described by PTOLEMY, the author of the Periplus, and by MARCIANUS of Heraclaea. Palai-simundu, LASSEN conjectures to be derived from the Sanskrit Pali-simanta, “the head of the sacred law,” from Ceylon having become the great centre of the Buddhist faith (De Taprob., p. 16; Indische Alter. vol. i. p. 200); and Salike he regards merely as a seaman’s corruption of “Sinhala or Sihala,” the name chosen by the Singhalese themselves, and signifying “the dwelling place of lions.”  BURNOUF suggests whether it may not be Sri-Lanka, or “Lanka the Blessed.”

Sinhala, with the suffix of “diva,” or “dwipa” (island), was subsequently converted into “Silan-dwipa” and “Seren-diva,” whence the “Serendib” of the Arabian navigators and their romances; and this in later times was contracted into Zeilan by the Portuguese, Ceylan by the Dutch, and Ceylon by the English.  VINCENT, in his Commentary on the Periplus of the Erythraean Sea, vol. ii. p. 493, has enumerated a variety of other names borne by the island; and to all these might be further added those assigned to it in China, in Siam, in Hindustan, Kashmir, Persia, and other countries of the East.  The learned ingenuity of BOCHART applied a Hebrew root to expound the origin of Taprobane (Geogr.  Sac. lib. ii. ch. xxviii.); but the later researches of TURNOUR, BURNOUF, and LASSEN have traced it with certainty to its Pali and Sanskrit origin.]

[Footnote 2:  GOSSELIN, in his Recherches sur la Geographie des Anciens, tom. iii. p. 291, says that Onesicritus, the pilot of Alexander’s fleet, “avoit visite la Taprobane pendant un nouveau voyage qu’il eut ordre de faire.”  If so, he was the first European on record who had seen the island; but I have searched unsuccessfully for any authority to sustain this statement of GOSSELIN.]

So vague and uncertain was the information thus obtained, that STRABO, writing upwards of two centuries later, manifests irresolution in stating that Taprobane was an island[1]; and POMPONIUS MELA, who wrote early in the first century of the Christian era, quotes as probable the conjecture of HIPPARCHUS, that it was not in reality an island, but the commencement of a south-eastern continent[2]; an opinion which PLINY records as an error that had prevailed previous to his own time, but which he had been enabled to correct by the information received from the ambassador who had been sent from Ceylon to the Emperor Claudius.[3]

[Footnote 1:  STRABO, l. ii. c.i.s. 14, c.v.s. 14, [Greek:  einai phasi neson]; l. xv. c.i.s. 14.  OVID was more confident, and sung of—­

  “. . . .  Syene
  Aut ubi Taprobanen Indica cingit aqua.”
  Epst. ex Ponto, l. 80]

[Footnote 2:  “Taprobanen aut grandis admodum insula aut prima pars orbis alterius Hipparcho dicitur.”—­P.  MELA, iii. 7.  “Dubitare poterant juniores num revera insula esset quam illi pro veterum Taprobane habebant, si nemo eousque repertus esset qui eam circumnavigasset:  sic enim de nostra quoque Brittania dubitatum est essetne insula antequam illam circumnavigasset Agricola.”—­Dissertatio de AEtate et Amtore Peripli Maris Erythraei; HUDSON, Geographiae Veter.  Scrip.  Grac.  Min.., vol. i. p. 97.]