Names of Sri Lanka - Ceylon

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Lanka - Amradvipa - Ratnadvipa - Dhammadipa - Cinnamon Island -
Tambapanni - Taprobane - Simundu - Salike - Sinhaladvipa- Heladiva - Eelam - Seilan - Ceylon

Introduction and Summary

"Sri Lanka" means "resplendend Lanka" or "shining Lanka" or "holy Lanka". Sri Lanka has been known by many other names in various parts of the world. Most of them are derivations of only three etymologies. Each of the three root names were in use in Sri Lanka herself. They are: “Lanka”, “Sinhala”, and “Tambapanni”. You can find detailed discussions of each of the three terms and their variations further below (chapter 1 to 3). But let’s start with a shorter overview, summarizing the most important information, particularly for those readers who do not intend to read long articles on this specific topic.

1. Of those names that are known to us, “Lanka” seems to be the most ancient one in India and Sri Lanka alike. The common Tamil name “Ilanka” (“Eelamka”) is probably an equivalent of the Sinhalese “Lanka”, too. The etymology of “Lanka” is not entirely clear. Perhaps its original meaning was simply “stretch of land” or “island”.

2. The earliest known scriptural records give the name “Tambapanni”, which literally means “copper palms” or “rust-red hands”. This designation seems to be the origin of the ancient European name for Sri Lanka: Taprobane.

3. Most of the names that were in use in various parts of the world at different points in time are deduced from the word “Sinhala”, which originally has the sense of “lion people" or “lion descendants”, as “Sinha” means “lion” in most Indian languages. For more than two millennia, “Sinhala” has been referring to the largest ethnic group on the island as well as to their language.

One of the numerous derivations of “Sinhala” seems to be the Arab term “Serendip”, another one the English “Ceylon”, which was the official name during the British colonial period and, even after independence from British rule, remained to be the nation’s official name until 1972. Another important derivation is probably the Tamil word “Ilam” (“Eelam”), though its Indo-Aryan etymology is not undisputed, as Tamil nationalists consider “Ilam” to be a purely Drawidian name.

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Poetical Cognomens of Sri Lanka

Further names of Sri Lanka are more like nicknames or honorary titles:

- “Pearl upon the brow of India" was a poetical name used by Buddhist writers.

 

- “Amradvipa” (Amradweepa), translating to “Mango Island”, is found in one of the two 6th-century inscriptions left by a resident from Sri Lanka in India at Bodhgaya, the holiest site of Buddhism, where the Buddha found enlightenment. It reads: “Mahanama, a resident of Amradvipa, and born in the island of Lanka”. (It’s not entirely clear that the residency and the land of origin of Mahanama are one and the same. Some Buddhist monks from foreign countries those days resided on the island of Sumatra, which is famous for mangos.)

 

- Due to Sri Lanka's abundance in high-quality sapphires of various colours and other precious stones, “Jewel Island” has become one of her cognomens in many parts of Asia. The corresponding Sanskrit term is “Ratnadwipa”, it is well-known from ancient Indian texts.

 

- “Cinnamon Island” and its equivalents are nicknames that were mainly used by Europeans, by the Dutch in particular: “Karneel Eiland”.

 

- “Dhammadipa” is a native Pali term translating to “Island of Learning” or “Island of the Buddhist Teaching”, verbatim “Dharma-Island”. This term is found in the island’s chronicles to highlight her religious significance: The island is said to have been chosen by the Buddha himself as the final abode of his religion and his teachings, the Dharma. The term has also been used in an ideological way, claiming superiority of Buddhism on the island.

Many of those namings – the most important 3 denotations in particular - were picked up in languages of other literate cultures, either onomatopoetically (imitating the pronunciation) or semantically (translating the meaning).

The quote below may serve as an important example, listing historical Chinese names of Sri Lanka. Though the term “Sri Lanka” has now become the most common one in China, namely as “Sililanka”, an older name sounding like “Ceylon” is still remembered, namely “Xi Lan” in Pinyin transcription (or “Hsi Lan” in Wade-Giles transcription correspondingly, also “See-lan” or “See-lung”). However, in Chinese sources from the imperial eras, several dozens of names had been in use to refer to the island of Sri Lanka. For having a look at some ancient names found in Chinese literary works, let’s cite a text of James Emerson Tennent, who served as “Colonial Secretary of Ceylon” from 1845 till 1850 and afterwards wrote several books about the island:

The names by which Ceylon was known to them [the Chinese] are either adapted from the Singhalese, as nearly as the Chinese characters would supply equivalents for the Sanskrit and Pali letters, or else they are translations of the sense implied by each designation. Thus, Sinhala was either rendered “ Seng-kia-lo,” or “ Sze-tseu-kwo,” the latter name, as well as the original, meaning “the kingdom of lions.” The classical Lanka is preserved in the Chinese “ Lang-kea” and “Lang-ya-seu.” In the epithet “Chih-too,” the Red Land, we have a simple rendering of the Pali Tambapanni, the “Copper-palmed,” from the colour of the soil. Paou-choo is a translation of the Sanskrit Ratna-dwipa, the “ Island of Gems,” and Tsih-e-lan, Seih-lan, and Se-lung, are all modem modifications of the European “Ceylon.”

Cited from: Tennent, James Emerson. Ceylon: an account of the island. 5th edition. London: Longman, Green, Longman, and Roberts, 1860, p. 610.

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1. LANKA

Though not within the surviving written records, the Sanskrit name "Lanka" seems to be the oldest known term referring to the island which lies to the south of the Indian Peninsula. In Sanskrit texts handed down to us, "Lanka" is mostly used as a proper noun, not having a general meaning but referring to a specific single entity. Particularly in the Ramayana Epic "Lanka" denotes the residence of demon-king Ravana. It's situated on the island he reigns, which is named "Lankadwipa" (Lankadweepa), which simply means "Lanka-Island". Some scholars have disputed that the city called Lanka in the Ramayana actually referred to a place on the very island today known as Sri Lanka. However, most Indians believe that the ancient Lanka mentioned in their national epic is indeed Sri Lanka ( - or that the island of Sri Lanka is at least what has remained from a formerly much larger island or continent that was reigned by King Ravana and which is now partly sunken under the surface of the sea, a kind of Atlantis of the Indian Ocean).

There is a theory that "Lanka" nevetheless must have been a common noun, this is to say: a word with a general meaning. That general meaning of "Lanka" could simply be "island" or "stretch of land". The reasons for this assumption are as follows. In some tribal languages in central and eastern India the term "Lanka" is said to refer to river islets. More importantly, the abbreviation "Lak" - which is still in use in the modern Sinhala language spoken in Sri Lanka and which also occurs in tradtional terms such as "Lakdiva" and "Lakbima" - is known from other islands as well, for example in the name "Lakkadives", an Indian atoll situated to the north of the Maldives. In the Maldivian language Dhivehi, which is very closelely related to Sri Lanka's Sinhalese language, "Ahi-Lanka" simply means the Maldives themselves, the literal meaning being "our islands" or "our lands", whereas the term "Mahi-Lanka", which translates to "large islands" or "big lands", refers to foreign countries.

