Sina were, either in whole or in part, the inhabitants of Modern China. But D'ANVILLE, who largely reduced the world of the ancients, fixed the Magnus Sinus in the Gulf of Siam, and allowed only a limited navigation along the coast of Cambodia. M. GOSSELIN, with bolder scepticism, fixes the Sina on the coast of Siam, and never allows the ancients to have passed' the Straits of Malacca.

In comparing these three statements, there cannot, I apprehend, be the smallest hesitation in preferring the one last mentioned. There positively is, beyond India, no coast, besides that of Siam, which has an ocean on the west. PTOLEMY mentions no island of a magnitude which could at all correspond to that of Sumatra. Even the Golden Chersonese, though it may suggest at first sight the peninsula of Malacca, will, when its details are examined, be found better to correspond to that of Ava and Pegu. This solution having been acceded to by Mr PINKERTON, by Dr VINCENT, and by all the eminent geographers of the present age, its correctness may probably be considered as a point finally decided.

We proceed, then, to the question respecting the Seres, a people who, by their mysterious remoteness, their wealth and civilization, and the peculiarities of their national character, excited an extraordinary interest in the ancient world. The information of the Greeks and Romans respecting their territory, as well as a long series of intervening regions, was chiefly derived from a great mercantile caravan, which, setting out from the Bosphorus, traversed Asia from west to east, till it arrived on the frontier of Serica. This communication does not appear to have been formed, till about the first century, during the most extended period of Roman power. Its object was to supply that empire with the luxury of silk, the use of which, from being a rare appendage of greatness, had become common to

almost

almost every class of society. The reports of the caravan merchants were collected and committed to writing by MARINUS of Tyre, whose compositions have perished; but the corrected substance of them is found in the great geographical work of PTOLEMY. The statements of PTOLEMY, therefore, combined with some supplementary information from PLINY and AMMIANUS, must form the authority on which this question is to be decided.

now.

The earliest modern opinion which I find stated upon this subject, is, that Serica was Cambalu, or the kingdom of the Great Khan, that is, the original dominion of Zingis. China, then, was the Sinarum Regio. Before the time of D'ANVILLE, however, the prevalent sentiment came to be, that the northern part of China was the seat of the Seres, the southern that of the Sinæ. VOSSIUS goes farther, and declares that he who doubts if the ancient Seres be the modern Chinese, may doubt as reasonably if the sun that shone then be the sun that shines As that learned and acute writer, however, has not explained the ground on which so peremptory an opinion was formed, it has not met with the attention which perhaps it merited. D'ANVILLE was the first who applied to this question that careful and systematic analysis which forms the only true mode of solution. Having brought the Sinæ to Cambodia, he carried westward also the position of the Seres. He assigned to them an extensive region of eastern Tartary, reaching from the territory of the Eygurs, or Igours, to the north-western frontier of China, of which it included only the projecting corner of the province of Chensi. Mr PINKERTON goes still farther, and places Serica in Little Bucharia. But M. GOSSELIN, with his usual boldness, has struck out an entirely new path. He finds Serica in the north of India, in the district of Serinagur, including a portion of Thibet.

The

The writers now mentioned, however widely discordant as to other particulars, seem to agree in one point, that of treating with contempt, and almost with ridicule, the ancient idea which extends Serica to China. Dr VINCENT alone, who thinks always for himself, has declared his adherence to the latter opinion. His subject, however, has led him to rest almost entirely on the maritime testimonies, which do not, I confess, appear to me so decisive as to the learned writer. They are contained in the narratives of ARRIAN and COSMAS INDICOPLEUSTES, persons who never passed Indostan, and collected only vague and inaccurate reports of the regions beyond. The testimony of such writers, it would appear, can never be put in competition with that collected from a company of merchants, who, if they did not enter Serica, at least habitually trafficked on its frontier. I certainly concur, therefore, with D'ANVILLE and the other geographers, in considering PTOLEMY as the main authority by whom the question must be decided. But, in adopting their premises, I have been led pretty confidently to a conclusion the opposite of theirs. The works of PTOLEMY and his cotemporaries appear to me to contain a series of statements which fix down, in a very decided manner, Serica as China. As results quite opposite have been drawn from every analysis yet made of these statements, and as they appear to me to involve a view of the entire geography of central Asia, widely different from any at present received, these circumstances, I hope, may plead my excuse for the unexpected length to which the discussion has extended..

Considering the decidedly opposite opinion which has been held by the most eminent geographers of the present age, I should perhaps have hesitated in laying before the Society the result of my inquiries, had they not been so strongly supported.

by

open

by recent discoveries in the north and north-west of India. These appear to have not only furnished new materials for the solution of the question, but to have laid radical errors, which have hitherto darkened the view of modern inquirers. When these are removed, I am persuaded that the reports of the ancient writers will be found clear, consistent, and satisfactory, to a degree beyond what has yet been suspected.

The principle hitherto proceeded upon, by all modern geographers, is, that provided their system appears to be supported by a few names and particulars found in PTOLEMY, they are at perfect liberty to impute to him any errors, however enormous, which may be necessary to fill up their hypothesis. M. GOSSELIN broadly lays down the maxim, that all precise knowledge, on the part of the ancients, terminated with the range of the Beloor; and D'ANVILLE repeatedly warns his readers against expecting more than a very vague and general coincidence between the actual features of the country and PTOLEMY's description of them. This last, he observes, must be corrected by the more copious and accurate information of modern times. My own researches, on the contrary, have led to a pretty decided conviction, that the ancients knew more respecting these regions, than has been, or is still known to the moderns; that they knew more consequently than those very eminent geographers who have treated their authority so lightly. I believe, if the statements of PTOLEMY be taken simply as they stand, and be carefully collected and arranged, they will be found to exhibit correctly all the grand outlines of Central and Eastern Asia.

Considering the subject in this view, it may be advantageous, before entering upon the proposed analysis, to notice some preliminary facts, which may throw light on the general degree of knowledge possessed by the ancient writers respecting this

part

part of the world. These are furnished by the very laudable efforts already alluded to, made by our countrymen in the East, to improve the geography of India, and the neighbouring regions, particularly by the recent mission to Caubul. A number of leading points have thus been satisfactorily settled; and the means are afforded of forming a comparative estimate between PTOLEMY's information and that hitherto possessed by modern geographers.

One of the leading questions in Indian geography, has always been that relating to the course of the five great riversthat water the Punjab. It was ascertained by the gentlemen attached to the Caubul mission, that these, after forming two great branches, at length united into one, and poured their waters into the Indus by that common channel. They had uniformly been represented before as falling by two separate and somewhat distant channels. This is justly noticed by a learned writer in the Edinburgh Review, as one of the most important recent geographical discoveries. It certainly was such to the moderns: but it merely restored the delineation which had been given, nearly two thousand years before, by PTOLEMY. His map exhibits the five rivers, which, after forming two great branches, unite and fall into the Indus, precisely in the manner described by Mr ELPHINSTONE. PLINY's testimony is to the same effect; he describes the Hydaspes falling into the Indus, quatuor alios amnes afferentem.

In endeavouring to prove the imperfection of PTOLEMY'S knowledge relative to the north of India, M. GOSSELIN pointedly refers to his placing the source of the Ganges in the Imaus (Himalaya) instead of deriving it from Thibet. Here also, however, PTOLEMY happens to be in the right. In 1808, the Supreme Government of Bengal, at the instance of the late Colonel COLEBROOKE, sent a mission to explore the origin of VOL. VIII. P. I.

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