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886
THE INDIAN ANTIQUARY.
[DECEMBER, 1884.
which he reckons ten, about 10 degrees eastward from Ceylon. There is no such group however to be found in that position, or near it, and we may safely conclude that the Maniolai isles are As mythical as the magnetic rocks they were Baid to contain. In an account of India, written at the close of the 4th or beginning of the 5th century, at the request either of Palladius or of Lausius, to whom Palladius inscribed his Historia Lausiaca, mention is made of these rocks : "At Muziris," says Priaulx, in his notice of this account "our traveller stayed some time, and occupied himself in studying the soil and climate of the place and the customs and manners of its inhabitants. He also made enquiries about Ceylon, and the best mode of getting there, but did not care to undertake the voyage when he heard of the dangers of the Sinhalese channel, of the thousand isles, the Maniolai which impede its navigation, and the loadstone rocks which bring disaster and wreck on all iron-bound ships." And Masu'di, who had traversed this sea, says that ships sailing on it were not fastened with iron nails, its waters so wasted them. (The Indian Travels of Apollonius of Tyana, &c., p. 197). After Ptolemy's time a different position was now and again assigned to these rocks, the direction in which they were moved being more and more to westward. Priaulx (p. 247), uses this as an argument in support of his contention that the Roman traffic in the eastern seas gradually declined after 273 A.D., and finally disappeared. How, otherwise, he asks, can we account for the fact that the loadstone rocks, those myths of Roman geography, which, in Ptolemy's time, the flourishing days of Roman commerce, ley some degrees eastward of Ceylon, appear A.D. 400 barring its western approach, and A.D. 560 have advanced up to the very mouth of the Arabian Gulf. Bat on the Terrestrial Globe of Martin Behem, Nuremberg A.D. 1492, they are called Manillas, and are placed immediately to the north of Java Major. Aristotle speaks of a magnetic mountain on the coast of India, and Pliny repeats the story, Klaproth states that the ancient Chinese authors also speak of magnetic mountains in the southern sea on the coasts of Tonquin and Cochin-China, and allege regarding them that if foreign ships which are bound with plates of iron approach them, such ships are there detained, and can in no case pass these places. (Tennant's Ceylon, vol. I, p. 444 n.) The origin of the fable, which represents the magnetic rocks as fatal to vessels fastened with iron nails, is to be traced to the peculiar mode in
which the Ceylonese and Malays have at all times constructed their boats and canoes, these being put together without the use of iron nails; the planks instead being secured by wooden bolte, and stitched together with cords span from the fibre of the cocoanut. "The Third Calender," in the Arabian Nights Entertainment, gives a lively account of his shipwreck upon the Loadstone Mountain, which be tells us was entirely covered towards the sea with the nails that belonged to the immense number of ships which it had destroyed.
CAP. 3. POSITION OF THE SINAI. 1. The Sinai are bounded on the north by the part of Serikê already indicated, on the east and south by the unknown land, on the west by India beyond the Ganges, along the line defined as far as the Great Gulf and by the Great Gulf itself, and the parts immediately adjacent thereto, and by the Wild Beast Gulf, and by that frontier of the Sinai around which are placed the Ikhthyophagoi Aithiopes, according to the following outline :
2. After the boundary of the Gulf on the side of India the mouth of the river Aspithra ............ 170° 16° Sources of the river on the
eastern side of the Sêman
thinos range ............... 180° 26° Bramma, a town............... 177° 12° 307 The mouth of the river
Ambastes ..................... 176° 10° The sources of the river...... 179° 30' 15° Rhabana, a town............... 177° 8° 30' Mouth of the river Sainos ... 176° 20 6° 30' The Southern Cape ......... 175° 15' 40 The head of Wild Beast Gulf 176° The Cape of Satyrs ......... 175° on the line Gulf of the Sinai" ............ 178° 2° 20'
3. Around the Gulf of the Sinai dwell the fish-eating Aithiopians. Mouth of the river Kottiaris ............
..... 177° 20° ° S. Sources of the river ...... 180° 40' 20 S. Where it falls into the
river Sainos............... 180° on the line. Kattigara, the port of the
Sinai........................ 177° 8° 30'S.
4. The most northern parts are possessed by the Semanthinci, who are situated above place in the lion's mouth or Straits of Singapur. * Latin Translator.
Wilford (A8. Res. vol. XIV, pp. 429-30), gives the fable regarding these rooks from the Chaturvarga Chintaman, and identifies them with those near Perindrs or the lion's
