Posted on Friday 9 March 2007 to unknown

In 550 AD, during the reign of Emperor Justinian, a monk who was cloistered at a remote monastery in the Sinai desert wrote a curious book about the topology of the earth and the universe. In the book the monk, who is know to posterity as Cosmas Indicopleustes, propounded a surprising theory that the world was not spherical as believed by the ancients but, on the contrary, was flat and surrounded by four walls which stretched up to the heavens and formed a curved lid.

Scholarship has not been terribly kind to the work of Cosmas Indicopleustes. Even in his own time he had to staunchly defend his theory against strong criticism. By his own admission he was not well educated in the "learning of schools" and his unfortunate practice of distorting passages of scripture in order to support his argument led to his work being largely dismissed by his contemporaries and then disregarded by later generations. While we too can easily dismiss his eccentric notions which seem to be more the product of pious daydreaming than any kind of scientific investigation or empirical observation, on closer inspection there is another rather more interesting side to Cosmas.

Thirty years before writing his book, Cosmas had led a life very different from the serene austerity of a desert cloister. Cosmas Indicopleustes actually means "Cosmas the India Voyager" and back then the monk was a merchant who had traveled extensively around the coasts of the Red Sea and the Indian Ocean. Buried deep under ten volumes of questionable scholarship which comprises the bulk of his Topology we find a surprising and particularly lucid account of his travels to these countries. This eleventh volume bears little relationship to the earlier parts of the book and it is thought to have been excerpted from another larger work of his on geography which has, sadly, been lost.

While its known that the Roman world engaged in trade with the Indian subcontinent, Cosmas offers us one of the only authentic eyewitness accounts. A close reading indicates that he had considerable local knowledge of the regions he describes and there is little doubt that he actually visited these places rather than merely relating second-hand information.

He begins his geographical treatise by describing the unusual flora and fauna of Africa and Asia. Here are some excerpts:

Rhinoceros
This animal is called the rhinoceros from having horns upon his snout. When he is walking his horns are mobile, but when he sees anything to move his rage, he erects them and they become so rigid that they are strong enough to tear up even trees by the root, those especially which come right before him. His eyes are placed low down near his jaws. He is altogether a fearful animal, and he is somehow hostile to the elephant. His feet and his skin, however, closely resemble those of the elephant. His skin, when dried, is four fingers thick, and this some people put, instead of iron, in the plough, and with it plough the land.


The Ethiopians in their own dialect call the rhinoceros Arou, or Harisi, aspirating the alpha of the latter word, and adding risi. By the arou they designate the beast as such, and by arisi, ploughing, giving him this name from his shape about the nostrils, and also from the use to which his hide is turned. In Ethiopia I once saw a live rhinoceros while I was standing at a far distance, and I saw also the skin of a dead one stuffed with chaff, standing in the royal palace, and so I have been able to draw him accurately.

Giraffe
Camelopards [so called because a giraffe has a head like a camel's and the spots of a leopard] are found only in Ethiopia. They also are wild creatures and undomesticated. In the palace one or two that, by command of the King, have been caught when young, are tamed to make a show for the King's amusement. When milk or water to drink is set before these creatures in a pan, as is done in the King's presence, they cannot, by reason of the great length of their legs and the height of their breast and neck, stoop down to the earth and drink, unless by straddling with their forelegs. They must therefore, it is plain, in order to drink, stand with their forelegs wide apart. This animal also I have delineated from my personal knowledge of it.

Hippopotamus
The hippopotamus, however, I have not seen, but I had teeth of it so large as to weigh thirteen pounds, and these I sold here. And I saw many such teeth both in Ethiopia and in Egypt.

Seal, Dolphin and Turtle
The seal, the dolphin, and the turtle we eat at sea if we chance to catch them. When we want to eat the dolphin and turtle we cut their throat. But we do not kill the seal that way, but strike it over the head as is done with the large kinds of fish. The flesh of the turtle, like mutton, is dark-coloured; that of the dolphin is like pork, but dark-coloured and rank; and that of the seal is, like pork, white and free from smell.

Coconut

It differs nothing from the date-palm, except that it is of greater height and thickness and has larger fronds. It bears not more than two or three flower-spathes, each bearing three nuts. Their taste is sweet and very pleasant, like that of green nuts. The nut is at first full of a very sweet water which the Indians drink, using it instead of wine. This delicious drink is called rhongcosura. If the fruit is gathered ripe and kept, then the water gradually turns solid on the shell, while the water left in the middle remains fluid, until of it also there is nothing left over. If however it be kept too long the concretion on the shell becomes rancid and unfit to be eaten.

A view of Sri Lanka as imagined in 1295 by Richard de Bello, the creator of the Hereford Mappamundi (Map of the World). Note that the long penisula next to the island is not India but Arabia. India is landmass on the right.

The Island of Sri Lanka
This is a large oceanic island lying in the Indian sea. By, the Indians it is called Sielediba [lion island], but by the Greeks Taprobanê [Tâmraparnî meaning "copper-coloured leaf" a name given to the island by its Indian conqueror Vijaya and also appears in inscriptions by Asok], and therein is found the hyacinth stone [probably sapphire or amethyst].


