The Brahmans designated it by the epithet of “the resplendent,” and in their dreamy rhapsodies extolled it as the region of mystery and sublimity[1]; the Buddhist poets gracefully apostrophised it as “a pearl upon the brow of India;” the Chinese knew it as the “island of jewels;” the Greeks as the “land of the hyacinth and the ruby;” the Mahometans, in the intensity of their delight, assigned it to the exiled parents of mankind as a new elysium to console them for the loss of Paradise; and the early navigators of Europe, as they returned dazzled with its gems, and laden with its costly spices, propagated the fable that far to seaward the very breeze that blew from it was redolent of perfume.[2] In later and less imaginative times, Ceylon has still maintained the renown of its attractions, and exhibits in all its varied charms “the highest conceivable development of Indian nature."[3]

[Footnote 1:  “Ils en ont fait une espece de paradis, et se sont imagine que des etres d’une nature angelique les habitaient.”—­ALBYROUNI, Traite des Eres, &c.; REINAUD, Geographie d’Aboulfeda, Introd. sec. iii. p. ccxxiv.  The renown of Ceylon as it reached Europe in the seventeenth century is thus summed up by PURCHAS in His Pilgrimage, b.v.c. 18, p. 550:—­“The heauens with their dewes, the ayre with a pleasant holesomenesse and fragrant freshnesse, the waters in their many riuers and fountaines, the earth diuersified in aspiring hills, lowly vales, equall and indifferent plaines, filled in her inward chambers with mettalls and jewells, in her outward court and vpper face stored with whole woods of the best cinnamons that the sunne seeth; besides fruits, oranges, lemons, &c. surmounting those of Spaine; fowles and beasts, both tame and wilde (among which is their elephant honoured by a naturall acknowledgement of excellence of all other elephants in the world).  These all have conspired and joined in common league to present unto Zeilan the chiefe of worldly treasures and pleasures, with a long and healthfull life in the inhabitants to enjoye them.  No marvell, then, if sense and sensualitie have heere stumbled on a paradise.”]

[Footnote 2:  The fable of the “spicy breezes” said to blow from Arabia and India, is as old as Ctesias; and is eagerly repeated by Pliny? lib. xii. c. 42.  The Greeks borrowed the tale from the Hindus, who believe that the Chandana or sandal-wood imparts its odours to the winds; and their poete speak of the Malayan as the westerns did of the Sabaean breezes.  But the allusion to such perfumed winds was a trope common to all the discoverers of unknown lands:  the companions of Columbus ascribed them to the region of the Antilles; and Verrazani and Sir Walter Raleigh scented them off the coast of Carolina.  Milton borrowed from Diodorus Siculus, lib. iii. c. 46, the statement that: 

“Far off at sea north-east winds blow Sabaean odours from the spicy shore Of Araby the Blest.” (P.L. iv. 163.)

Ariosto employs the same imaginative embellishment to describe the charms of Cyprus: