________________
MAY, 1926 )
PALOURA-DANTAPURA
97
stage as ab ostio Gangis ad promontorium Calingôn et oppidum Dandagula DCXXV M. passuum, i.e., "from the mouth of the Ganges to the promontory of the Kalingas and the fortified town of Dandagula, 625000 paces." The promontory of the Kaliūgas, which serves as so clear a guide-mark to the line of the coast, is evidently, and beyond all doubt, the place where Ptolemy locates the starting point of the deep-sea route to the Golden Peninsula, and which marks for him a sudden alteration in the geographical direction of the coast. The neighbouring town (oppidum) can be none other than the Paloura of Ptolemy, otherwise called Dantapura ; and in Pliny's title of Dandagula it is easy to recognize the name of Dantakära. The distance of 625,000 paces, chosen by Pliny from among the discordant data of the itineraries, is equivalent to 3645 stadia. Ptolemy reckons 500 stadia to a degree at the equator, and therefore also on each of the meridians. Accordingly, by Ptolemy's reckoning, the distance from the Ganges to Dandagula would correspond approximately to 6° 36'. Between Paloura and the westernmost mouth of the Ganges, Ptolemy marks a distance of 7° 50' in longitude (136° 40'-144° 30') and of 6° 55' in latitude (11° 20'-18° 15'). Apparently, therefore, Ptolemy was working on data closely allied to the approximate calculations of Pliny; without the combination of ideas which forced him to wholesale misconception of outline, he would probably have been able to produce a tolerably faithful representation of this part of the coastline. The delta of the Ganges is situated near the 22° degree N; the region, in which one must search for Dantapura and in which local tradition still locates the fort (oppidum) of Dantavaktra, lies in proximity to Chicacole and Kaliūga patam, 'the city of the Kalingas,' a little to the north of the 180 degree; the distance between these two places, following the shore-line, is from 5 to 6 degrees.
"In a work which is included in Etudes asiatiques, published by the French School of the Far East on the occasion of its twenty-fifth anniversary, I have pointed out that the aphetérion eis Khrusen (starting-point for the golden Chersonese) of Ptolemy is identical with the Charitrapura of Hiuen-tsang and of various Sanskrit texts. I should like to draw attention to another feature, common both to the Greek and Chinese writers. As we have seen, Ptolemy locates the apheté rion at a promontory where the coast bends sharply from the direction W.N.W. by E.S.E. to the direction S by N, and then is inflected eastwards, separating the Argaric and Gangetic gulfs. The Charitrapura of Hiuen-tsang is situated on the southwestern boundary of the kingdom of Orissa and to the north-east of the kingdom of Malakuta. Towards the south-west, Orissa borders on the kingdom of Kong-yu-t'o or Kongoda, which forms a province of Southern Kosala and corresponds with the modern Ganjam District. “The frontiers of this kingdom” writes Hiuen-tsang “include several dozens of little towns which are near some hills and are situated at the meeting of two seas."-This, at any rate, is Júlien's rendering of the passage, which Watters criticises as follows "The word two does not appear in the original Chinese text; the term hai-kiao here signifies the meeting of the sea and the land. The pilgrim wished his readers to know that the towns at one end joined the hills and at the other were situated on the coast." I do not propose to join in this controversy on the Chinese translation, but I feel bound to remark that the word kiao signifies, as a general rule, crossing, exchange, mingling,' and that the expression situated at the crossing (or intermingling) of the seas' is a very apt rendering of the geographical idea which Ptolemy adopted for the aphelerion.
"To find a sufficiently conspicuous promontory along the eastern coast, one has to travel as far as point Palmyras, which marks the beginning of the Gangetic delta, situated in 20° 44' 40" N. and 87° 2 E, to the north of the mouth of the Mahanadi. But Ptolemy locates the aphetérion well to the south of the latter river, which he styles the Manadas, half-way between its mouth and the mouth of the Maisolos, by which latter term he signifies both the Godavari and the Kistna. Moreover, the deflected current which, during the south-west monsoon, runs from the coast of India to the coast of Burma, breaks away from the Indian coast in
