These extravagant ideas of the magnitude of Ceylon were not entirely removed till many centuries later.  The Arabian geographers, Massoudi, Edrisi, and Aboulfeda, had no accurate data by which to correct the errors of their Greek predecessors.  The maps of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries repeated their distortions[1]; and Marco Polo, in the fourteenth century, who gives the island the usual exaggerated dimensions, yet informs us that it is now but one half the size it had been at a former period, the rest having been engulfed by the sea.[2]

[Footnote 1:  For an account of Ceylon as it is figured in the Mappe-mondes of the Middle Ages, see the Essai of the VICOMTE DE SANTAREM, Sur la Cosmographie et Cartographie, tom. iii. p. 335, &c.]

[Footnote 2:  MARCO POLO, p. 2, c. 148.  A later authority than Marco Polo, PORCACCHI, in his Isolario, or “Description of the most celebrated Islands in the World,” which was published at Venice in A.D. 1576, laments his inability even at that time to obtain any authentic information as to the boundaries and dimensions of Ceylon; and, relying on the representations of the Moors, who then carried on an active trade around its coasts, he describes it as lying under the equinoctial line, and possessing a circuit of 2100 miles.  “Ella gira di circuito, secondo il calcole fatto da Mori, che modernamente l’hanno nauigato d’ogn’intorno due mila et cento miglia et corre maestro e sirocco; et per il mezo d’essa passa la linea equinottiale et e el principio del primo clima al terzo paralello.”—­L’Isole piu Famose del Monde, descritte da THOMASO PORCACCHI, lib. iii. p. 30.]

Such was the uncertainty thrown over the geography of the island by erroneous and conflicting accounts, that grave doubts came to be entertained of its identity, and from the fourteenth century, when the attention of Europe was re-directed to the nascent science of geography, down to the close of the seventeenth, it remained a question whether Ceylon or Sumatra was the Taprobane of the Greeks.[1]

[Footnote 1:  GIBBON states, that “Salmasius and most of the ancients confound the islands of Ceylon and Sumatra.”—­Decl. and Fall ch. xl.  This is a mistake.  Saumaise was one of those who maintained a correct opinion; and, as regards the “ancients,” they had very little knowledge of Further India to which Sumatra belongs; but so long as Greek and Roman literature maintained their influence, no question was raised as to the identity of Ceylon and Taprobane.  Even in the sixth century Cosmas Indicopleustes declares unhesitatingly that the Sielediva of the Indians was the Taprobane of the Greeks.