It lies on the other side of the pepper country. Around it are numerous small islands [the Laccadives] all having fresh water and coconut trees. They nearly all have deep water close up to their shores. The great island, as the natives report, has a length of three hundred gaudia, that is, of nine hundred miles, [in fact it is 271 miles long but the Sri Lankan unit of distance, the gaon, expresses a somewhat indeterminate length and means "the distance which a man can walk in an hour"] and it is of the like extent in breadth [actually it is 137 miles wide].


There are two kings in the island, and they are at feud the one with the other. The one has the hyacinth country, and the other the rest of the country where the harbour is. and the centre of trade. It is a great mart for the people in those parts. The island has also a church of Persian Christians who have settled there, and a Presbyter who is appointed from Persia, and a Deacon and a complete ecclesiastical ritual. But the natives and their kings are heathens.


In this island they have many temples, and on one, which stands on an eminence, there is a hyacinth as large as a great pine-cone, fiery red, and when seen flashing from a distance, especially if the sun's rays are playing round it, a matchless sight.

The island being, as it is, in a central position, is much frequented by ships from all parts of India and from Persia and Ethiopia, and it likewise sends out many of its own. And from the remotest countries, I mean Tzinista [China] and other trading places, it receives silk, aloes, cloves, sandalwood and other products, and these again are passed on to marts on this side, such as Male [Malabar], where pepper grows, and to Calliana [Kalyâna, near Bombay] which exports copper and sesame-logs, and cloth for making dresses, for it also is a great place of business. And to Sindu [the mouth of the Indus] also where musk and castor is procured and androstachys, and to Persia and the Homerite country, and to Adulé.

And the island receives imports from all these marts which we have mentioned and passes them on to the remoter ports, while, at the same time, exporting its own produce in both directions. Sindu is on the frontier of India, for the river Indus, that is, the Phison, which discharges into the Persian Gulf, forms the boundary between Persia and India [as it did in the time of Alexander]. The most notable places of trade in India are these: Sindu, Orrhotha [Surat], Calliana, Sibor, and then the five marts of Male which export pepper: Parti, Mangarouth [Mangalore], Salopatana, Nalopatana, Poudopatana.

Then out in the ocean, at the distance of about five days and nights from the continent, lies Sielediba, that is Taprobanê. And then again on the continent is Marallo, a mart exporting chank shells, then Caber which exports alabandenum, and then farther away is the clove country, then Tzinista [China] which produces the silk. Beyond this there is no other country, for the ocean surrounds it on the east [Cosmas is credited as being the first Westerner to identify China's eastern coast]. This same Sielediba then, placed as one may say, in the centre of the Indies and possessing the hyacinth receives imports from all the seats of commerce and in turn exports to them, and is thus itself a great seat of commerce.

Now I must here relate what happened to one of our countrymen, a merchant called Sopatrus, who used to go thither on business, but who to our knowledge has now been dead these five and thirty years past. Once on a time he came to this island of [Sri Lanka] on business, and as it chanced a vessel from Persia put into port at the same time with himself. So the men from Adulé with whom Sopatrus was, went ashore, as did likewise the people of Persia, with whom came a person of venerable age and appearance.

Then, as the way there was, the chief men of the place and the custom-house officers received them and brought them to the king. The king having admitted them to an audience and received their salutations, requested them to be seated. Then he asked them

"In what state are your countries, and how go things with them?"

To this they replied, they go well. Afterwards, as the conversation proceeded, the king inquired "Which of your kings is the greater and the more powerful?"

The elderly Persian snatching the word answered "Our king is both the more powerful and the greater and richer, and indeed is King of Kings, and whatsoever he desires, that he is able to do."

Sopatrus on the other hand sat mute. So the king asked:

"Have you, Roman, nothing to say?"

"What have I to say", he rejoined, "when he there has said such things? But if you wish to learn the truth you have the two kings here present. Examine each and you will see which of them is the grander and the more powerful."

The king on hearing this was amazed at his words and asked,

"How say you that I have both the kings here?"

"You have", replied Sopatrus, the money of both ?- the nomisma of the one, and the drachma, that is, the miliarision of the other. Examine the image of each, and you will see the truth."

The king thought well of the suggestion, and, nodding his consent, ordered both the coins to be produced. Now the Roman coin had a right good ring, was of bright metal and finely shaped, for pieces of this kind are picked for export to the island. But the miliarision, to say it in one word, was of silver, and not to be compared with the gold coin.

So the king after he had turned them this way and that, and had attentively examined both, highly commended the nomisma, saying that the Romans were certainly a splendid, powerful, and sagacious people. So he ordered great honour to be paid to Sopatrus, causing him to be mounted on an elephant, and conducted round the city with drums beating and high state. These circumstances were told us by Sopatrus himself and his companions, who had accompanied him to that island from Adule; and as they told the story, the Persian was deeply chagrined at what had occurred.

The nineteenth century preface to Cosmas' Christian Topology cites the work as an example of how Christianity had snuffed out the light of classical learning and had ushered in an age "shrouded in the long night of mediaeval ignorance and barbarism". This last charge was a just little unfair given that Cosmas' views never really ever made it into the mainstream of Mediaeval thought. There is a common story that the opponents of Columbus' planned voyage to the West were also Flat-Earthers in this mold. But this is a myth constructed in the modern age, Columbus' critics were in fact far more concerned that he had grossly overestimated the supposed size of the Asian landmass and grossly underestimated the circumference of the Earth (something, in fact, that had already been known with considerable accuracy for more than 17 centuries. In this matter, these learned gentlemen were right and Columbus was dead wrong.