GEOGRAPHY of India, in ancient times, be came slowly known to the learned inen of the West. In the centuries immediately preceding the Christian era, the conquests of Alexander threw open the interior of Asia as far as the Indus and Afghanistan, and Greek colonies bear hig the conqueror's name were established on the sites of Herat and Kandahar. Megasthenes, the resident ambassador of Seleucus at the court of the Indian monarch Sandracottus, gave to the world a valuable store of information concerning India, of which only fragments remain to us in the works of Arrian and Strabo. But Megasthenes' knowledge of India was apparently limited to the valleys of the Indus and Ganges ; he had little idea of its general configuration. The earliest geographical treatises were called Peripli, or circum navigations, being in fact detailed descriptions of the coasts and ports of some particular sea or seas, and the nations 'bordering on them. Thus there were several Peripli of the Mediterranean, two or three of the Euxine and of the Red Sea, and one of the Indian Ocean. Eratosthenes the astronomer followed Megasthenes in his account of India. And if we compare his map with that of Eferodotus, many improveineuts are apparent. But the great mountain chains of Asia are represented by a stiff, unbroken range, traversing that continent hori zontally in one straight line. The Persian Gulf, the outline of India with its promontory, are strangely distorted towards the ea,st, instead of pointing due south, Taprobane (Ceylon) making its appearance at the foot. In the generation after Eratosthenes, wrote Hipparchus, also an Alexandrine astronomer. He devoted rnueh time to criticising Eratosthenes, and generally unjustly. From Hipparchus to Strabo there arose no geo grapher worthy of mention. The physicist Posi donius thought that the habitable world extends over about half the circumference of the globe, so that there -would only be another half to be traversed by any one sailing with an east wind. to India.' This, too, was the leading idea of Columbus' voyage 1600 years later, and was the germ of the name West Indies.
Pliny gives some details of the direct voyage to India, as it was practised in his day. His account is confirmed by the more than usually accurate Periplus of the Erythman Sea (as the Indian Ocean was then called, the modern Red Sea being then the Arabian Gulf), the work apparently of a trader in those parts. The direct voyage to the western coast of India was a distinct advance upon the practice of the ancient Alexandrian traders, who seldom ventured far beyond the mouth of the Arabian Gulf. Elippalus, a pilot, discovered the secret of the trade winds ; and, following his example, navigators sailed straight to Muziris (perhaps Mangalore). The district of Dachina bades is evidently the Dekhan, and Comar or Cape Cory is Cape Comorin.
Marinus of Tyre wrote 50 years after the date of the Periplus. He had new sources of informa tion for the S. and S.E. of Asia. A miscalculation
of the distance which would be covered by a seven months' journey, led him to place the capital of the Seres, or Chinese, about 3000 miles too far to the east. Such an error is the stranger, as the Chinese historians record the arrival at the court of the emperor Hi-wan-ti, in A.D. 166, of an em bassy fron Antun (Antoninus), king of Ta-thsin (Rome). The Seres had been known even in the Augustan era. as the silk manufacturing nation ; but it was thought they carded the silk off the trees. Thus Virgil relates :— Velleraque ut foliis depectunt tenuia Seres ?' The error was long-lived. Pausanias had some ghmniming of the truth ; but the silk-worm was not known in Europe till Justinian. Just as 3farinus extended Asia to the E., he extended it proportionately to the S.E. Rumours had already reached the author of the Periplus of the Erythrzean Sea concerning Cochin China and the Malay Peninsula. On the strength of these and of other information of his own, Marinus conceived the continent as stretching far away in that direction, and then bending round and joining the S. of Africa. No doubt this tremendous extension of the length of the inhabited world by Marinus, accepted as it was by Ptolemy, by shortening the voyage across the Atlantic to India, was au addi tional incentive to the adventure of Columbus.
Claudius Ptolemazus, who may be said. to be the last great ancient geographer, wrote about A.D. 150. He was a mathematician and astronomer, and regarded geography from a corresponding point of view. Ptolemy's information about the source of the Nile is more correct than Euro peans possessed till Speke and Livingstone. It must have come to him via Zanzibar, down to which point the author of the Periplus of the Erythrtean Sea has some acquaintance with the coast.
Ptolemy places Cape Comorin very little to the south of the mouth of the Indus. 3fassilia and Byzantium are still placed on the same parallel of latitude, and help to distort the whole map of Europe.
The northern provinces of British India occupy a great unbroken plain, which extends from the Himalaya mountains to the Arabian Sea and the Bay of Bengal, and is traversed by the rivers Indus aud Ganges and their tributaries. The central and southern portion projects into the Indian Ocean. It is roughly triangular in shape, and its larger part consists of a hilly plateau or table-land. On the western flank of this plateau are the Aravalli Hills, which separate Rajputana from the plain of the Indus, and the Syhadri or Western Ghats, which rise abruptly from the sea to an elevation that seldom exceeds 4000 feet, though the Neilgherry mountains, near the southern end of the range, rise to 8760 feet. The eastern margin of the plateau is known as the Eastern Ghats. In 3fysore the plateau rises to 3000 feet, but the average altitude of the central parts is about 1500 feet above the sea.