Cosmas Was Evidently Personally Acquainted With The West Coast Of The Indian Peninsula.

He enumerates the principal ports, especially those from which pepper was shipped.

This article he describes as a source of great traffic and wealth. The great island of Sielidiba, or Ceylon, was the mart of the commerce of the Indian ocean. Its ports were visited by vessels from Persia, India, Ethiopia, South Arabia, and Tzinitza. If the last country is China, of which there can be little doubt, as he mentions that the Tzinitzae brought to Ceylon silk, aloes, cloves, and sandal-wood, and expressly adds that their country produced silk, - Cosmas is the first author who fully asserts the intercourse by sea between India and China. Besides the foreign vessels which frequented the ports of Ceylon, the native merchants carried on an extensive trade in their own vessels, and on their own account. In addition to pepper from Mali on the coast of Malabar, and the articles already enumerated from China, &c., copper, a wood resembling ebony, and a variety of stuffs, were imported from Calliena, a port shut to the Egyptian Greeks at the time of the Periplus; and from Sindu they imported musk, castoreum, and spikenard. Ceylon was a depot for all these articles, which were exported, together with spiceries, and the precious stones for which this island was famous.

Cosmas expressly states that he was not in Ceylon himself, but that he derived his information respecting it and its trade from Sopatrus, a Greek, who died about the beginning of the sixth century. This, as Dr. Vincent observes, is a date of some importance: for it proves that the trade opened by the Romans from Egypt to India direct, continued upon the same footing from the reign of Claudius and the discovery of Hippalus, down to A.D. 500; by which means we came within 350 years of the Arabian voyage published by Renaudot, and have but a small interval between the limit of ancient geography and that of the moderns.

From this author we first learn that the Persians having overcome the aversion of their ancestors to maritime enterprise, had established a flourishing and lucrative commerce with India. All its principal ports were visited by Persian merchants; and in most of the cities there were churches in which the service was performed by priests, ordained by a Persian archbishop.

We shall conclude our notice of Ceylon, as described by Cosmas, from the account of Sopatrus, with mentioning a few miscellaneous particulars, illustrative of the produce and commerce of the island. The sovereignty was held by two kings; one called the king of the Hyacinth, or the district above the Ghants, where the precious stones were found; the other possessed the maritime districts. In Ceylon, elephants are sold by their height; and he adds, that in India they are trained for war, whereas, in Africa, they are taken only for their ivory. Various particulars respecting the natural history of Ceylon and India, &c. are given, which are very accurate and complete:

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