Though the name "Lanka" is on record in ancient and medieval texts in India, which are composed in Sanskrit or in much later Indian languages, the reason for renaming the republic from "Ceylon" to "Sri Lanka" was not the said Indian tradition of this name. Rather, the main reason for using "Lanka" as the new designation of the nation was that it was known from the island's own Buddhist chronicles written in Pali, the holy language of Buddhism. The first occurence of the term "Lanka" within Sri Lanka's most famous ancient chronicle, the Mahavamsa, can be found in the 20th verse of the first chapter. It reports that the Buddha, here refered to as the "conquerer" of supreme enlightenment, recognized the island of Lanka as the future stronghold of his religion: "For Lanka was known to the Conqueror as a place where his doctrine should shine in glory; and from Lanka, filled with demons, the demons must be driven forth." The next verse is the beginning of an account of the Buddha's first visit to the island. In Mahiyangana he won over some demons to become protectors of his religion. This respective verse 1,15 also mentions "Lanka" as the island, in the middle of which the Buddha has given his decisive proselytising sermon.        
 
The Mahavamsa (Mahawansa) was composed not before the 5th century AD. However, these writings are based on much earlier traditions. Some of them had until then been handed down in the island's own language, an early form of Sinhalese. But at least one text written in Pali, the sacred language of Theravada Buddhism, must have been available for Mahanama, the author of the Mahavamsa. That earlier Pali work is known as "Dipavamsa" (Deepavansa), which simply translates to "Island Chronicle". The name "Lanka" also occurs in the first chapter of this earliest surviving Pali chronicle of Sri Lanka, which was composed around the 4th century BC. More precisely, the name found in the Dipavamsa is "Lankadipa" (Lankadeepa), which accordingly means "Lanka Island". Let's quote a passage, as this is indeed the very earliest known occurence of the name "Lanka" on the island that now (again) bears this name:

The highest of men sent forth the irresistable power of his knowledge; the stainless teacher then saw the most excellent Lankadipa, - an exquisite country, endowed with a beautiful climate, fertile, a mine of treasures, which had been visited by former Buddhas and had been inhabited by multitudes of Saints. Perceiving the most excellent island of Lanka, a fertile region, a dwelling-place fit for Saints, the compassionate One who well understood the right and wrong time, thus thought: "In the present time Yakkhas, Bhutas and Rakkhasas (inhabit) Lankadipa, who are all to low for (adopting the doctrine of) the Buddhas; their power I can outroot. Having driven out the hosts of Yakkhas, the Pisacas and Avaruddhakas, I will establish peace in the island and cause it to be inhabited by men. ... Let those wicked beings fully live out their span of life; (afterwards) there, in the most excellent Lankadipa, an opportunity will arise for (the progagation of) the Faith.

Dipavansa 1,17-22
cited from: Oldenberg, Hermann. The Dipavamsa: an ancient Buddhist historical record. Third AES Reprint. New Delhi: Asian Educational Services, 2001, pp.118-19.

The text cited from the Dipavansa makes mention of visits of previous Buddhas to the very same island. However, the island bore other names in those earlier periods: Ojadipa, Varadipa, Mandadipa, visited by the Buddhas Kakusandha, Konagamana, Kassapa respectively (Mhv 15,57-59.91-93.125-27). Accordingly, "Lankadipa" is the name in the period of the Buddha Gotama (Mhv 15,160-64), the fourth Buddha in our present aeon. Presumably, the future Buddha Metteya of this aeon will visit the same island, too, which might then be carrying a new name.

The name "Lanka" remained in use in India during the classical Gupta period, which roughly corresponds the centuries in which the Dipavamsa and Mahavamsa were composed in Sri Lanka. The continuity of the name "Lanka" in India's classic period can be seen from the title of one of the most famous Holy Scriptures of Mahayana Buddhism, the "Lankavatara Sutra". The name "Lankavatara" (Lanka-Avatar) translates to "descent to Lanka". A celestial Buddha comes to earth and visits the island of Lanka. The Sutra mentiones Ravana, the legendary king of the island. So there is little doubt, that the "Lanka" of this famous sutra really intended to refer to the island currently known as "Sri Lanka".

The Lankavara Sutra was composed in classical Sanskrit in the 4th century in India and translated to the Chinese already at the beginning of the 5th century. Due to it's doctrine of consciousness as the root of all phenomena it has become a canonical text of the Yogacara school of Mahayana Buddhism. It's also relevant in Chan (Zen) Buddhism, as the Sutra is said to have been handed down by the first Chan patriarch and legendary Shaolin founder, Bodhidharma, who had arrived to Luoyang from the west in the 5th century. (From a medieval Chinese perspective, silk road regions in central Asia as well as in the Middle East and also India all were Western countries).

The name of “Lanka” was reintroduced in the context of the independence movement in the 20th century. For example, in 1935 the Trotskyist party LSSP was founded, the name of which is “Lanka Sama Samaja Party”. In the early years of independence, when the island still bore the official name Ceylon, S.W.R.D. Bandaranyake founded the "Sri Lanka Freedom Party". As said, the nation state was named "Sri Lanka" afterwards, when it became a republic within the Commonwealth of Nations in 1972, instead of continuing to be a royal dominion of Commonwealth Realm status.

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2. Tambapanni - Taprobane

The appellation "Lanka", though known from literary works of India and Sri Lanka, seems to have been unknown to the Greeks and Romans, from whose literary heritage most historical Western names of Sri Lanka derive. Prior to 1972, almost nobody knew the word "Lanka" in the Western world. Before discussing the probable origin of the famous English term "Ceylon", let's turn to the name that was in use much earlier on: Which was the by far most common Western name of Sri Lanka in antiquity? During the hellenistic period and in the high empire period of Rome -  from the 3rd century BC till the 2nd century AD - the island was mostly known to Westerners as "Taprobane". It's probable that this Western name can be traced back to another very ancient and original name of the island, namely Tambapanni.

Tamraparni and Ashoka's Tambapanni

The earliest written records on hand giving a name of Sri Lanka are the rock edicts of the Indian Emperor Ashoka, more precisely: the so-called major rock edicts 2 and 13. Let's cite the respective passages:

Everywhere in the dominions of king Devanampriya Priyadarsin, and of (those) who are (his) borderers, such as the Chodas, the Pandyas, the Satiyaputa, the Kelalaputa [Ketalaputa in the Girnar version, Keralaputa in the Manschra version], Tamraparni, the Yona (Greek) king named Antiyoga (Antiochus) [Antiyaka in the Girnar version], and the other kings who are the neighbours of this Antiyoga, - everywhere two (kinds of) medical men [treatment in the Girnar version] were established by king Devanampriya Priyadarsin, (viz.) medical treatment for men and medical treatment for cattle.

