________________
DECEMBER, 1884.]
remarks, "Ptolemy shows no conception of the great Brahmaputra valley. His Bêpyrrhos shuts in Bengal down to Maeandrus. The latter is the spinal range of Arakan (Yuma), Bêpyrrhos, so far as it corresponds to facts, must include the Sikkim Himalaya and the Garo Hills. The name is perhaps Vipulavast,' the name of one of the mythical cosmic ranges but also a specific title of the Himalaya."
PTOLEMY'S GEOG. BK. VII, CHAP. 2, §§ 9-12.
Mount Maiandros:-From this range descend all the rivers beyond the Ganges as far as the Bêsynga or Bassein river, the western branch of the Irawadi. It must therefore be the Yuma chain which forms the eastern boundary of Arakan, of which the three principal rivers are the Mayu, the Kula-dan and the Lê-myo. According to Lassen Maiandros is the graecized form of Mandara, a sacred mountain in Indian mythology.
Dobassa or Da mass a range:-This range contributes one of the streams which form the great river Doanas, Bêpyrrhos which is further to the west, contributing the other confluent. A single glance at the map, Saint-Martin remarks (Etude, p. 338), clearly shows that the reference here is to the Brahmaputra river, whose indigenous name, the Dihong, accounts readily for the word Doanas. It would be idle, he adds, to explain where errors so abound, what made Ptolemy commit the particular error of making his Doanas run into the Great Gulf instead of joining the eastern estuary of the Ganges. The Dobassa Mountains, I therefore conclude, can only be the eastern extremity of the Himalaya, which goes to force itself like an immense promontory into the grand elbow which the Dihong or Brahmaputra forms, when it bends to the south-east to enter Asâm. If the word Dobassa is of Sanskrit origin, like other geographical appellations applied to these eastern regions, it ought to signify the 'mountains that are obscure,'-Tâmasa Parvata. Yule (quoting J. A. S. Beng. vol. XXXVII,pt. ii, p. 192) points out that the Dimasas are mentioned in a modern paper on Asâm, as a race driven down into that valley by the immigration of the Bhôtiyas. This also points to the Bhôtân Himalayas as being the Damassa range, and shows that of the two readings, Dobassa and Damassa, the latter is preferable.
Mount Sêmanthinos is placed 10 degrees further to the east than Maiandros, and was regarded as the limit of the world in that direction. Regarding these two Sanskrit designations, Saint-Martin, after remarking that they are. more mythic than real, proceeds to observe: "These Oriental countries formed one of the horizons of the Hindu world, one of the extreme regions, where positive notions transform them.
375
selves gradually into the creations of mere fancy. This disposition was common to all the peoples of old. It is found among the nations of the east no less than in the country of Homer. Udayagiri,-the mountain of the east where the sun rises, was also placed by the Brahmanik poets very far beyond the mouths of the Ganges. The Sêmanthinôs is a mountain of the same family. It is the extreme limit of the world, it is its very girdle (Samanta in Sanskrit). In fine, Puranik legends without number are connected with Mandara, a great mountain of the East. The fabulous character of some of these designations possesses this interest with respect to our subject, that they indicate even better than notions of a more positive kind the primary source of the information which Ptolemy employed. The Maiandros, however, it must be observed, has a definite locality assigned it, and designates in Ptolemy the chain of heights which cover Arakan on the east."
9. From Bêpyrrhos two rivers discharge into the Ganges, of which the more northern has its sources in .... 148° 33° and its point of junction with the Ganges in
.................
The sources of the other. river are in................. 1420 and its point of junction with the Ganges in ...... 144° 26° 10. From Maiandros descend the rivers beyond the Ganges as far as the Bêsynga River, but the riyer Sêros flows from the range of Sêmanthinos from two sources, of which the most western lies in 170° 30′ 32° and the most eastern in...... 173° 30' 30° and their confluence is in... 171° 27°
.........
11. From the Damassa range flow the Daonas and Dorias (the Doanas runs as far as to Bêpyrrhos)
and the Dôrias rises in...... 164° 30' 28°
Of the two streams which unite to form the Doanas that from the Damassa range rises in ........ ............. 162° that from Bêpyrrhos rises in 153° The two streams unite in... 160° 20′
27° 30' 27° 30' 19°
The river Sôbanas which flows from Maiandros rises in....... ......... 163° 30′ 13°
12. The rivers which having previously united flow through the "Golden Khersonese from the mountain ridges, without name/which overhang the Khersonese-the one flowing into the Khersonese first detaches from it the Attabas in about............. ..... 161° 2° 20'
*************
140° 15' 30° 20'
27°
