Indian Antiquary Vol 48

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

Page 25

FEBRUARY, 1919]
THE ANCIENT GEOGRAPHY OF INDIA
(3) Arabic. As Arabic enterprise extended their commercial relations far beyond the limits of Ptolemy's world, their knowledge was wider than his and far sounder for many regions in the east and south Eastern Asia, Africa). In geography, as in astronomy, they had worked on the old Greek lines, but on them they had built up their own structures by independent researches on mathematical calculations and reports of travellers. But Arabic geography never got beyond a certain point. It never threw up a truly great writer like Strabo or Ptolemy. What they did was to preserve the Greek traditions and to improve it, schile Europe was degrading into barbariem owing to eoclesiastical authority. "Men like Massoudy (A.D. 956), Alboruni or Edrisi (11th century) had a better and more adequate conception than any Christian before A.D. 1300. The construction of maps and globes reached a considerable proficiency in their hand while the Christian ones are almost ridiculous.” Besides the above writers, Sulaiman (A.D. 851), Abu Zaid (A.D. 916), Iba Kurdadba (A.D. 912), Al Itakhri-(A.D. 951) and AlkaswinP(A.D. 1276) have written about India. But the distortion of Indian names in their works perplexes much. Alberuni's knowledge of Sanskrit enabled him to give & transcript as faithful as the use of the Semitio alphabet allowed him. But his geographical account of India is not a new account; it is mainly & synopsis (chaps. 25, 29) of the Hindu accounts-Bhuvana-kosa and Karmavibhaga. He has only added a few notes on them. His original contribution schap. 181 is the account of 16 itineraries which seem to have been communicated to him by the military and civil officers of Mahmûd. Here he mentions directions and distances in farsakh (= 34 miles approx.) [Ibn Batuta in Sindh, JRAS., 87, p. 401 ff. and a map in 1889; Rashuddin's geographical notices of India - Col. Yule in JRAS., 1869-70, p. 340 ff.).
(4) Chinese. Having discovered the use of magnet as early as the third century A.D., the Chinese could make extensive sea-voyages. They are even alleged to have discovered what is now known as the North America in A.D. 500 (Beazly's Dawn of Modern Geography, pp. 489-90; 493). The conversion of this nation into Buddhism which was introduced into their country in A.D. 67 caused a series of pilgrims to visit India—the land of Buddhaand write invaluable accounts of it.
As the Gmeks and the early Arabs visited India either in the track of some invader or as merchants, their accounts chiefly inform us of the military glories of nations or of kings little known or altogether unknown in Indian literature which is deficient in the historical sense, or of the trades of places which have long ago been deserted or buried in the silts of rivers and are no longer remembered. Hence though these sources give much information, they do not contribute much to the study of geography. Rather it coquires much roscaroh to elucidate these foreign accounts.
But the case is different with the Chinese. These pilgrims, saturated with Indian ideas, visited their holy land and described the sacred monuments of places which have been immortalized in Sanskrit or Pali literature, some of which still retain their oelebracy, while the ruins of some others still exist enabling us to understand their Chinese description. This fact explaire the importance of the Chinese sourcer.
of the various Chinese schounts, those of Sung-You and Iwl Song (A.D. 600.; trane Lated in Beal's Records from the Western World, Vol. I; and in Bull. de l'Ecole Tv