The Principal Points In The Geography Of Asia, As Given By Ptolemy, Respect
The Coasts Of India, The Route To The Seres, And The Caspian Sea.
His
delineation of India is equally erroneous with his delineation of the
British Isles:
According to him, it stretches in a right line from west to
east, a little to the south of a line drawn between the Ganges and the
Indus. He possessed, however, information respecting places in the farther
peninsula of India, the locality of several of which, by comparing his
names with the Sanscrit, may be traced with considerable certainty. He
assigns to the island of Ceylon a very erroneous locality, arising from his
error respecting the form of India, and likewise an extent far exceeding
the truth. He is the first author, however, who mentions the seven mouths
of the Ganges. The route to the Seres, which he describes, has been already
noticed: it is remarkable that the latitude which he assigns to his Sera
metropolis, is within little more than a degree of the latitude of Pekin,
which, in the opinion of Dr. Vincent, is one of the most illustrious
approximations to truth that ancient geography affords. His description of
Arabia is, on the whole, accurate; he has, however, greatly diminished the
extent of the Arabian Gulf, and by at the same time increasing the size of
the Persian, he has necessarily given an erroneous form to this part of
Asia. The ancient opinion of Herodotus, that the Caspian was a sea by
itself, unconnected with any other, which was overlooked or disbelieved by
Strabo, Arrian, &c. was adopted by Ptolemy, but he erroneously describes it
as if its greatest length was from east to west.
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