Page:Ancient India as described by Ptolemy - John Watson McCrindle.djvu/206

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figures he has taken this to be an island lying between Cape Kumârî (Comorin) and Taprobanê (Ceylon).

Kôry:—It has already been noticed that Kôry was both the name of the Island of Râmêśvaram and of the promontory in which it terminated.


Cap. 2.

Position of India beyond the Ganges.

1. India beyond the Ganges is bounded on the west by the river Ganges; on the north by the parts of Skythia and Sêrikê already described; on the east by the Sinai along the Meridian, which extends from the furthest limits of Sêrikê to the Great Gulf, and also by this gulf itself, on the south by the Indian Ocean and part of the Green Sea which stretches from the island of Menouthias in a line parallel to the equator, as far as the regions which lie opposite to the Great Gulf.

India beyond the Ganges comprised with Ptolemy not only the great plain between that river and the Himâlayas, but also all south-eastern Asia, as far as the country of the Sinai (China). Concerning these vast regions Ptolemy is our only ancient authority. Strabo's knowledge of the east was limited in this direction by the Ganges, and the author of the Periplûs, who was a later and intermediate writer, though he was aware that inhabited countries stretched far beyond that limit even onwards to the eastern end of the world, appears to have learned little more