Indian Antiquary Vol 08

SR No.: 032500
Original Sutra Author: N/A
Author: Jas Burgess
Publisher: Swati Publications
Publication Year: 1984
Total Pages: 404
Language: English
Classification: Book_English
File Size: 19 MB

Page 149

MAY, 1879.]
PERIPLUS OF THE ERYTHRÆAN SEA.
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called the little and the great A pokopa (or Bluffs) of Azania, where there are no harbours, but only roads in which ships can conveniently anchor. The navigation of this coast, the direction of which is now to the south- west, occupies six days. Then follow the Little Coast and the Great Coast, occupying other six days, when in due order succeed the Dromoi (or Courses) of A zania, the one going by the name of Sarapiôn, and the other
by that of Nikon. Proceeding thence, you pass the mouths of numerous rivers, and a succession of other roadsteads lying apart one from another a day's distance either by sea or by land. There are seven of them altogether, and they reach on to the Pyrala o i islands and the narrow strait called the Canal, beyond which, where the const changes its direction from southwest slightly more to south, you are conducted by a voyage of two days and two nights to Me
Next occurs a succession of rivers and road steads, seven in number, which being passed we are conducted to the Purala än Islands, and what is called a canal or channel (déput). These islands are not mentioned elsewhere. They can readily be identified with the two called Manda and Lamou, which are situate at the mouths of large rivers, and are separated from the mainland and from each other by a narrow channel. Vincent would assign a Greek origin to the name of these islands. “With a very slight alteration," he says, "of the reading, the Paralian Islands (Ilūp &lov, marine fire,) are the islands of the Fiery Ocean, and nothing seems more consonant to reason than for a Greek to apply the name of the Fiery Ocean to a spot which was the centre of the Torrid Zone and subject to the perpendicular rays of an equinoctial sun." [The Juba islands run along the coast from Juba to about Lat. 1° 50 S., and Manda bay and island is in Lat. 2° 12 S.)
Beyond these islands occurs, after a voyage of two days and two nights, the island of Menouthias or Menout hesias, which it has been found difficult to identify with any certainty. " It is," says Vincent," the Eitenediommenout hesias of the Periplás, a term egregiously strange and corrupted, but out of which the commentators unanimously collect Menoothias, whatever may be the fate of the remaining syllables. That this Menoothias," he continues, "must have been one of the Zangibar islands is indubitable; for the distance from the coast of all three, Pemba, Zangibar, and Momfia, affords a character which is indelible; a character applicable to no other island from Guardafui to Madagascar." He then identifies it with the island of Zangibar, lat. 6° 5' S., in preference to Pemba, 50 6 S., which lay too far out of the course, and in preference to Momfia, 70 50 S. (though more doubtfully), because of its being by no means conspicuous, whereas Zangibar was 'so prominent and obvious above the other two, that it might well attract the particular attention of navigators, and its distance from the mainland is at the same time so nearly in accordance with
that given in the Peripliis as to counterbalance all other objections. A writer in Smith's Classical Geography, who seems to have overlooked the indications of the distances both of Ptolemy and the Periplus, assigns it a position much further to the north than is reconcilable with these distances. He places it about a degree south from the mouth of the River Juba or Govind, just where an opening in the coral reefs is now found. "The coasting voyage," he says, "steering S. W., reached the island on the east side--a proof that it was close to the main.... It is true the navigator says it was 300 stadia from the mainland ; but as there is no reason to suppose that he surveyed the island, this distance must be taken to signify the estimated width of the northern inlet separating the island from the main, and this estimate is probably much exaggerated. The mode of fishing with baskets is still practised in the Juba islands and along this coast. The formation of the coast of E. Africa in these latitudes-where the hills or downs upon the coast are all formed of a coral conglomerate comprising fragments of madreporo, shell and sand, ronders it likely that the island which was close to the main 16 or 17 centuries ago, should now be united to it. Granting this theory of gradual transformation of the coast-line, the Menouthias of the Peripliis may be supposed to have stood in what is now the rich garden-land of Shamba, where the rivers carrying down mud to mingle with the marine deposit of coral drift covered the chokelup estuary with a rich soil."
The island is said in the Periplíis to extend towards the West, but this does not hold good either in the case of Zangibar or any other island in this part of the coast. Indeed thoro is no one of them in which at the present day all the characteristics of Menou thias are found combined. Mom fia, for instance, which resembles it somewhat in name, and which, as modern travellers tell us, is almost entirely occupied with birds and covered with their dung, does not possess any streams of water. These are found in Zangibar. The author may perhaps have con