Kalsi version cited from:
Hultzsch, Eugen. Inscriptions of Asoka. Corpus Inscriptionum Indicarum Vol. 1. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1925, pp. 28-29.

The quoted English translation of the German scholar Eugen Hultzsch makes use of the Sanskrit term "Tamraparni". This is only for convenience. Hultsch gives the correct transcription of the original Prakrit text including "Tambapamni" (with "ṃṇ") first, before translating it into English. His English version then has Sanskrit names (instead of the original Prakrit names) for proper nouns (names of persons and places).

There are five main versions of the major rock edicts, namely in Shahbazgarhi, Kalsi, Girnar, Dhauli, and Jaugada. Fragments can also be found at other places such as Sopara 70 km north of Mumbai (Bombay). The word "Tambapanni" is not completely decipherable in the respective inscriptions in Dhauli and Girnar. In the Shahbazgarhi version it is given with only one "n": "Tambapani". This is due to the fact that this inscription in the northwest of the Ashokan Empire is written in the Persian-inspired Karoshthi script, not in Brahmi characters that are used in the other Ashokan edicts. In the Kalsi version, the syllable "pa" is not decipherable. The exact spelling is not double-n "nn", but "ṃṇ" (Anushvara+ṇ, but pronounced like double-n). This means, the spelling differs slightly from the Pali term "Tambapanni" (spelt with "ṇṇ"). The reason is that Ashoka's inscriptions are not composed in Pali nor in one of the other 6 discernable middle-Indian languages (literary Prakrits). Rather, the official language of the Ashokan Empire was an archaic version of Prakrit and the edicts are not composed in a standardized form of this language. In short: The pronunciation "Tambapanni" is the oldest name of Sri Lanka on record.   

Three of the other four southern neighbours of Ashoka are well known from Tamil history: Cholas and Pandyas are Tamil dynasties that reigned for more than a millennium further on. The Kelalaputas (Keralaputa, as the Kalsi dialect often replaces the "r" of the Manschra version by an "l", whereas the "t"of the Girnar version seems to be mistaken) are obviously the Cheras, counted as the third major Tamil dynasty in the classical Tamil Sangam literature (mainly 2nd century BC to 3rd century AD) and giving their name to the current state of Kerala. But there is some uncertainty regarding the "Satiyaputa". It might have been a dynasty that was in charge of the region of Tondaimandalam (around Kanchi and further inland Velur), which became the stonghold of the Pallavas in much later centuries. Remarkably, Tambapanni (Sri Lanka) is recorded only in one line with the Tamil kingdoms. The island kingdom is not highlighted as a political entity of a much more intimate relationship with Ashoka and his Buddhist Dharma, although one might expect the latter when reading the later Buddhist accounts about contacts between Emperor Ashoka of India and King Tissa of Sri Lanka. By the way, both kings bear the same name: Devanamp(r)iya.

The major rock edict 13 is the most famous one among Ashoka's inscriptions, as it makes mention of his brutal campaign against the neighbouring Kalinga kingdom and Ashoka's remorse concerning the victims and his decision to rule according to the Dharma henceforth, being victoriuos only by spreading the Dharma instead of making wars. The regions mentioned explicitely for being reached by the Dharma are located in the west and south, namely the Greek Seleukid empire in the Middle East and other kingdoms of the Diadochi resp. the Tamil and Sri Lankan areas in the south. Let's quote the relevant passage concerning the victorious Dharma:

And this (conquest) has been won repeatedly by Devanampriya both [here] and among all (his) borderers, even as far as at (the distance of) six hundred yojanas where the Yona king named Antiyoga (is ruling), and beyond this Antiyoga, (where) four - 4 - kings (are ruling), (viz. the king) named Tulamaya, (the king) named Antekina, (the king) named Maka, (and the king) named Alikyashudala, (and) likewise towards the south, (where) the Chodas and Pandyas (are ruling), as far as Tamraparni.

Kalsi version
cited from: Hultzsch, p. 48.

Again, the Shahbazgarhi inscription in Karoshthi characters has "Tambapaniya", whereas the Kalsi version in Brahmi letters has "Tambapamniya". Similar, the Karoshthi inscription reads "Panda", instead of the "Pandya" of the Brahmi version. The Chodas mentioned in both versions are the Cholas known from abovementioned inscription No. 2. So the parallels are obvious.

However, taking the major rock inscription 13 alone, one could assume, that Tambapanni is not a separate entity besides Cholas and Pandyas but the borderline of their territory. A reason for the latter assumption is that in the Indian Mahabharata epic (VIII 8340) and in some Purana texts, Tamraparni or Tambraparnni is the name of a river. Indeed, there is a river known as Tamraparni in the very south of the Pandyan territory, namely in today's Tirunelveli District. It is known as as "Thamirabarani" in Tamil. Actually, the hypothesis has been raised that the island is named after this very Tamraparni alias Thamirabarani river of southern India, when early settlers arrived from the Tirunelveli and Tuticorin region, which is one of Sri Lanka's closest neighbours on the mainland. But most scholars agree that the current name of the said river in Tamil Nadu, "Tamraparni", was not in use at that point in time. This is to say: The island was known as "Tambapanni" already before the Indian river was also called by this name. Nevertheless, some Tamil historians believe, that "Tamraparni" was not a word meaning "copper-hand" originally. Rather, it might have become a sanskritized version of a much older Tamil name. "Thamira" means copper, this indeed is a loanword from Sanskrit. The same applies to "barani"or "parani" for "leaf" or "tree", as this Tamil word has an equivalent in the Marathi language and thereby is also of Sanskrit origin. It's derived from "patra(m)". So far, so good, it's borrowed from Sanskrit. But, as said, this etymology of the river name might well be a later Sanskritization of a much older Tamil name. Actually, such corruptions of word meanings - just due to similarities of pronunciations - were quite common means when Brahmins reinterpreted Tamil names to paste them into their mythologies of north-Indian origin. Particularly, this occured in the case of holy texts explaining the mythological stories of origins of sacred sites. Tamraparni is a holy river with such a religious hymn, the Tamraparni Mahatmyam. Here we find, that the river is named after a female manifestation in this fluid form of something else, that was originally a string of red lotus owned by the sage Agastya. But in contrast to this poetical myth of Brahmin composers, the original Tamil name of the river was "Tan Porunai". This has a completely different meaning, as it translates to "cool toddy". Nonetheless, the pronunciation of the original name could well be the origin of the sanskritized written name "red leaf", which still sounds similar.

As mentioned, "Tambapanni" is the Pali equivalent of Sanskrit "Tamraparni". Other Tamil variants are "Tamiraparuni" or "Tampirapanni".

