Onesicritus Affirms That India Is
A Full Third Part Of The World; And Nearchus Says That It Is Four Months
Journey In A Straight Line From West To East.
Pliny, in the 17th Chap, of
his 6th Book, says that India is a third part of the earth, and that
consequently it must be nearer Spain in the western than in the eastern
direction.
The fifth argument which induced the admiral to believe that the distance
in a western direction to India was small, was taken from the opinion of
Alfragranus and his followers, who computed the circumference of the
globe as much less than all other cosmographical writers, as they only
allowed 56-2/3 miles to a degree of longitude. Whence my father inferred,
that the whole globe being small, the extent of that third part which
remained to be discovered must necessarily be proportionally small
likewise; and might therefore be sailed over in a short time. And, as the
eastern bounds of India were not yet discovered, and must lie considerably
nearer us towards the west, he therefore considered that the lands which
he might discover in his proposed expedition westwards might properly be
denominated the Indies. Hence it appears how much Roderick the archdeacon
of Seville was wrong in blaming the admiral for calling those parts the
Indies which were not so. But the admiral did not call them the Indies as
having been seen or discovered by any other person; but as being in his
opinion the eastern part of India beyond the Ganges, to which no
cosmographer had ever assigned any precise limits, or made it to border
upon any other country farther to the east, considering those unknown
parts of eastern India to border on the ocean.
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