Indian Antiquary Vol 48

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

Page 23

FEBRUARY, 1919)
THE ANCIENT GEOGRAPHY OF INDIA
19
increase of knowledge' due to the foundation of the mighty Roman Empire. He "did not carry us much further than Eratosthenes. Indeed in some respects he is even inferior. to his predecessor." He distorted the shape of various countries. But he conceived rightly, noticed the difficulty of correctly representing a curved surface on a plane and perceived that a projection must be to some extent erroneous. As for his account of India, he himself has admitted that it cannot be absolutely true. As an apology he has pointed out the difficulty of getting correct inforination about India owing to its great distance and to the fact that only a few have ever visited it, that those few have visited only a part of it, and that those again were ignorant men unqualified to write an account of the places they have visited. (Strabo in M'Crindle's Ancient India, pp. 17 and 9.)
Pliny, the Naturalist, (A.D. 23-79) dealt with everything under the sun in his long array of books. Having no new theory of his own and having read (as he himself has said) more than 2,000 books, he became an industrious collector from every source. But " his love of the marvellous disposed him to accept far too readily even the most absurd fiction." He is also liable to the charge of occasional carelessness in his citation. His notices of Asia are fuller and indicate an increasing trade between Europe and the East. And the discovery, made at this time by Hippalus (a navigator who made a study of the winds of the Indian Ocean), of the periodic nature of the monsoons enabling the European navigators to take a direct route to India and not a coasting course, became a valuable aid to the commercial relations with India. The hearsay tales of these rough sailors were mixed by Pliny with the accounts of Alexander's companions and of Megasthenes in his geography of India. (VI Book of his Natu.il History).
The increase of trade with India created the demand of a guide-book which was produced in the form of the "Periplus of the Erythræan Sea " by an anonymous writer (first century A.D.). Erythræan sea was the whole expanse of the ocean reaching from the coast of Africa to the utmost boundary of ancient knowledge of the East. It was
o called from the entrance into it by the straits of the Red Sea-thu" Erythra " of the Greeks. This Periplus contains the best account of the commerce carried on from the Red Sea and the coast of Africa to the East Indies during the time that Egypt was a Roman province. It mentions river-mouths, ports, eto., with distances from one another, exports, imports, and such other details as a merchant would most value. The author of the Periplus evidently sailed in person round the coast of India. But owing to the occasional shifting of sea-side-emporta, we cannot now expect to find every place on the coast mentioned by him. As to inland details, he was not correct. Thus he placed Paithan at a distance of twenty days' journey to the south of Barygaza while it is 200 miles to the southeast of it. Thus we cannot trust it as a geographical source for inland knowledge, though we can take its mention of commercial products to be true.
The greatest figure of this period-Ptolemy, whose name marks the highest pitch of perfection in early geography, Klaudios Ptolemaios who flourished in Alexandria (circa A.D. 150) was a musician, mathematician, astronomer and geographer. His work on geography is a sequel to his great "Almagest." It is not a descriptive geography like that of Strabo, but is exclusively a mathematical or cosmical one. His object was to correct and reform the map of the world. So he explained the geometrical principles of geography and pointed out that the only scientific basis on which a map could be constructed must be made on astronomical observations. Hence in describing places he