The Ancient Geography of India/Ceylon
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Ceylon
[p.557]: The famous island of Ceylon is not reckoned amongst the kingdoms of India, and it was not visited by the pilgrim on account of political disturbances. But as he gives a description of it from the account of the monks whom he met at Kanchipura, and as it is closely connected with India both religiously and politically, my work would not be complete without some notice of this interesting island.
In the seventh century of our era Ceylon was known by the name of Seng-kia-lo, or Sinhala, which was said to be derived from the lion-descended Sinhala, whose son Vijaya is fabled to have conquered the island on the very day of Buddha's death, in B.C. 543. Its original name was Pao-chu, or "Isle of Gems," in Sanskrit Ratnadwipa. Its existence was first made known to the European world by the expedition of Alexander, under the name of Taprobane. The popular PS,li form is Tamba-panni, or "red-handed," in allusion to the " red palms " of the hands of Vijaya's sick companions, who, on landing from their vessel, touched the red ground with their hands. The true form, however, would appear to be Tamba-panni1 or "red-leaved," from the Sanskrit Tamra-parni. Lassen also gives Tambra-pani, or the " great pond," or "pond covered with the red lotus," as a probable derivation. In later times it was known to the western world as Simundu, or Palai-Simundu, which Lassen thinks may have been derived from Pali-Simanta, or " head of the holy law." As Pliny applies the latter name to the city containing the royal palace, it has been
1 Tumour's ' Mahawanso,' p. 50.
[p.558]: supposed to be only another appellation for the capital Anarajapura, or Anuragrammon, of Ptolemy. No explanation is offered of Andrasimundu, which Ptolemy gives as the name of a promontory on the western coast of Ceylon, opposite Anarajapura. From its position it may be only another name for Palai-simundu.
Ptolemy calls the island Salike, which, as Lassen suggests, would appear to be only a sailor's corrupt form of Sinhalaka, or Sihalaka, shortened to Silaka. Ammianus calls it Serendivus, which is the same as the Sieladiba of Kosmas, both being derived from Sihala-dipa, which is the Pali form of Sinhala-dwipa, or " Sinhala's island." Abu Rihan gives the form of Singal-dib, or Sirindib, which is the Serendib of European sailors. From the same source came the Arabic Zilan, and our own Ceylon. Amongst the Hindus the most familiar name is Langka-dwipa, which is also mentioned in the ' Mahawanso ' under the Pali form of Lanka-dipa1.
According to Hwen Thsang, the circuit of the island was 7000 li, or 1167 miles,2 which is nearly double the truth,— its actual size, according to Sir Emerson Tennent, being 271½ miles in length from north to south, and 137½ miles from east to west, or about 650 miles in circuit. Its dimensions are so uniformly exaggerated by the classical authors that I cannot help suspecting some misconception as to the value of a local measure. Kosmas, on the authority of Sopater, who had actually visited the island, gives its size as 300 gaudia, γανδια, in length, and the same m breadth. This name Sir Emerson Tennent identifies with that
1 Tumour's ' Mahawanso," pp. 2, 3, 49.
2 Julien's ' Hiouen Thsang,' iii. 125. See Map No. I.
[p.559]: of a local measure, named gaou1 which he estimates at about 3 miles, thus making the island 900 miles long, and as many broad. But the gaudia may just as likely be the well-known gao-kos of India. This was the distance at which the lowing of a cow could be heard, that is 1000 dhanus, or bows, equal to 6000 feet, or 1.136 of a mile. The 300 gaudia would thus be equal to 340 miles, which is only 70 miles in excess of the real length of the island. Pliny makes the length 10,000 stadia, or 1149 English miles. Ptolemy assigns nearly 15 degrees of latitude, or about 1000 miles, which is slightly reduced by Marcianus to 9500 stadia, or 1091½ English miles. Now the earlier Chinese pilgrim, Fa-Hian, who visited Ceylon in A.D. 412, or about one century before Sopater, states the size of the island at 50 yojanas in length by 30 in breadth,2 or about 350 miles by 210 miles. If, as we may fairly suppose, both travellers derived their dimensions from the statements of the people of the country, the 300 gaudia of Sopater may be taken as the equivalent of 50 yojanas, which gives 6 gaudia to the yojana, and makes the native measure rather more than one English mile, or exactly equal to the gao-kos of India.
