Part 97 (1/2)
An exploit so adventurous and so triumphant, rendered Hippalus the Columbus of his age, and his countrymen, to perpetuate his renown, called the winds which he had mastered by his name.[1] His discovery gave a new direction to navigation, it altered the dimensions and build of the s.h.i.+ps frequenting those seas [2], and imparted so great an impulse to trade, that within a very brief period it became a subject of apprehension at Rome, lest the empire should be drained of its specie to maintain the commerce with India. Silver to the value of nearly a million and a half sterling, being annually required to pay for the spices, gems, pearls, and silks, imported through Egypt.[3] An extensive acquaintance was now acquired with the sea-coast of India, and the great work of Pliny, compiled less than fifty years after the discovery of Hippalus, serves to attest the additional knowledge regarding Ceylon which had been collected during the interval.
[Footnote 1: _Periplus, &c._, HUDSON, p. 32; PLINY, lib. vi, ch. 26. A learned disquisition on the discovery of the monsoons will be found in VINCENT's _Commerce of the Ancients_, vol. i. pp. 47, 253; vol. ii. pp.
49; 467; ROBERTSON's _India_, sec. ii.]
[Footnote 2: PLINY, lib. vi. ch. 24.]
[Footnote 3: PLINY, lib. vi. ch. 26. The nature of this rich trade is fully described by the author of the _Periplus of the Erythrean Sea_, who was himself a merchant engaged in it.]
Pliny, writing in the first century, puts aside the fabulous tales previously circulated concerning the island[1]; he gives due credit to the truer accounts of Onesicritus and Megasthenes, and refers to the later works of ERATOSTHENES and ARTEMIDORUS[2] the geographers, as to its position, its dimensions, its cities, its natural productions, and as to the ignorance of navigation exhibited by its inhabitants. All this, he says, was recorded by former writers, but it had fallen to his lot to collect information from natives of Ceylon who had visited Rome during his own time under singular circ.u.mstances. A s.h.i.+p had been despatched to the coast of Arabia to collect the Red Sea revenues, but having been caught by the monsoon it was carried to Hippuros, the modern Kudra-mali, in the north-west of Ceylon, near the pearl banks of Manaar.
Here the officer in command was courteously received by the king, who, struck with admiration of the Romans and eager to form an alliance with them, despatched an emba.s.sy to Italy, consisting of a Raja and suite of three persons.[3]
[Footnote 1: I have not thought it necessary to advert to the romance of JAMBULUS, the scene of which has been conjectured, but without any justifiable grounds, to be laid in Ceylon; and which is strangely incorporated with the authentic work of DIODORUS SICULUS, written in the age of Augustus. DIODORUS professes to give it as an account of the _recent discovery_ of an island to which it refers; a fact sufficiently demonstrative of its inapplicability to Ceylon, the existence of which had been known to the Greeks three hundred years before. It is the story of a merchant made captive by pirates and carried to aethiopia, where, in compliance with a solemn rite, he and a companion were exposed in a boat, which, after a voyage of four months, was wafted to one of the Fortunate Islands, in the Southern Sea, where he resided seven years, whence having been expelled, he made his way to Palibothra, on the Ganges, and thence returned to Greece. In the pretended account of this island given by JAMBULUS I cannot discover a single attribute sufficient to identify it with Ceylon. On the contrary, the traits which he narrates of the country and its inhabitants, when they are not manifest inventions, are obviously borrowed from the descriptions of the continent of India, given by CTESIAS and MEGASTHENES. PRINSEP, in his learned a.n.a.lysis of the Sanchi Inscription, shows that what JAMBULUS says of the alphabet of his island agrees minutely with the character and symbols on the ancient Buddhist lats of Central India. _Journ.
Asiat. Soc. Ben._, vol. vi. p. 476. WILFORD, in his _Essay on the Sacred Isles of the West, Asiat. Res._ x. 150, enumerates the statements of JAMBULUS which might possibly apply to Sumatra, but certainly not to Ceylon, an opinion in which he had been antic.i.p.ated by RAMUSIO, vol. i.
p. 176. La.s.sEN, in his _Indische Alterthumskunde_, vol. iii. p. 270, a.s.signs his reasons for believing that Bali, to the east of Java, must be the island in which JAMBULUS laid the scene of his adventures.
