But, in the direction of the notable seats of commerce already mentioned, there are numerous others [of less importance] both on the coast and inland, and a country of great extent. Higher up in India, that is, farther to the north, are the White Huns. The one called Gollas when going to war takes with him, it is said, no fewer than two |371 thousand elephants, and a great force of cavalry. He is the lord of India, and oppressing the people forces them to pay tribute. A story goes that this king once upon a time would lay siege to an inland city of the Indians which was on every side protected by water. A long while he sat down before it, until what with his elephants, [339] his horses and his soldiers all the water had been drunk up. He then crossed over to the city dryshod, and took it. These people set great store by the emerald stone and wear it set in a crown. The Ethiopians who procure this stone from the Blemmyes in Ethiopia take it into India and, with the price it fetches, they invest in wares of great value. All these matters I have described and explained partly from personal observation, and partly from accurate inquiries which I made when in the neighbourhood of the different places.
The kings of various places in India keep elephants, such as the King of Orrhotha, and the King of Calliana, and the Kings of Sindu, Sibor and Male. They may have each six hundred, or five hundred, some more, some fewer. Now the King of Sielediba gives a good price both for the elephants and for the horses that he has. The elephants he pays for by cubit measurement. For the height is |372 measured from the ground, and the price is reckoned at so many nomismata for each cubit, fifty it may be, or a hundred, or even more. Horses they bring to him from Persia, and he buys them, exempting the importers of them from paying custom. The kings of the continent tame their elephants, which are caught wild, and employ them in war. They often set elephants to fight with each other for a spectacle to the king. They keep the two combatants apart by means of a great cross beam of wood fastened to two upright beams and reaching up to their chests. A number of men are stationed on this and that side to prevent the animals meeting at close quarters, but at the same time to instigate them to fight one another. Then the beasts thrash each other with their trunks till one of them gives in. The Indian elephants are not provided with large tusks, but should they have such, the Indians saw them off, that their weight may not encumber them in action. The Ethiopians do not understand the art of taming elephants; but should the king wish to have one or two for show, they capture them when young and subject them to training. Now the country abounds with them, and they have large tusks which arc exported by sea from Ethiopia even into India and Persia and the Homerite country and the Roman dominion. These particulars I have derived from what I have heard.
The river Phison separates all the countries of India [lying along its course] from the country of the Huns. In scripture the Indian region is called Euilat (Havilah). For it is thus written in Genesis: Now the river goeth out from Eden to water Paradise. And from there it was parted and became four heads. The name of the first is Phison (Pishon); that is it which compasseth the whole land of Euilat, where there is gold ; and the gold of that land is good; there is the |373 carbuncle and the jasper stone ; where the writer clearly calls the country Euilat. This Euilat, moreover, is of the race of [340] Ham. For thus again it is written: The sons of Ham, Cush and Misraim, Phut and Caraan the sons of Cush, Sabâ and Euilat; that is the Homerites and Indians, for Sabâ is situated in the Homerite country, and Euilat is in India. For the Persian Gulf divides those two countries. And that country has gold according to sacred scripture. It has also the pezerôs which Scripture calls anthrax (carbuncle) and the jasper stone, by which it designates the leek-green stone. Clearly therefore does divine scripture, as being really divine, relate these things, even as the whole of our treatise goes to show.
[Footnotes renumbered and placed at the end]
1. In the Codex the pictures of the animals and plants precede the description of them. See the Plates in the Appendix.
2. Salt states that the name, by which the rhinoceros (two-horned) is designated to this day all over Abyssinia, is absolutely the same as that given by Cosmas. Hence he was convinced that the language spoken at the Court of Axum was Gheez.
3. The animal, however, as depicted by Cosmas is more like a horse than a rhinoceros. A description of the rhinoceros and its mode of fighting with the elephant is given by Agatharchides in his work on the Erythraean.
4. Cosmas here uses the Latin word: palati/w .
5. This is evidently the yak, the Bos grunniens of naturalists.
6. The Chowries or fly-flappers used in India, particularly on occasions of state and parade. Tupha is the Turkish name of the horsetail standard.
7. It is little more than three feet in length.
8. The cyst of the male, which is about the size of a hen's egg, contains a clotted, oily, friable matter, dark-brown in colour, and this is the true musk.
9. The first author who has given a description of the unicorn is Ctesias of Cnidos, a physician who spent seventeen years at the Court of Artaxerxes Mnêmôn, where he heard all manner of marvellous stories about India. The one-horned animal which he describes under the name of the wild ass of India, and which Aristotle speaks of as the Indian ass, is best identified with the rhinoceros, notwithstanding all the errors of the description.
10. Lobo, in his history of Abyssinia, describes the unicorn as resembling a beautiful horse, and in the picture of it by Cosmas its body is not unlike that of a horse. For a remark on this picture, see Yule's Marco Polo, vol. ii, 273.
11. Gr. ei0j krhmno_n e0fa&lletai, kai\ r(i/ptei e(auto_n e0k tou~ u#youj . Montfaucon's rendering of these words: "deorsum in praecipitia sese conjicit," does not give their full import.
12. This is said to hold true of the oryx.
13. Psalm xxii, 21. The Revised Version has here: from the horns of the wild ox. To the influence of the Septuagint Version, which rendered the Hebrew word for the wild ox (reem) by unicorn, may be traced most of the fables about the unicorn.
14. Psalm xxix, 6.
15. Numb. xxiii, 22.
16. Gr. litrw~n . This word is the Sicelo-Greek form of the Latin libra. The coinage system of the Dorians of Sicily was borrowed from Italy.
17. In Alexandria----and probably in his earlier years, when he was a merchant.
18. "Possibly," says Yule, "Cosmas has confounded the cocoa-nut milk with the coco-palm toddy. For sura is the name applied on the Malabar coast to the latter. Roncho may represent lanha, the name applied there to the nut when ripe, but still soft."
19. Gr. kata_ qa&lattan . Montfaucon renders ad oram maris "on the sea shore."
20. Gr. w(j xoi/rou, melamyo&u de\ kai\ bromw~dej . Montfaucon in his rendering overlooks the de\ , and thus makes Cosmas say that pork is black and foul-smelling. bromw~dej is an incorrect form of brwmw~dej , an epithet applied by Strabo to the district of Puteoli, which was noted for its foul smells.
21. Ceylon has been known by many names. In Sanskrit works it is called Lanka, an appellation unknown to the Greeks. Megasthenes, who wrote his work on India about 300 B.C., calls it Taprobanê, a compound which is generally regarded as a transliteration of Tâmraparnî, copper-coloured leaf, a name given to the island by its Indian conqueror, Vijaya. This name is found in its Pâli form, Tambaparni, in Asôka's inscription on the Girnâr rock. Some are, however, of opinion that Taprobanê is a slightly-altered form of Dwîpa-Râvana (Island of Râvana), as the country was called by Brahmanical writers. From the Periplûs and Ptolemy we learn that Taprobanê was anciently called Simoundou, but in his own time, Salike, i.e., the country of the Salai. Here we have in a slightly-altered form the Siele-diva of Cosmas, for diva is but a form of Dwipa, the Sanskrit for island. Both salai and siele have their common source in sihalam (pronounced as Silam), the Pâli form of the Sanskrit sinhala , a lion. To the same source may be traced all its other names, such as Serendivus, Sirlediba, Serendib, Zeilan, Sailan, and Ceylon. As there are no lions in Ceylon, sinhala must be taken to mean a lion-like man----a hero----the hero Vijaya.