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Ancient India: As Described by Ptolemy
This is a reproduction of a book published before 1923. This book may have occasional imperfections such as missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. that were either part of the original artifact, or were introduced by the scanning process. We believe this work is culturally important, and despite the imperfections, have elected to bring it back into print as part of our continuing commitment to the preservation of printed works worldwide. We appreciate your understanding of the imperfections in the preservation process, and hope you enjoy this valuable book.
450 pages, Hardcover
First published December 1, 1985
About the author
John Watson McCrindle
25 books5 followersJohn Watson McCrindle was a British philologist.
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
March 7, 2026
Ptolemy's geography of ancient India is a notoriously difficult writing and reading for reasons aplenty. Nevertheless, it retains a value as a record of antiquity, and judging from the multiplicity of learned disquisitions, it has not ceased to elucidate antiquarian scholarship and cartographical methodologies, how much ever erroneous.
Ptolemy, the celebrated astronomer, mathematician and geographer lived in the second century of the Common Era in Alexandria. Not much is known about his birth or early life, and whatever is on record is constituted majorly by conjectures. His major astronomical treatise, known by the Arabic title 'Almagest' was largely built on the platform set up by Hipparchus, who lived three centuries before him, and was a systematic work on rectilineal & spherical astronomy, motion of heavenly bodies and instruments used by the Greeks hitherto and was universally accepted until superseded by the Copernican revolution in the 15th century. Ptolemy's geography, more to do with cartography than geography proper, too was dethroned by the 15th century as maritime discoveries began to take hold. The geographical system had a precedent in Hipparchus and the Marinus of Tyre, for these two were strong advocates of cartography, and suggested that the only way to map out the inhabited world lay in observations of the latitude and the longitude.
While these influences propelled Ptolemy, it were here that errors started to creep in and thereafter multiplying, but nevertheless not too hourly contested as the grid of latitudes and longitudes offered a scientific schema to place the inhabited world within. Let us look at five major computational errors Ptolemy made, culminating in India's case, where he gave the subcontinent and east - west orientation rather than the north - south one known today.
1. The first calculation defect artists out of his adoption of Poseidonius' (135 - 50 BCE) and Marinus' circumferential length of the earth at 180000 stadia (One stadia (or stadion) is an ancient unit of length, generally estimated to be approximately 150 to 210 meters. While the exact length varied by region and time, the most common standard, such as the Olympic stadion or the Roman stadium, is widely considered to be around 185 meters). Ptolemy made every degree of latitude and longitude, measured at the equator, equal to 500 stadia, a significant deviation from 600 stadia that is considered today.
2. The shifts in longitudes thus measured - even though the Prime Meridian was imaginarily conceived at Ferro in the Fortunate Islands (Canaries), more westerly than any part of Europe or Africa, Ptolemy, unaware of the island's exact knowledge drew its position at 2-1/2° instead of 9°20' west of the sacred promontory at Cape St. Vincent, regarded by him as the westernmost point of Europe. Hence, all Ptolemy's longitudes reckoned eastwards, were 7° less than they would have been if measured from the meridian at Ferro. This error was unfortunate as the longitude was really calculated from Alexandria, and not the imaginary meridian, both westwards and eastwards, and thereafter reversed to suit computability.
3. Equatorial position was moved north - Ptolemy was aware of the equinoctial line (the celestial equator projection into space of Earth's equator), but lacked observational acumen, and thus calculated its position from the tropic that passed through Syene (present-day Aswan in Egypt). He then reckoned the degree as 500 stadia, and made the distance between the tropic and equator too small by one-sixth. This resulted in moving the equator North by almost 230 miles than its actual position.
4. In general, Ptolemy's countries are married at the North and bulge as they move south. This resulted in the eastern parts of Asia to be carried a long-way beyond their true distance from Europe and Africa.
