Indian Antiquary Vol 48

Author(s): Richard Carnac Temple, Devadatta Ramkrishna Bhandarkar
Publisher: Swati Publications

Page 21

ASRUARY, 1919)
THE ANCIENT GEOGRAPHY OF INDIA
Hwen Tsiang meant East when he wrote West, or that instead of a thousand he meant a hundred. But one must not do this without any strong proof.
(d) He estimated Ptolemy's geography to be of much value (C. 4.G., Preface, vii). But it is otherwise.
(e) Cunningham himself has, in his voluminous reports (ASR.) in 23 volumes (the first two only of which were written, though not published, before the publication of his Geography), embodying his researches occupying a period of more than & quarter of a century, abandoned many of the identifications stated in his Geography. And the researches of various other scholars-M'Crindle, Stein, Fleet, Smith, Watters, &c. --have shown that not only are many of his identifications doubtful but that some are positively wrong.
6. H. Yule.-His annotations on Marco Polo; his map of Ancient India from classical sources in Dr. W. Smith's Illas of Ancient Geography (1875); ete.
7. Dr. A'Crindle, the translator of Megasthenes, Arrian, Strabo, Periplus, Ptolemy, &c.--His geographical notes give a summary of 1-1.
3. Mr. Pargiter.-Geography of Rama's Exile (JR.18., 1894), Eastern Indian Nations (JASB., 1895), Eng. translation of Markanleya Purana, Nations at the time of the Great War (JRAS., 1908).
9. Babu Nabin Chandra Div.-GBiography of Asie compilal from the Ramayanı (1896). Of no importance.
10. Vandalal Dey-Geographical Dictionary of Ancient and Medieval India: (A dictionary au l not systematic treatise. Grounds of identifications and references are generally not given.)
11. Prof. F. Pulle.-Cartography of India in the Studi Italiani di Filologia IndoIranica, Vols. IV & V. 12. Dr. M. Collins.--The Geographicul Dale of the Raghuox nsa and Dasakumaracharita. (2) Sources of the Historical Geography of Ancient India.
1.-FOREIGN.1 -. -- . (1) Classical. Though a few references to India may be gathered from the Phoenician and Persian sources, they are not of any importance. Hence of the foreign accounts we have first to turn to that of the Greeks. Their earliest notion of the earth was that it was flat and round disc encircled by the mighty river-Ocean. Homer and his contemporaries knew very little beyond Greece, the Archipelago, Asia Minor, Egypt, Sicily and a part of Italy. But the colonizing spirit expanded their knowledge; and the first introduction of maps, at least in Greece, and the discovery of an instrument to fix the latitude by Anaximander, a disciple of Thales, helped this expansion.
Hecatosus (500 B.c.), the first Greek geographer, knew of two continents onlyEurope and Asia (a part of which was Africa). His “Survey of the World” is lost,
# Fleet in d, 1901, p. 34 f.; The Evolution of Geograp'y by J. Keane, London, 1899; The Dawn of Modern Geography by C. R. Beazly. London, 1897; etc.