determining whether these, or most of these, were simply ports for native vessels, or for the larger ships that conveyed the merchandise of Alexandria and of the West. It seems, however, probable from his strange ignorance of the real size of Ceylon (in which ignorance he nearly equals Arrian), that even then direct communication with that island was not very common; add to which, that, beyond the Golden Chersonesus, Ptolemy has noticed but one emporium, a fact clearly showing that few, if any, reports had reached him of the trade beyond the present site of Singapore.
Manufactures of India. But, however little we may know of the outline of the coasts of India, or of its harbours to the eastward of Cape Comorin, previous to the Christian era, there can be no doubt of the comparatively high state of civilization then prevalent among the Hindus generally, and of their skill in manufactures.
So great was the variety of cloths manufactured by it even in the days of Arrian, who gives them in detail, that we can hardly suppose the number to have afterwards much increased. In the "Periplus"[1] we read of the finest Bengal muslins; of coarse, middle, and fine cloths; of coarse and fine calicoes; of coloured shawls and sashes; of coarse and fine purple goods, as well as of pieces of embroidery; of spun silk and of furs from Serica: and it is further recorded that the Greeks who visited India in the train of Alexander the Great, were struck with the whiteness and fineness of the texture of the cotton garments of the Hindus. Moreover, it is quite possible that the "coloured cloths and rich apparel," noticed by Ezekiel as brought to Tyre and Babylon, were partly,
- ↑ Arrian, "Periplus," 13 to 36.
