SINDBAD, well known to Europe as having the history of his voyages incorporated in the Thousand and 011C Nights, but they form in Arabic a distinct and separate work, which Baron Wal kenaer (in Nouvelles Annales des Voyages, tont.
p. 6) regards of equal value with those of Soliman and Abu Said. The voyages belong to the Oth century, when the commerce of the Arabs under the khalifs of Baghdad was at its highest activity. In his first voyage Sindbad reaches the country of the maharaja. This title was given so far back as the 2d century to a Iiindu king, whose monarchy is said to have comprised the greater part of Southern India, the Malay Penin sula, Sumatra, and Java in the Indian Archipelago, and whose title continued to be borne afterwards by one of the sovereigns of the disintegrated empire, who reigned over the kingdom of Bija nagar or Vijayanag,ar. In Sindbad's second voyage inention is made of the kingdom of Mita (the Malay Peninsula according to some), and the tnanner of the preparation of camphor, produced in the mountain forests there, is accurately described. In the third voyage the island of
Silaheth is mentioned. In the fourth he was carried to a country (Malabar) where he found men gathering pepper, and front it he went to the island of Nacous (the Nicobars?) and on to Kela (Quedah or Keydah?). In the fifth voyage he is shipwrecked on the island (Le. country) of the Old Man of the Sea, probably somewhere on the Konkan coast. Thence he crossed the sea to the Maldives, and back again to the pepper country of Malabar, passing on to the peninsula of Cornorin, where he found the aloes- wood, called santy, and afterwards to the pearl fisheries of the Gulf of Manaar, whence he travelled back to Baghdad. In the sixth voyage he visited an island (i.e. country) where were superb trees, of the kinds named malty and comary, and the island of Serendib (Ceylon), which was also the limit of his seventh and last voyage.