DIODORUS SICULUS, lib. ii. ch. lv., &c. An attempt has also been made to establish an ident.i.ty between Ceylon and the island of Panchoea, which Diodoras describes in the Indian Sea, between Arabia and Gedrosia (lib.
v. 41, &c.); but the efforts of an otherwise ingenious writer have been unsuccessful. See GROVER's _Voice from Stonehenge_, P. i. p. 95.]
[Footnote 2: PLINY, lib. xxii. ch. liii. iv. ch. xxiv. vii. ch. ii.]
[Footnote 3: ”Legatos quatuor misit principe eoram Rachia.”--PLINY, lib.
vi. c. 24. This pa.s.sage is generally understood to indicate four amba.s.sadors, of whom the princ.i.p.al was one named Rachias. CASIE CHITTY, in a learned paper on the early _History of Jaffna_, offers another conjecture that ”Rachia” may mean _Arachia_, a Singhalese designation of rank which exists to the present day; and in support of his hypothesis he instances the coincidence that ”at a later period a similar functionary was despatched by the King Bhuwaneka-Bahu VIII. as amba.s.sador to the court of Lisbon.”--_Journal Ceylon Asiat. Soc.,_ p.
74, 1848. The event to which he refers is recorded in the _Rajavali_: it is stated that the king of Cotta, about the year 1540, ”caused a figure of the prince his grandson to be made of gold, and sent the same under the care of _Sallappoo Arachy_, to be delivered to the King of Portugal.
The Arachy having arrived and delivered the presents to the King of Portugal, obtained the promise of great a.s.sistance,” &c.--_Rajavali_, p.
286. See also VALENTYN, _Oud en Nieuw Oost-Indien_, ch. vi.; TURNOUR'S _Epitome_, p. 49; RIBEYRO'S _History_, trans, by Lee, ch. v. But as the emba.s.sy sent to the Emperor Claudius would necessarily have been deputed by one of the kings of the Wijayan dynasty, it is more than probable that the rank of the envoy was Indian rather than Singhalese, and that ”Rachia” means _raja_ rather than _arachy_.
It may, however, be observed that Rackha is a name of some renown in Singhalese annals. Rackha was the general whom Prakrama Bahu sent to reduce the south of Ceylon when in arms in the 12th century (_Mahawanso_, ch. lxxiii.); and it is also the name of one of the heroes of the Paramas. WILFORD, _As. Res._, vol. ix. p. 41.]
The Singhalese king of whom this is recorded was probably Chanda-Mukha-Siwa, who ascended the throne A.D. 44, and was deposed and a.s.sa.s.sinated by his brother A.D. 52. He signalised his reign by the construction of one of those gigantic tanks which still form the wonders of the island.[1] From his envoys Pliny learned that Ceylon then contained five hundred towns (or more properly villages), of which the chief was Palaesimunda, the residence of the sovereign, with a population of two hundred thousand souls.
[Footnote 1: _Mahawanso_, ch. x.x.x. p. 218; TURNOUR'S _Epitome_, p. 21; AMMIa.n.u.s MARCELLINUS mentions another emba.s.sy which arrived from Ceylon in the reign of the Emperor Julian, l. xx. c. 7, and which consequently must have been despatched by the king Upa-tissa II. I have elsewhere remarked, that it was in this century that the Singhalese appear to have first commenced the practice of sending frequent emba.s.sies to distant countries, and especially to China. (See chapter on the Knowledge of Ceylon possessed by the Chinese.)]
They spoke of a lake called Megisba, of vast magnitude, and giving rise to two rivers, one flowing by the capital and the other northwards, towards the continent of India, which was most likely an exaggerated account of some of the great tanks, possibly that of Tissaweva, in the vicinity of Anaraj.a.poora. They described the coral which abounds in the Gulf of Manaar; and spoke of marble, with colours like the sh.e.l.l of the tortoise; of pearls and precious stones; of the luxuriance of the soil, the profusion of all fruits except that of the vine, the natural wealth of the inhabitants, the mildness of the government, the absence of vexatious laws, the happiness of the people, and the duration of life, which was prolonged to more than one hundred years. They spoke of a commerce with China, but it was evidently overland, by way of India and Tartary, the country of the Seres being visible, they said, beyond the Himalaya mountains.[1] The amba.s.sadors described the mode of trading among their own countrymen precisely as it is practised by the Veddahs in Ceylon at the present day[2]; the parties to the barter being concealed from each other, the one depositing the articles to be exchanged in a given place, and the other, if they agree to the terms, removing them unseen, and leaving behind what they give in return.