1 'Ceylon,' i. 567. He identifies the γανδια (gaudia) with, the gaou now in use, which is " the distance that a man can walk in an hour." But how about the word Hour, which has a strong European smack about it? Was not the original gaou the distance that a man could walk in 1 ghari, or 24 minutes, the well-known Indian division of time ? If so, the length of the gaou, at 3 miles to the hour, would be 1.2 miles, which agrees very closely with the actual length of the gao-kos, as noted above. The gaou is valued by Wilson at 4 kos ; vide his Glossary in voce.
2 Beal's ' Fah-Hian,' c. xxxvii. p. 148. But he makes the length from east to west, instead of from north to south.
[p.560]: In his interesting and valuable work on Ceylon, Sir Emerson Tennent has suggested that the port of Galle may be the Tarshish1 of the Bible, " which lay in the track between the Arabian Gulf and Ophir, and that Ophir itself is Malacca, or the Aurea Chersonesus, because "Ophir, in the language of the Malays, is the generic name for any gold mine." But this view seems to me to be quite untenable, as the names of all the articles brought back by Solomon's fleet are pure Sanskrit. Sir Emerson states that they are " identical with the Tamil names by which some of them are called in Ceylon to the present day." These names are sen-habim, or "teeth of elephants," kophim, or "apes," and tukum, or "parrots." But these are the pure Sanskrit words ibha, kapi, and suka, with the mere addition of the Hebrew plural termination. It is true that these Sanskrit names have been naturalized in the south of India, but they have not displaced the original Tamil appellations, which still remain the terms in common use, namely, yane for elephant, kuranga for monkey, and mayil for peacock, or kilip-pillai for parrot. Now, if the fleet of Solomon obtained these Sanskrit names in Ceylon, then we must admit that the Aryan race had pushed their conquests to the extreme south of India some centuries before the time of Solomon, that is about 1200 or 1500 B.C. But at this very time, as we learn from their own records, the Aryas had not yet crossed the Narbada, nor even penetrated to the mouth of the Ganges. It does not therefore seem possible that any of their names could have been obtained either in Ceylon or in the south of India so early as the time
1 ' Ceylon," ii. 101.
[p.561]: of Solomon. Even according to their own annals,1 the Ceylonese were barbarians until the landing of Vijaya, in B.C. 543 ; and there is no satisfactory evidence of any Aryan connection or intercourse before the time of Mahendra, the son of Asoka, in B.C. 242.
The writer of the article Ophir in Smith's 'Dictionary of the Bible ' argues in favour of Arabia, by assuming that " ivory, apes, and peacocks " were not imported from Ophir, but from Tarshish, and that gold and algum trees only were imported from Ophir. By this assumption he gets rid of the Indian names for the elephant, monkey, and parrot ; but there still remains the name of algum wood, which Professor Lassen derives from the Sanskrit valgu, or sandal-wood. He admits that Arabia does not now produce gold, but thinks that it may once have done so, or if not, that it at least possessed gold by importation, as the Queen of Sheba presented much gold to Solomon.
This subject has already been discussed in my account of Vadari, or Eder, in Western India ; but I may here again state my opinion that the Ophir of the Bible, which is rendered Σώφειρ and Σονφίρ by Josephus and the Septuagint,2 is most probably the Sauvira of Hindu geography, or south-western Rajasthan, which amongst the people of the west would have been pronounced Hobir, just as Sindhu became Indus, and as sapta became haft and έπτα. According to Pliny the country to the north of the Gulf of Khambay formerly produced both gold and silver, which it does even at the present day. Specimens of gold from the
1 ' Fo-kwe-ki,' c. xxxviii. ' Mahawanso,' p. 48. ' Hiouen Thsang,' iii. 132.
2 Josephus, Antiq., i. 6, 4. 1 Kings x. 11 ; and 2 Chron. viii. 18. Sofir is the Coptic name of India.
[p.562]: Aravali mountains may be seen in the India Museum, and the same range is the only part of India in which silver is found in any quantity. Western India also was colonized by the Aryan race at least two thousand years before Christ, and the Aryan language had became the common speech of the country long before the time of Solomon. I would therefore identify the Ophir or Sophir of Scripture with the Indian Sauvira of the Hindus, where the captains of Solomon's fleet could have obtained the fine pure gold for which Ophir was famed, and where they would have obtained ivory, apes, and peacocks (or parrots) called by the very names which they have preserved to us in the Bible.