5. In India's case, the faultline becomes planar considerably, as Ptolemy's geographical system gives India an undue longitudinal extension, and denying any prospect of an Indian peninsular shape as known today. By the calculations wrought by him, for instance, Cape Comorin (Kanyakumari) is placed only 4° south of Bharuch (near the mouth of the Narmada). Another instance is the inflationary magnitude of Sri Lanka (then known as Taprobane), which was made 14 times as large as it is today. Things get more weirder when Ptolemy's system placed Paithan (the former capital-like settlement of Maharashtra) in the Bay of Bengal, Ganga to flow into the sea near Canton, and Mahanadi to run into Thailand and Cambodia.
These observations must have penetrated the original maps, but unfortunately, none of those are extant today. The oldest map accompanying the original manuscripts come from the 12th century, courtesy of a draughtsman, Agathodaemon of Alexandria. So are we at a loss here by 10 centuries separating the original manuscript and cartographical. Possibly no. At least as regards the position of India, a series of serious researchers began to set the errors right. While not naming all of these choices, it is indeed obligated to make some who made astounding geographical discoveries to bring to light Ptolemy's faults.
H. H. Wilson, in his Ariana Antiqua, which is an account of his travels in Afghanistan and NW Frontier of India has rendered an invaluable service in elucidating many obscure names in Ptolemy. Christian Lassen, the famed Indologist, known for his encyclopaedic knowledge wrote exhaustively on the antiquities of India, sourced from classical and Sanskrit texts. But his enunciation wasn't up to the mark, according to the author of the present work"Ancient India as Described by Ptolemy", John McCrindle. Lassen's work found its cartographer in Henri Kiepert, who made the first serious attempt to draw the map of the ancient India. The map, although faulty, does being out the errors in Ptolemy's system. Next in line is the towering Father of Geography of Ancient India, M. Vivien de Saint-Martin, who brings together eclectic understandings from Vedic, Classical and Chinese sources in understanding the geography of ancient India and Central Asia. A particular hagiographical note made by Alexander Cunningham about Saint-Martin is gentle reminder.
"St-Martin's identifications have been made with so much care and success that few places have escaped his research and most of these have escaped only because the imperfection or want of fullness in the maps rendered actual identifications quite impossible."
No such inquiry can ever be complete without invoking the Giant of Indian Archaeology, Sir Alexander Cunningham. Cunningham's magnus "The Ancient Geography of India" and 23 volumes of Archaeological Surveys has not only given a summary of Lassen and St-Martin's works, but also corrected and revised then in the light of his extensive researches and discoveries. John McCrindle owes a lot on these works for his commentaries, which are well laid out in the editorial notes towards the end of the present book.
John W McCrindle taught at the prestigious Patna College, and this work first saw the light of the day in 1885. McCrindle's primary contribution is translating Ptolemy's difficult Greek text into English, making it accessible to a wider audience. The book features a scholarly introduction, extensive commentary, and two detailed maps to help readers visualize ancient Indian geography and place names. A certain critique notes Ptolemy's work is "mathematical, not descriptive." While invaluable for coordinates, it offers little description of India's people, customs, or daily life compared to other ancient sources. There is certain repetitiveness in McCrindle, especially when it comes to linguistics, this compelling disengagement at times.
While the title focuses on India, the book's scope is broader. It includes McCrindle's translation of Ptolemy's chapters describing not only India but also:
· Central Asia and the provinces adjacent to India, such as Hyrkania, Margiane, Baktriane, and Sogdiana.
· The Indo-Chinese region, which Ptolemy termed "India beyond the Ganges."
· The island of Taprobane, which is modern-day Sri Lanka.
· The Sinai region, referring to what is now Southern China.
The book, was part of a larger, ambitious project by McCrindle. He aimed to translate and compile all significant references to India found in classical Greek and Roman literature. This particular volume on Ptolemy was the fourth in a series that also included translations of works by Megasthenes, Arrian, and others. McCrindle's goal was to consolidate these "multifarious sources which are not easily accessible" into a single, useful compendium for both general readers and scholars. Thus, the work has a niche following, and rightly so.