It is impossible to read this narrative of Pliny without being struck with its fidelity to truth in many particulars; and even one pa.s.sage, to which exception has been taken as an imposture of the Singhalese envoys, when they manifested surprise at the quarters in which the sun rose and set in Italy, has been referred[3] to the peculiar system of the Hindus, in whose maps north and south are left and right; but it may be explained by the fact of the sun pa.s.sing overhead in Ceylon, in his transit to the northern solstice; instead of hanging about the south, as in Italy, after acquiring some elevation above the horizon.
[Footnote 1: ”Ultra montes Emodos Seras quoque ab ipsis aspici notos etiam commercio.”--PLINY, lib. vi. c. 24.]
[Footnote 2: See the chapter on the Veddahs, Vol. II. Part II. ch. iii.]
[Footnote 3: See WILFORD'S _Sacred Islands of the West, Asiat. Res_., vol. x. p. 41.]
The rapid progress of navigation and discovery in the Indian seas, within the interval of sixty or seventy years which elapsed between the death of Pliny and the compilation of the great work of Ptolemy is in no instance more strikingly exhibited than on comparing the information concerning Taprobane, which is given by the latter in his ”System of Geography,”[1] with the meagre knowledge of the island possessed by all his predecessors. From his position at Alexandria and his opportunites of intercourse with mariners returning from their distant voyages, he enjoyed unusual facilities for ascertaining facts and distances, and in proof of his singular diligence he was enabled to lay down in his map of Ceylon the position of eight promontories upon its coast, the mouths of five princ.i.p.al rivers, four bays, and harbours; and in the interior he had ascertained that there were thirteen provincial divisions, and nineteen towns, besides two emporiums on the coast; five great estuaries which he terms lakes[2], two bays, and two chains of mountains, one of them surrounding Adam's Peak, which he designates as Maloea--the name by which the hills that environ it are known in the _Mahawanso_. He mentions the recent change of the name to Salike (which La.s.sen conjectures to be a seaman's corruption of the real name Sihala[3]); and he notices, in pa.s.sing, the fact that the natives wore their hair then as they do at the present day, in such length and profusion as to give them an appearance of effeminacy, ”[Greek: mallois gynaikeiois eis hapan anadedemenos].”[4]
[Footnote 1: PTOLEMY, _Geog_. lib. vii. c. 4, tab. xii, Asiae. In one important particular a recent author has done justice to the genius and perseverance of Ptolemy, by demonstrating that although mistaken in adopting some of the fallacious statements of his predecessors, he has availed himself of better data by which to fix the position of Ceylon; so that the western coast in the Ptolemaic map coincides with the modern Ceylon in the vicinity of Colombo. Mr. COOLEY, in his learned work on _Claudius Ptolemy and the Nile_, Lond. 1854, has successfully shown that whilst forced to accept those popular statements which he had no authentic data to check, Ptolemy conscientiously availed himself of the best materials at his command, and endeavoured to fix his distances by means of the reports of the Greek seamen who frequented the coasts which he described, constructing his maps by means of their itineraries and the journals of trading voyages. But a fundamental error pervades all his calculations, inasmuch as he a.s.sumed that there were but 500 stadia (about fifty geographical miles) instead of sixty miles to a degree of a great circle of the earth; thus curtailing the globe of one sixth of its circ.u.mference. Once apprised of this mistake, and reckoning Ptolemy's longitudes and lat.i.tudes from Alexandria, and reducing them to degrees of 600 stadia, his positions may be laid down on a more correct graduation; otherwise ”his Taprobane, magnified far beyond its true dimensions, appears to extend two degrees below the equator, and to the seventy-first meridian east of Alexandria (nearly twenty degrees too far east), _whereas the prescribed reduction brings it westward and northward till it covers the modern Ceylon_, the western coasts of both coinciding at the very part near Colombo likely to have been visited by s.h.i.+pping.”--Pp. 47, 53, See also SCHOELL, _Hist, de la Lit. Grecque_, l.
v. c. lxx.
[Ill.u.s.tration]]