Tambapanni in the Pali Chronicles

Like "Lanka", the term "Tambapanni" is also known from the earliest historiographical records of the island nation, namely the chronicles known as Dipavamsa and Mahavamsa. The Dipavamsa states:

There is an island (formerly) called Ojadipa, Varadipa, or Mandadipa, the (recent) name of which is Lankadipa, and which is (besides) known by the name of Tambapanni.

Dipavamsa 9,20
cited from: Oldenberg, Hermann. The Dipavamsa: an ancient Buddhist historical record. Third AES Reprint. New Delhi: Asian Educational Services, 2001, p.161.

This verse clearly indicates, that the entire island was called Tambapanni. Only a few verses later on, there is a more detailed explanation of this name, and here it refers only to a specific region of the island, namely to the landing place of the first Sinhalese settlers:

They came to Lankadipa, where they disembarked and went on shore. Standing on dry ground, being exhausted by great hunger, thirst and fatigue, they were unable (?) to walk on foot. They crawled about on the ground with both hands and knees; afterwards, when they rose and stood upright, they saw that their hands were resplendent (copper-coloured). The red-coloured dust of the ground covered their arms and hands; hence the name of that place was called Tambapanni (copper-palmed). Tambapanni was the first town in the most excellent Lankadipa; there Vijaya resided and governed his kingdom.

Dipavamsa 9,28-31
cited from: Oldenberg, p.161-62.

One could say: The etiological derivation of the name "Tambapanni" given here is etymologically correct: "Tamba" means "copper" in many Indian languages. The Pali term "pani" translates to "hand" or "palm" and, by the way, is etymologically related to the Latin term "palma".

There is an ongoing debate where the first Sinhalese settlers under the leadership of Vijaya arrived. The port of Jambukola in the very north-northwest of Jaffna Peninsula is one of such claiming to be the landing place. Instead, the northwestern coast of mainland Sri Lanka is more likely the site meant in the story, for several reasons. Vijaya and his followers are said to have arrived from a port called Suparaka, which is usually identified with Sopara at the Arabian sea. Seafarers arriving from northwestern India, however, will land on Sri Lanka at places to the south of Mannar. This is the coastline of Wilpattu National Park. The stones and sand here are deep-red laterite, at Kudiramalai Point in particular, which is a Tamil name meaning "Horse Mountain". It's most likely that this region was meant by the term "Tambapanni" or "Thambapanni". The main reason for assuming that the coastline of Wilpattu was that first Thambapanni (Thambapanni region in the more narrow sense), is that all major Sinhalese settlements from the earliest period are situated in the hinterland of this part of the northwestern coast.

The parallel text in the Mahavamsa chronicle (6,47) names the landing place "Tambapannidesa". The Sanskrit term "desha" and the corresponding Pali term "desa" mean spot, place, region, and country.

The explicit explanation of the term's etymology in the Mahavamsa mentions "Tambapanni" as being both the name of the region of the landing place and the name of the entire island:

When those who were commanded by Vijaya landed from their ship, they-sat down wearied, resting their hands upon the ground and since their hands were reddened by touching the dust of the red earth that region and also the island were (named) Tambapanni.

Mahavamsa 7,40-41
cited from: Geiger, Wilhelm. The Mahavamsa: or the great chronicle of Ceylon. London: Pali Text Society, 1912, p. 58.

 

Taprobane in Western Literature from Antiquity

"M" and "B" are both labials, and "P" and "B" are even closer related to each other. In transformation processes of spoken languages, the pronunciation of vowels changes and varies even more than in the case of consonants. When afterwards foreigners pronounce the same word, it usually sounds even more outlandish. This is why most scientists agree, that the Greek word "Taprobane" is a derivation of the Sanskrit and Prakrit names "Tamraparni" resp. "Tambapanni". Others opined that "Taprobane" was instead a corrupted form of "Dwipa-Ravana", named by Brahmins after Ravana. Remember, Ravana was Lanka's king according the holy Ramayana epic.

The name "Taprobane" became the Greek (and later on also the Latin) titling of the island of Sri Lanka soon after (or only shortly before) Alexander the Great invaded northwestern India in in 327 BC. Prior to this very first campaign of European armed forces on Indian territory the Greek had little more than a mythical name concerning a land behind India: Antichthon. India's southern Cape Comorin was considered to be the end of the world. Thus, what's behind it must belong to another world.

Nevertheless, this Greek term may come to a surprise in the context of Sri Lanka's names, as "Antichthon" literally means a planet and not an island. The English translation is "counter earth". In the world model of the Pythagorean atronomer Philolaus (second half of 5th century BC) - which was one of the first cosmological models that put Earth not in the centre of the universe any more - "Antichthon" was the name of an earth-like sister planet orbiting the "Central Fire" just at the opposite side, thereby never being visible from Earth.

Despite the said literal meaning, the Greek term "Antichthon" seems also to have been used in the sense of antipodes, designating a sphere or part of the surface of the Earth that is on the opposite side of the same planet. According to Pompomius Mela, Taprobane is said to have been called "Antichthon" in this sense by Hipparchos in the 2nd century BC. (This is debated, as the name “ipparchius” given by Mela might be a later interpolation in manuscripts). Pomponius Mela, a Roman geographer of Spanish origin, is one of the two Latin geographers mentioning Taprobane, the other one being the elder Pliny, see below. Mela composed his geography "De Chronographia", later known as "De Situ Orbis" under Emperor Claudius in the mid 1st century AD.  In De Chronographia III 70, Mela states, that Taprobane is either a large island or the first part of the opposite Earth ("aut grandis admodum insula aut prima pars orbis alterius").

But the assumption of Taprobane being part of the Antichthon is obviously mistaken, because a charakteristic feature of the Antichthon in the sense of Antipode or "opposite hemisphere" is this: The sun runs counterclockwise when oberserved from the area of the Antichthon. Hence, Taprobane can definitely not be part of the Antichthon, as the entire area of the island of Sri Lanka belongs to the northern hemisphere.

This fact - and also some other reasons - led many scholars to the conclusion that the elder Pliny in his most famous description of Taprobane does not refer to Sri Lanka at all but to a Southeastasian island, most probably to Sumatra. Sumatra's historical capitals were at the southern end of the island (and thereby located within the southern hemisphere), which would be in accordance with Mela's and Pliny's account of Taprobane. Keeping this scholarly decent in mind, it's still highly likely that Pliny (also) meant Sri Lanka, when he wrote about Taprobane, as it might well be the case, that he simply confused and amalgamated various reports from more than one author about more than one island, all of them located to the southeast of India. Thus, the present-day Sri Lanka would be one of them, but Sumatra could be the subject matter of another part of Pliny's Taprobane account. (This hypothesis - divergent island reports were fused by Pliny - could also explain some contradictions within his description of Taprobane.) That Pliny's Taprobane must also refer to Sri Lanka can be seen at the very beginning of his account. The Greek (Seleucide) ambassador Megasthenes is mentioned there, who during his stay in India in the early days of the Mauriya dynasty had best chances to come into contact with merchants who had visited Sri Lanka. But at that early point in time (before Ashoka), it would be extremely surprising if Megasthenas had been informed (and was himself reporting) about Sumatra instead of the close-by island of Sri Lanka. The same applies to Onesicritos, who, even a few decades prior to that, was an admiral serving Alexander the Great, and afterwards composed a novel about him (unrecoverable today). Reaching the Indus Valley, Alexander and Onesicritos may have received knowledge about an island at the southern tip of India. But it his highly unlikely that they were informed about Sumatra instead of Sri Lanka.

