by the 

 Ocean at which point the god Bacchus is said to have set up two 

 pillars to mark the boundaries of the world and to commemorate his 



* A promontory of Greece was also called by this name, which some think 

 to be a name of Venus. 



f The Aornis or Avernus, of the historians of Alexander's campaign (Curfcius 

 and Arrian) is upon the Indus. Strabo places it by the very source of that river. 

 [The Greek word is Aornos (&opvos). Ed.] 



X Ptolemaeus says this island was subsequently known as Simundus, a 

 Palse Simundus, and later Sala3, whence Ceylon, though some think it to be 

 Sumatra. It was discovered by the fleet of Alexander under Nearchus. 



§ Mt. Imaus is not mentioned by Dionysius. 



