Jain Journal 1977 10

Author(s): Jain Bhawan Publication
Publisher: Jain Bhawan Publication

Page 26

60
Though one may yet search for an exact reference of the western hemisphere in ancient Indian literature there are accounts which deserve to be examined in this respect. The lure of gold attracted in the past Indian mariners to the idyllic lands in South-East Asia and the islands of the East Indies. The names like Suvarnabhumi and Suvarnadvipa gave a reality to the dream and experience of early voyagers. Could this land of gold i.e. Suvarnabhumi even call the more determined missionaries and sea-captains to sail beyond the eternal waves of the Pacific? It is the same gold which inspired the Spaniards after Columbus. On linguistic grounds Schmidt has opined as follows:
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"In the same way as I have presented here the results of my investigations on movements of peoples who starting from India towards the east, at first spread themselves over the whole length of Indo-Chinese peninsula, and then over all the islands of the Pacific Ocean upto its eastern extremity,..." (R. C. Majumdar : Suvarṇadvipa, pp.15-16). In this perspective may be recalled that Suvarnabhumi was essentially a legendary country like Eldorado. R. C. Majumdar views at it from the sources critically surveyed by him,
"It seems to be quite clear, therefore, that Suvarnabhumi was used primarily as a vague general designation of an extensive region, but, in course of time, different parts of it come to be designated by the additional epithets of islands, peninsula or city". (Suvarnadvipa, p.46). By referring to territories called Chryse (gold) beyond the Ganges as the last part of the inhabited world the Periplus of the Erythraean Sea, a Greek log-book of the 1st century A.D., seemingly recalls a myth of earlier times. Though This or China is located to the north of Suvarnabhumi the descriptions tend to hid a tradition by a golden haze.