As the Taprobane account of Pliny is the most important one written in Latin language, let's cite its very beginning:

Ceylon [lit. Taprobane], under the name of the Land of the Counterlanders [lit. Antichthonum], was long considered to be another world; but the epoch and the achievements of Alexander the Great supplied clear proof of its being an island. Onesicritus, a commander of Alexander's navy, writes that elephants are bred there of larger size and more warlike spirit than in India; and Megasthenes says that it is cut in two by a river, that the inhabitants have the name of Aborigines [lit. Palaeogonos], and that they produce more gold and large pearls than the Indians. Eratosthenes further gives the dimensions of the island as 875 miles in length and 625 miles in breadth, and says that it contains no cities, but 700 villages.   

Plinius, Historia Naturalis, Book VI, begin of Chapter 24
cited from: Rackham, Harris. Pliny: Natural history. Vol. 2 Libri III - VII. The Loeb classical library, Nr. 352. Repr. London: Heinemann, 1961, p. 399.

Further down in the same paragraph, Pliny refers to a report of Annius Plocamus. This Roman tax collector is of utmost significance for writing the history of Indian Ocean trade in general and for the history of Sri Lanka’s relations to the Roman world in particular. According to Pliny it was during the reign of his contemporary Emperor Claudius, that a freedman of Annius Plocamus collecting customs along the Red Sea. When sailing along the Arabian Peninsula Annius Plocamus was driven away by monsoon winds. After a fortnight he landed on the island of Sri Lanka, where he stayed for half a year, learning the local language and impressing the king by having coins of various Roman emperors that nevertheless were all from exactly the same weight. This motivated the Sinhalese king to send an embassy to Rome. As there is inscriptional evidence of Annius Plocamus in Egypt already dating back to the period of Emperor Augustus, the University of Ceylon History of Ceylon dates this event about half a century earlier than Pliny. This event plays a major role in dating the reigns of early Sri Lankan kings. However, even more important is the effect on world history: Since this period, Arab seafarers in Roman services increasingly mastered the direct route to southern India and Sri Lanka with the help of the monsoon winds. This was facilitating direct trade between the spice regions and the Mediterranean world. The story of the freedman of Annius Plocamus arriving on Taprobane marks a point in time that is at the very beginning of international spice trade on a large scale.

No less than the classical poet Ovid is another Latin author mentioning Taprobane in his oeuvre. In his Epistulae ex Ponto (letters from his exile at the Black Sea) he implicitely expresses the opinion that Taprobane is one of the remotest places on Earth (Pont 1,5,80).
 
One of the famous Greek geographers writing about Taprobane is Strabon. Most of his writings are from the era of Augustus, but the final version of his “Geography”, which became famous in the Middle Ages, is from the reign of Emperor Tiberius:

Well, then, let us pass on to the country that rises  opposite of the Cinnamon-producing Country and lies towards the east on the same parallel. This is the region about Taprobane. We have strong assurance that Taprobane is a large island in the open sea, which lies off India to the south. It stretches lengthwise in the direction of Ethiopia for more than five thousand stadia, as they say ; and from it, they say, much ivory is brought to the markets of India, and also tortoise-shell and other merchandise.

Strabon, Geographia 2, 1, 14
Cited from: Jones, Horace Leonard. The geography of Strabo. Vol. 1. Books I – II. The Loeb classical library, Nr. 49. London: Heinemann, 1917, p. 271.

In later antiquity and the Middle Ages „Taprobane“ was more and more replaced by other names, see below. However, the island’s name of the Augustean Age came never completely our of fashion in the western world, not even in early modern Europe. Taprobane, however, got an increasingly fictional character of being a paradisial or a phantastic or socially perfect far-away island.

The Welsh, who call themselves Cymmry, have a myth of an original homeland named „Defrobani“. The Cymmri, being the first Britains, were led from that far-away Defrobani to the British Isles by their national hero Hu Gadarn, who invented ploughing and singing. The Irish of the Middle Ages have their own word for “Defrobani”. In a poem about an odyssee of a captain Milidh (Milet) and his comrades, the seafarers stay a month at “Tiprafaine”, where they are said to have experienced no sorrow.

Portugal’s national poet, Luis de Camoes, in his Luisiadas had included Taprabone in the opening verses: “Armes, and the Men above the vulgar File, who from the Western Lusitanian shore past ev'n beyond the Trapobanian-Isle, through Seas which never Ship had sayld before” (first English translation, by Sir Richard Fanshaw, mid 17th century), whereas Camoes otherwise makes use of “Ceilao” in his hymnic epic portraying the achievements of Portuguese seafarers. Cervantes and Milton mention Taprobane in “Don Quixote” resp. “Paradise lost”, too. However, in the latter cases, it's only a topographical name without exalted symbolical significance.

Taprobane finally got the reputation of a desirable ideal community due to the political philosophy of Tommaso Campanella. During his 27 years imprisonment in Naples, Campanella composed several works, the most famous one being “The City of the Sun” (originally written in Italian in 1602; published as “Civitas solis” in Latin in Frankfurt 1623). Shaped after Plato’s Politeia, the Taprobana of this novel is a kind of Utopia. The story is told to the author by a fictional sea captain who found this island where labour is divided equally among all people and all work is done only for common good and not for payment.

 

Simundu (Palaisimoundou)

The most famous Greek geographer from antiquity, of course, is the astronomer Ptolemy (Ptolemaios). The Taprobane account in his "Geographike Hyphegesis" from the 2nd century AD is remarkable for at least two reasons. In contrast to the elder Pliny one century earlier on, Ptolemy mentions not only the name “Taprobane” but also two others (that are commonly believed to derive from the same root as “Ceylon”, see below). Furthermore, the lists of coordinates given by Ptolemy himself (and additional maps already contained in the earliest surviving manuscripts of his Geography, which are from the Byzantine era) provide much more detailed and accurate information concerning the cities of the island than Pliny's Natural History. Important towns of the inland regions are known to Ptolemy, too, most importantly Anurogrammon, obviously referring to Anuradhapura (which was indeed also called Anuradhagrama in early periods), and Maagramon, which is probably the ancient Mahagama, the ancient capital of Southern Sri Lanka, today known as Tissamaharama. (But according to the coordinates given by Ptolemy, Maagramon could also refer to Mahiyangana at the Mahaweli River).

