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Milton, it is true, with other excellent scholars, has insinuated his belief that probably Taprobane is Ceylon; when our Saviour in the wilderness sees the great vision of Roman power, expressed, inter alia, by high officers of the Republic flocking to, or from, the gates of Rome, and "embassies from regions far remote," crowding the Appian or the Emilian roads, some
"How can the irons spin, weave, and print so beautifully?" Our country is like what Taprobane was to our ancestors a strange realm of light, whence came the diamond, muslin, and peacocks; an attempt at explanation of our manufactures usually elicits the expression, "Truly ye are gods!"
"From the Asian kings, and Parthian amongst these; From India and the golden Chersonese, And utmost Indian isle Taprobane * Dusk faces with white silken turbans wreathed;" it is probable, from the mention of this island Taprobane following so closely after that of the Malabar peninsula, that Milton held it to be the island of Ceylon, and not of Sumatra.
"Thence to the gates cast round thine eye, and see at What conflux issuing forth or entering in; Pretors, proconsuls, to their provinces Hasting, or on return in robes of state; Lictors and rods, the ensigns of their power; Legions or cohorts, turns of horse and wings; Or embassies from regions far remote, In various habits on the Appian road, Or on the Emilian; some from farthest south, Syene, and where the shadow both way falls, Meroe, Nilotic isle: and, more to west, The realm of Bocchus to the Blackmoor Sea; From India and the Golden Chersonese, And utmost Indian isle, Taprobane, Dusk faces with white silken turbans wreathed; From Gallia, Gades, and the British, west, Germans, and Scythians, and Sarmatians, north, Beyond Danubius to the Tauric pool."
Notwithstanding the obvious situation of this island in the direct track from the ports of India to the Spice Islands and to China, it seems to have been unknown to the Greek and Roman geographers, whose information or conjectures carried them no farther than Selan-dib or Ceylon, which has claims to be considered as their Taprobane; although during the middle ages that celebrated name was almost uniformly applied to Sumatra.
It was passing through with two tame tigers, as a present to the boy at Byzantium, from some hundred-wived kinglet of the Hyperborean Taprobane, or other no-man's-land in the far East. I took the liberty of laying an embargo on them, and, after a little argumentation and a few hints of torture, elephant and tigers are at our service. 'And of what service are they to be?
When strangers from Ethiopia, Egypt, Phoenicia, and distant Taprobane, come to witness the far-famed beauty of the violet-crowned city, they will stand in mute worship before the Parthenon; and when their wonder finds utterance, they will ask what the Athenians bestowed on an artist so divine.
It is no new discovery of our day, as the earliest writers celebrated the pearls and gems of "Taprobane," and ornaments composed of its precious stones decked Asiatic queens of beauty twice ten hundred years ago. Ancient thrones were beautified by its sparkling sapphires, and the products of its spice-fields rendered fragrant the fires which burned upon the altars of pagan gods.
When asked, therefore, whether Ceylon is Taprobane, the true answer is, not by affirmation simply, nor by negation simply, but by both at once; it is, and it is not. Taprobane includes much of what belongs to Ceylon, but also more, and also less. And this case is a type of many others standing in the same logical circumstances.
In this he does but follow the stream of geographical critics; and, upon the whole, if any one island exclusively is to be received for the Roman Taprobane, doubt there can be none that Ceylon has the superior title.
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