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Persian Gulf in particular, and in part the beauty and adornment of other countries, from Irak and Khurasan as far as Rum and Europe, are derived from Maabar, which is so situated as to be the key of Hind.
Marco himself (III, xx) calls Chdla “the kingdom of Maabar called Soli, which is the best and noblest province in India, and where the best pearls are found. ”
Friar Odoric (chap, iv) says of this kingdom: “The king of the said region is most rich in gold, silver and precious stones, and and there be the fairest unions (pearls) in all the world.”
61. Palaesimundu. — This is the modern Ceylon. According to Lassen (I, 201) this word is the Sanscrit Palisimanta , “abode of the law of piety;” that is, the Dharma of Gautama Buddha. The distinction is of interest; “by the ancients’’ it was called Taprobane , which is the Sanscrit Tamraparni , the name given to it in the Rama- yana. The knowledge concerning Ceylon which reached the west through Onesicritus, Eratosthenes and Strabo, was of the island before its conversion to Buddhism under the missionary zeal of Asoka. Our author speaks of it in the time of its greatest devotion to the new religion, which its neighbors the Dravidian kingdoms of Southern India never fully accepted.
According to McCrindle ( Ancient India, 20, 160), the name Taprobane , or Tamraparni , was given by Vijaya, who led the first Indian colony into the island, and applied to the place where he first landed. The name means “copper-colored;” compare Tamra-lipti , the sea- port town at the mouth of the Ganges. The Pali form, Tambapanni , appears in the inscription of Asoka at Girnar. Another Brahmanical name, Dvipa Rdvana , “island of Ravana,” (the demon-king, kid- napper of Slta in the Ramayana) , is thought by some to be the origin of Taprobane.
Ptolemy notes that the ancient name was Simundu (mistaking the first two syllables of our author’ s word Palaesimundu for the Greek palai), but in his own time Salike, the country of the Sake. Cosmas Indicopleustes called it Sielediba ; which, as McCrindle notes, is through the Pali the true Sanscrit name for the island: Sinhala-dvipa , “island of the lions,” or lion-like men-heroes. “To this source may be traced its other names, Serendib, Sylan, and Ceylon.”
Pliny knows the name Palcesimundus (VI, 24) but applies it to a city “adjoining the harbor that lies facing the south,” and calls it “the most famous city in the island, the king’s place of residence, containing a population of 200,000. ” But there is no harbor on the south coast of Ceylon, and Pliny seems to be confusing his city and