 

The entire chapter 4 of book 7 of Ptolemy’s Geography is dedicated to Sri Lanka. It opens with giving the location of the island as opposite of India’s cape “Kory” (Comorin, Kanyakumari). Ptolemy then names it Taprobane, but adds two more names, “Simundu” being the older one and “Salike” being the current one. The name of the inhabitants is given as “Salai”.

The etymology of “Simundu” (Simoundou) is unclear. It could be affiliated to “Samudra”, which simply means “sea” in Indian languages. The reasoning behind this hypothesis is as follows. Usually the term “ekaleito palai simoundou” found in the Geography of Ptolymy is translated “called by the ancients Simundu”, see above.

But in the context of the island of Taprobane the term “Palaisimundu” could also be taken as only one word. This is to say: It may well be the case that “palai” was not meant as a greek word (meaining “old”) originally. Rather, it could have been part of the Indian name, for example “Parasamudra”, which means “beyond the ocean”. The term “Palaisimundu” is known from other Latin and Greek sources, too. Pliny himself has it, though not as a name of the entire island but only denoting one river and the most important harbour town on Taprobane.

The term “Palaisimundu” also occured in the most important sourcebook with regard to the early expansion of Indian Ocean trade (1st century AD), namely the Periplus of the Erytraean Sea (Periplus Maris Erythraei). This log, listing coastal landmarks and port towns, was written by an unknown author presumably in the time of Pliny (mid 1st century AD). It's composed in an uneducated Greek style, using several Latin terms. Undoubtedly, the author himself had been travelling along the southwestern coast of India, which he calls “Cerobothra” (Ceraputra, etymologically related to the modern name “Kerala”). He gives a detailed account of the port town of Muziris (modern Cranganore near Cochin). Though the coasts behind Cape Comorin are known to him only from hearsay, he is the first Western author giving insightful information about the coasts of Southeastern India, namely the modern Coromandel Coast of Sri Lanka’s neighbour Tamil Nadu. This means: It’s highly likely that he came to hear the island name “Palaisimundu” not in his Western homeland but in southwestern India, where at that point in time an archaic form of Tamil (not modern Malayalam) was the spoken language.

“Palai” is known from many Tamil topynyms such as Palaitivu, which is Sri Lanka’s smallest inhabited island. And Palai first and foremost is one of the five archetypical types of natural settings (“Sangham landscapes”) used as temper categories (so-called “tinais”) in the classical Tamil Sangham literature of nearly the same period. “Palai” means semi-arid wasteland. This type of landscape occurs on the Jaffna Peninsula and in other parts of the northern half of Sri Lanka. This means, “Palaisimundu” may have been a dry zone at the other side of the sea or on an island within the ocean. The Sanskrit term “Samudra”, literally meaning “collection of waters”, is in use - and very common - in modern Tamil anyway. “Palai-Samudra” (or maybe  “Palai” with a Tamil derivate of “Samudra”), forming a compound of Dravidian and Indo-Aryan terms, might have been the origin of “Palaisimundu”.

To be honest, this derivation of “Simundu” from “Samudra” is very vulnerable to objections indeed. Jean Filliozat, an expert in Tibetan and Khmer and Tamil studies alike, who established the Institut Français d'Indologie in Pondicherry in 1955 and soon afterwards became director of the École Française d'Extrême Orient for two decades, argued against it. But the alternatives are not more convincing or conclusive. Christian Lassen, a 19th century Indologist from Norway, considered “Pali-simanta” to be the root of “Palai-Simundu”. The original term then would mean “head of the holy law” and the entire word wood be Indo-Aryan in this case and not Tamil at all.

Of course, there is also a Tamil alternative proposed by Mudaliyar C. Rasanayagam, the author of “Ancient Jaffna” published in 1926, who tried to make the case for Tamil independence in the northern part of the island. Rasanayagam states that “Palaisimundu” originates from “Palaisilamandalam”. “Sila” for “Sinhala” dervives from the Tamil word “Ilam” according to Rasanayagam, though most scholars agree that it’s the other way around. “Mandalam” in many Indian languages does not only mean “circle” but also “land” or “region” or “district”.

All in all, there is a shortcut to explain the enigmatic name “Simundu” of the Periplus and Ptolemy. It might well be that it’s simply a Greek misspelling of a word about a far-away island, heard by some Western or Arab seafarers arriving in India, a word, which in turn in those parts of India (northwest and southwest) that were visited by Westerners only was a local variation of the original name “Sinhaladwipa” (Sanskrit) or “Sihaladiva” (one of many Prakrit and Pali variants) . “Diva” or “diwa” (“island”), may have been contracted to “doo”, as the semiconsonant “w” is similar to the the vowel “u” or “oo” in many languages, and the “l” of “Sihala” might have been mistakenly represented by an “m” by those Greek travellers. Then the original sound would have been somewhat like ”Silun(dwe)”. And with this in mind we come to next chapter, which will lead to “Ceylon”.

But coming to that conclusion, we have also to consider, that Ptolemy reported another new name of Taprobane alias Silundu: Salike. As said, in the same text he calls the inhabitants of the island “Salai”. It is not far to seek that “Salai” is a corrupted version of “Sinhala” and that the typonym “Salike” is simply derived from the name of the people, the “Salai”.

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3. Sinhala - Serendip - Ceylon

​Sinhalese settlers arrived on the island in the 5th century BC and cultivated the northwestern part of the dry zone first. They became soon the major ethnical group on the island. Not surprisingly, the island is often named after its inhabitants, the “Lion people”, what is the literal meaning of “Sinhalese”.

„Sinhala“ (also transcribed “Singhala”) is the corresponding Sanskrit term. It’s known from the Indian Mahabharata Epic, the core topic of which, a battle in the region of today's Delhi, dates back to much earlier periods around 1000 BC. But the extant parts of the epic are composed not before the 4th century BC and finally edited as late as the early Gupta period (4th century AD).
​
The first mentioning of the Sinhala is found in the Adi Parva (Book 1) of the Mahabharata. In Section CLXXVI, Indian and foreign armies emerge from the cow of Rishi Vasishtha, who is one of the earliest and most revered sages in Hinduism. The Sinhala are listed among the peoples emanating from this holy cow:

And from the froth of her mouth came out hosts of Paundras and Kiratas, Yavanas and Singhalas, and the barbarous tribes of Khasas and Chivukas and Pulindas and Chins and Huns with Keralas, and numerous other Mlehchhas.

Mahabharata Book 1, Section 176
Roy, Pratap Chandra. The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa. Vol. 1. 2nd ed. Calcutta: Oriental Press, 1965, p. 403.

