CONCERNING ANCIENT INDIA. 79

Hitherto I have confined my researches con-cerning the knowledge which the ancients had ofIndia, to the continent; I return now to con-sider the discoveries which they had made, ofthe islands situated in various parts of the oceanwith which it is surrounded, and begin, as Iproposed, with Taprobane, the greatest and mostvaluable of them. This island lay so directlyin the course of navigators who ventured beyondCape Comorin, especially when, according tothe ancient mode of sailing, they seldom ven-tured far from the coast, that its position , oneshould have thought, must have been determinedwith the utmost precision. There is, however,hardly any point in the geography of the ancientsmore undecided and uncertain. Prior to the ageof Alexander the Great,, the name of Taprobanewas unknown in Europe. In consequence of £heactive curiosity with which he explored everycountry that he subdued or visited, some informa-tion concerning it seems to have been obtained.From his time , almost every writer on geogra-phy has mentioned it, but their accounts of itare so various, and often so contradictory,’ thatwe can hardly believe them to be describing thesame island. Strabo, the earliest writer now ex-tant , from whom we have any particular accountof it, affirms that it was as large as Britain, andsituated at the distance of seven days, accordingto some reports, and according to other, oftwenty days tailing from the southern extremity ofthe Indian peninsula; from which, contrary to what

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