No. 60. — 1908.] couto: history of ceylon. 81 



Arrian 1 , a Greek author, in the treatise that he made on 

 the navigation of India, says that anyone setting out from the 

 coast of Camora and Poduca would arrive at an island that 

 lay to the west called Pallesimonda, and by the ancients 

 Tapobrana, which all considered a new world, and in his time 

 was well known, and that in it were bred the largest and best 

 elephants of all those in India 2 . 



Eratosthenes 3 , a Greek author, says that the island of 

 Tapobrana lies in the Eoan Sea between the east and west on 

 the way to India twenty days' sail from Persia. 



Ptolemy 4 in his tables puts the island of Tapobrana on the 

 coast of India opposite to the Comori Promontorium, which 

 lies in thirteen and a half degrees north (and Pliny 5 calls it 

 Colaicum Promontorium), and says 6 that before his days it 

 was called Simonda, but that in his time it was known by the 

 name of Salica, and its natives by that of Salim, and that it 

 had a length of nine hundred and thirty miles, which is equal 

 to two hundred and ten leagues of ours, and that in it was 

 produced much rice, honey, ginger, beryl, jacinth, and many 

 other kinds of stones and metals that are found only in the 

 island of Ceilao. 



Let us turn to the geographers who make this Tapobrana 

 to be the island of Qamatra. 



Micer Pogio 7 , a Florentine, secretary to the pope, a learned 

 man, who by command of the holy pontiff wrote a description 

 of the journey that Nicolao de Conti 8 , a Venetian, made by 

 land through the whole of India to Cathay, says in it that this 

 Venetian arrived at Qamatra anciently Tapobrana. 



Maximilan Transilvanus, also a learned man, and secretary 

 to an emperor, in a letter that he wrote to the cardinal of 



1 The reference is to the Periplus of the Erythraean Sea, by an unknown 

 author, but formerly attributed to Arrian. See McCrindle's Com. and 

 Nav. of the Eryth. Sea 141, 144. 



2 The passage in the Periplus does not mention elephants. 



3 I can find no such statement as follows in the quotation from 

 Eratosthenes in McCrindle's Anc. Ind. Couto repeats the statement 

 further on. 



4 See Ptolemy's map of India in McCrindle's Anc. Ind. as desc. by 

 Ptol. 



5 See McCrindle's Anc. Ind. 104. 



6 See McCrindle's Anc. Ind. as desc. by Ptol. 24:7. 



7 Val. has " Michael [!] Poggius." 



8 See translation in Ind. in the Fift. Cent. Gf. also Yule's Marco Polo 

 (3rd ed.) ii. 295. 



o 36-08 