In principle, the term “Sinhala” of course could refer to other peoples, too, for example to Indian tribes revering a lion as their namegiving ancestral or emblematic animal. Nonetheless, it’s quite certain that those Sinhalas mentioned in the Mahabharata are indeed the islanders of the same name. This can be deduced from the fact that they are listed among other foreigners (Yavanas are Greeks) and other far-distant peoples. It’s even more obvious in Book 2 (Sabha Parva) of the Mahabharata, where in Section XXXIV the Sinhalas are mentioned together with the Drawidas (Tamils), who are actually the islander’s next neighbours in southern India. Furthermore, in Section LIII the Sinhalas occur as a kingdom, which is said to be a supplier of pearls: “And the king of the Singhalas gave those best of sea-born gems called the lapis lazuli, and heaps of pearls also, and hundreds of coverlets for elephants.” (Mhb II, 53) The Gulf of Mannar between southern India and Sri Lanka was famous for pearl fishery in antiquity.

Because “Siṃhala“ is attested as the Sanskrit name of the island in India's Purana literature, which is from the Gupta and subsequent medieval periods, the name “Sinhala” (or “Singhala”) and related names such as “Sinhala-dweepa“ must have been quite common during the classical Indian period (4th to 5th century AD) and even in the North-Indian empire of King Harsha (7th century). The term “Sinhala” as refering to the island of Sri Lanka is also known from the writings of the famous Chinese scholar and traveler Xuanzang (Hsüan-tsang), who spent most of his time in India in the kingdom of Harsha and whose report inspired one of the most famous Chinese novels, “Journey to the West“.

A Prakrit form of the Sanskrit term “Sinhala” is “Sihalam”. As Pali is a variant of Prakrit languages, the latter was also no alien in Sri Lanka. Interestingly, this Prakrit term can be pronounced more like “Silam” (with a long "ee") or even like “Seelang”. This is the word from which most names of the island that historically were in use in the Chinese and Arabic and Western World are derived, the English “Ceylon” being the most prominent among them.

 

Another derivation of the Prakrit term “Sihalam” is “Hela” and its related names such as “Heladiva” (meaning “Hela-island”) or “Helabima” (“Hela-land”). “Hela” is a term used in the most ancient layers of the Sinhalese language. Actually, in Sinhalese and many other Indo-Aryan languages, the sounds of “s” and “sh” and “h” are closely interconnected and often interchangable, for example “Ashura” (demon) of Indian languages is etymologically related to “Ahura” (lord) in Persian languages. (Indo-Aryan languages are the Indian and Iranian branch of the Indo-European family of languages.)

 

The Tamil name “Eelam” is sometimes spelt  “Eezham” or “Izham” according to scientific conventions, as the so-called retroflex approximant “l” is a phoneme typical of Dravidian languages and to be distinguished from the alveolar approximant (English “l”). “Eelam” is most probably adapted from the said ancient Sinhalese pronunciation “Hela”. However, according to several Tamil authors, it’s derived from the name of a palm tree. A caste of toddy tappers known as “Eelavar” refers to “Eelam” as their place of origin.

Late Antiquity

As mentioned above, Ptolemy has three names for the island of Sri Lanka, one of them being “Salike”, which seems to be derived from the name “Salai”. It’s highly likely that this Greek name is also related to the Prakrit term “Sihala” for Sanskrit “Sinhala”.

Other adaptations of the Indian term “Sinhala” or “Sihalam” become even more common in later antiquity in Europe, referring to the island formerly known as Taprobane.

Ammianus Marcellinus is a 4th-century Roman historian of Greek origin. His Latin work is titled “Res Gestae” (as so many historical accounts in Latin) and composed in the 380s.  Originally, it chronicled the history of Roman emperors from the 2nd century onwards. But only the last sections are still extant, being now the most significant source concerning the reigns of the Christian emperors Constantius II, Valentinian, and Valens. The author himself favours the last non-Christian emperor, Julian Apostata.

In Res Gestae XXII 7,10, Ammianus Marcellinus reports that in the year 362 AD neighbouring and distant countries, out of fear of Emperor Julian’s approach, sent envoys to him, even from South Asia: “Indian tribes vied with each other, sending nobles loaded with gifts even from the Maldive Islands and Ceylon.” (Yonge, Charles Duke. The Roman history of Ammianus Marcellinus. London: George Bell & Sons, 1894, p.286) What is translated as “Maldive Islands and Ceylon” by Yonge, is given as “Divae” and “Serendivae” by Ammianus in the original Latin version, though in the grammatical Ablative form “Divis et Serendivis”. (Another transcription is “Diuis et Serendiuis”. More importantly, there are variants of the spellings in the early manuscripts. Editio Gelenii, for example, has “Indis et Serendis”, which alters even the meaning, in this case to “India and Sri Lanka” instead of “Maldives and Sri Lanka”.)

What’s interesting about this record of Ammianus Marcellinus is that it has replaced the earlier and better known name completely: “Taprobane” is absent from all the surviving manuscripts of his Res Gestae. Even more important is the spelling of the new name, the root word of it being “Serendiv”. It’s highly likely that Ammianus made use of a Persian word, since he himself had served as a Roman soldier in the army of Julian in the Roman–Persian Wars. Ammianus came in close contact with the culture of the Sassanine Empire of Iran. Most probably, the Persian origin of the term is the reason why the new Latin term has an “r” instead of the “l” of the original “Sinhala” or the Greek “Sailan” given by Ptolemy. There are two reasons for this assumption. Firstly, the Latin word “Serendivae” comes very close to a name that was later on well-known and widespread in Persia, namely “Sarandeeb” or “Serendib”. Secondly, Iranian terms often substitute the “l” of the corresponding Indian terms by an “r”, just as in this case. This means, the Indian origin must have sound like “Selendiv”. This is definitely derived from a possible Prakrit “Sihalandipa”. Remember, that the Prakrit name of Sri Lanka was probably pronounced “Seelandip” with a long “i” (“ee”) instead of “iha”. It’s also quite common in Indian names, that “a” at the end of a word is not pronounced any more. In conclusion, substracting the ending “-dip” for “island”, we get finally this: “Seelan”, the origin of “Ceylon”.        

