COSMAS, called from his maritime experierux.s Indicopleustes, was apparently an Alexandrian Greek, who wrote between 530 and 550. He was the first Greek or Roman writer who speaks of China in a matter-of-fact manner, by a name which no one has ever disputed to mean China.
Ile NV t1.3 monk when he composed the work biell has come down to us, but in his earlier days he had been a merchant,. and in that capacity had sailed on the Red Sea and the Indian Ocean, isiting the coasts of Ethiopia, and apparently also the Persian Gulf, and the western coasts of India, as well as Ceylon. His book was written at Alexandria (A.D. 535), mad is termed Topographia Christiana (Universal Christian Topography), the great object of it being to show that the tabernacle in the wilderness is a pattern or model of the uni verse. Sir J. E. Tennant (Ceylon, i. p. 542) says that Cosmas got his accounts of Ceylon from Sopatrus, whom he met at Adule ; a.nd Lassen ascribes all Cosmas sa.ys of India to the same authority (ii. 773). But they have not given the ground of these opinions. One anecdote is ascribed to Sopatrus, no more. He gives a clear account of the commerce between India and Eg,ypt in his day. He says that the produce of Kalliana was brass, sesamine logs, and cotton stuffs ; of Sindus, castorin and spikenard ; of Male (Malabar), pepper ; and that from Tzinitza (China) and other countries beyond Sielediba or Taprobaue, came silk, aloe-wood, cloves, nutmegs, a,nckandal-wood. Writing of the island of Tapro
bane in Further India, Cosmas says where the Indian Sea is, there is a church of Christians, with clergy and a congregation of believers, though I know not if there be any Christians further on in that direction. And such also is the case in the land called Male, where the pepper grows. And in the place called Kalliana there is a bishop appointed from Persia, as well as in the island which they call the Isle of Dioseoris, in the same Indian Sea. The inhabitants of that island speak Greek, having been originally settled there by the Ptolemies, who ruled after Alexander of Macedon. This Male is evidently Malabar, probably the Kalliena of the Periplus, which Lassen identifies with the still existing Kalyani on the mainland near I3ombay. Father Paolino, indeed, will have it to be a place still called Kalyanapuri on the banks of a river two miles north of Mangalore, but unreasonably.—Via Galle, Indie Orientate, p. 100, in Yule, Cathay, i. p. 171.