Accordingly, the early or mid 6th-century Byzantine sailor named Kosmas Indikopleustes called the island “ Sielediba ”. The true name of this author is not known. As he is believed to have served as a Greek seaferer in the Indian Ocean, he was later on called “Indikopleustes”, which translates to “Indian Voyager”. Kosmas himself does not say whether he reached India on his first voyage. But his Book 11, which is about Sri Lanka, too, but first and foremost has descriptions of Indians ports, seems to indicate personal knowledge. The author had become a monk, when he wrote down his account. Most probably, he was a Nestorian Christian. The major aim of his work was not delivering a geographical travel report but to replace the ancient theory of Earth being of spherical form by a Christian worldview of a flat Earth: The idea of spherical body seemed to by a pagan notion to him, better to be replaced by an Earth shaped like the tabernacle of Moses. Though the flat-earth theory never became recognized by the Roman Church officially and never replaced the spherical-earth theory in discourses of medieval Christian scientists completely, the account of Kosmas Indokopleustes – although not exactly proposing a flat Earth - was a scholarly milestone on the way to the popular wordview of the Middle Ages. The title of his work is “Christian Topography”. The earliest surviving manuscript (from the 9th century) does not include the Books XI and XII. Only in two manuscripts from the 11th century (which nevertheless are copies from much older manuscripts and may contain original texts) we can read, in Book XI, chapter 16:

This is a large Oceanic Island lying in the Indian sea. By the Indians it is called Sielediba, but by the Greeks Taprobane, and therein is found the hyacinth stone. It lies on the other side of the pepper country.

cited from: McCrindle, John Watson. The Christian Topography of Cosmas, an Egyptian Monk. London: Hakluyt Society, 1897, p. 363-64.

It’s interesting to learn that – in contrast to Ammianus Marcellinus – Kosmas Indikopleustes was fully aware of the identity of the island now known as “Sielediba” with the “Taprobane” of the elders – similar to Ptolemy, who four centuries earlier on mentioned “Salike” and “(Palai)Simundu” as alternative names of Taprobane.

 

Arabs and Persians

It were mostly Arab and not Greek seafarers who carried out the Indian Ocean Trade on behalf of the Egyptians and Romans. This is to say, Arabs had played a crucial role in maritime contacts between the Mediterranean World in the west and South India and Sri Lanka in the east already for many centuries prior to the Muslim era.

The most notable Arab name of Sri Lanka - for example known from “Sindbad the Sailor”, a late addition to the famous folk tales of “One Thousand and One Nights” - is “Serendip”. As versions of the name “Silan” remained in use among Arabs, too, it seems highly likely that the alternative Arab term “Serendip” was adapted from an earlier Persian term “Sarandib” and not the other way around. Other names in use among Arabs were equivalents to the Greek term “Taprobane” and “Island of Rubies”, slightly corresponding to the meaning of the Indian term “Ratnadvipa”.      

The quotation below is insightful and revealing, although it contains a mistaken spelling and one misleading date. The Persian geographer Abu'l-Qasim Ubaydallah ibn Abdallah ibn Khordadbeh composed the earliest surviving Arab geography in the mid 9th century AD. He is also known under the Latin transliterations Ibn Khurdadbhih or Ibn Khurradadhbih. The cited text of Sri Lanka's historian and Kandy specialist Lorna Dewaraja also refers to Buzurg ibn Shahriyar Ram'Hurmuzi, who was a captain of a merchant ship of the Iranian province of Khuzestan. He recounts his voyages from the first half of the 10th century AD in his work “Kitab al-Ajab al-Hind”, which translates to “Book of Wonders of India”. It was composed between 950 and 960 AD. Similar to Kosmas Indokopleustes, Ibn Shahriyar gives both names, viz. “Saheelan” as well as “Serendip”.

Sri Lanka has been referred to several times by Ibn Khurdabdhbih (c 345 A.D) in his Kitab-al-Masalik-Wa’l-Mamalik, the oldest work of Arab geography that has come down to us, under the name of Sarandib, a corruption of Sanskrit, Sinhaladvipa. Sarandib was sometimes used in the narrow sense to denote only that district in which Adam’s Peak was situated. Then the whole island was called Siyalan and sometimes Sahilan. Besides Sarandib the Greek name Tabrubani was also used by Arab writers. These numerous referrences show that the contact between Sri Lanka and Arabia was not merely commercial but at times cultural as well. Ibn Shahriyar who wrote his Ajab -Al-Hind around 953 A.D. records that the people of Sri Lanka, hearing of the teaching of the Holy Prophet during his life time selected an able person from among themselves and sent him to Arabia to get more authentic information about the Islamic teaching.

cited from: Dewaraja, Lorna Srimathie. The Muslims of Sri Lanka: one thousand years of ethnic harmony, 900-1915. Colombo: Lanka Islamic Foundation, 1994, pp. 24-25.

Besides borrowing “Serendip” from the Persians, the Arabs also came into contact with the Prakrit term “Sihalandipa” directly. This can be seen from the fact, that the most famous Arab-writing scholar of the 10th-century, the Persian polymath Al-Biruni, said the the island known as Serendip bears the Indian name “Sangaladip”, with the original “l” instead of the Persian “r”. (cf. Aḥmad, Saiyid Maqbul. Arabic classical Accounts of India and China. Shimla: Indian Institute of Advanced Study in association with Rddhi-India, Calcutta, 1989.).

A Persian fairy tale called “The Three Princes of Serendip” inspired Horace Walpole to coin the new word “serendipity” in a letter written on 28th January 1754. As the three princes are “always making discoveries, by accidents and sagacity, of things which they were not in quest of“, the English term “serendipity” created by Walpole originally meant “accidental saggacity” or “fortunate discovery” or “happy accident”. Robert K. Merton, who also invented the phrasing “self-fulfilling prophecy”, in his scientific work “The Travels and Adventures of Serendipity” - which is a research on sociological semantics - introduced the term “serendipity” into the history and philosophy of science. Examples of “serendipity” in the latter scientific sense are the discovery of America by Columbus or that of Penicilline by Alexander Fleming. Notwithstanding the original and the modern scientific meaning, “serendipity” has also got an aesthetical connotation of “finding something beautiful without looking for it”. In this sense, Cambodia’s most popular beach in Sihanoukville, frequented by young people in particular, is called “Serendipity Beach”.

medieval and modern European names of Sri Lanka

Marco Polo, who visited Sri Lanka on his voyage back from China in the early 1290s, called the island „Seilan“ or „Seylam“ or „Zeilam“. (The exact spelling depends on the edition, his travel account was published by different editors.) Marco Polo may well have come into contact with this name before starting his journey, as the term „Seelan“ has been known in Europe since late antiquity, see above. He furthermore crossed the Middle East, where, besides "Serendip", variations of the name "Seelan" were even more common than those of "Taprobane" (see above). Most importantly, the pronunciation of the Chinese name „Xi Lan“ or „Xi Lon“ was similar to "Seilan".

 

Variations of „Seilan“, more likely mediated by the Arabs than passed down from antiquity directly, became the most common names of the island in almost all European languages during the early modern period of international expansion. The Portuguese were the first Europeans to make use of this word. They called the island „Ceilao“. The Spanish and French notation is „Ceilan“. The Dutch had various spellings such as „Zeylan“, „Seylan“ and „Seylon“. But it were the Dutch who also introduced „Ceylon“, which, albeit pronounced differently, was then transferred to English, German, and Italian.