Ptolemy, the celebrated astronomer, mathematician and geographer lived in the second century of the Common Era in Alexandria. Not much is known about his birth or early life, and whatever is on record is constituted majorly by conjectures. His major astronomical treatise, known by the Arabic title 'Almagest' was largely built on the platform set up by Hipparchus, who lived three centuries before him, and was a systematic work on rectilineal & spherical astronomy, motion of heavenly bodies and instruments used by the Greeks hitherto and was universally accepted until superseded by the Copernican revolution in the 15th century. Ptolemy's geography, more to do with cartography than geography proper, too was dethroned by the 15th century as maritime discoveries began to take hold. The geographical system had a precedent in Hipparchus and the Marinus of Tyre, for these two were strong advocates of cartography, and suggested that the only way to map out the inhabited world lay in observations of the latitude and the longitude.
While these influences propelled Ptolemy, it were here that errors started to creep in and thereafter multiplying, but nevertheless not too hourly contested as the grid of latitudes and longitudes offered a scientific schema to place the inhabited world within. Let us look at five major computational errors Ptolemy made, culminating in India's case, where he gave the subcontinent and east - west orientation rather than the north - south one known today.
1. The first calculation defect artists out of his adoption of Poseidonius' (135 - 50 BCE) and Marinus' circumferential length of the earth at 180000 stadia (One stadia (or stadion) is an ancient unit of length, generally estimated to be approximately 150 to 210 meters. While the exact length varied by region and time, the most common standard, such as the Olympic stadion or the Roman stadium, is widely considered to be around 185 meters). Ptolemy made every degree of latitude and longitude, measured at the equator, equal to 500 stadia, a significant deviation from 600 stadia that is considered today.
2. The shifts in longitudes thus measured - even though the Prime Meridian was imaginarily conceived at Ferro in the Fortunate Islands (Canaries), more westerly than any part of Europe or Africa, Ptolemy, unaware of the island's exact knowledge drew its position at 2-1/2° instead of 9°20' west of the sacred promontory at Cape St. Vincent, regarded by him as the westernmost point of Europe. Hence, all Ptolemy's longitudes reckoned eastwards, were 7° less than they would have been if measured from the meridian at Ferro. This error was unfortunate as the longitude was really calculated from Alexandria, and not the imaginary meridian, both westwards and eastwards, and thereafter reversed to suit computability.
3. Equatorial position was moved north - Ptolemy was aware of the equinoctial line (the celestial equator projection into space of Earth's equator), but lacked observational acumen, and thus calculated its position from the tropic that passed through Syene (present-day Aswan in Egypt). He then reckoned the degree as 500 stadia, and made the distance between the tropic and equator too small by one-sixth. This resulted in moving the equator North by almost 230 miles than its actual position.
4. In general, Ptolemy's countries are married at the North and bulge as they move south. This resulted in the eastern parts of Asia to be carried a long-way beyond their true distance from Europe and Africa.
5. In India's case, the faultline becomes planar considerably, as Ptolemy's geographical system gives India an undue longitudinal extension, and denying any prospect of an Indian peninsular shape as known today. By the calculations wrought by him, for instance, Cape Comorin (Kanyakumari) is placed only 4° south of Bharuch (near the mouth of the Narmada). Another instance is the inflationary magnitude of Sri Lanka (then known as Taprobane), which was made 14 times as large as it is today. Things get more weirder when Ptolemy's system placed Paithan (the former capital-like settlement of Maharashtra) in the Bay of Bengal, Ganga to flow into the sea near Canton, and Mahanadi to run into Thailand and Cambodia.
These observations must have penetrated the original maps, but unfortunately, none of those are extant today. The oldest map accompanying the original manuscripts come from the 12th century, courtesy of a draughtsman, Agathodaemon of Alexandria. So are we at a loss here by 10 centuries separating the original manuscript and cartographical. Possibly no. At least as regards the position of India, a series of serious researchers began to set the errors right. While not naming all of these choices, it is indeed obligated to make some who made astounding geographical discoveries to bring to light Ptolemy's faults.
H. H. Wilson, in his Ariana Antiqua, which is an account of his travels in Afghanistan and NW Frontier of India has rendered an invaluable service in elucidating many obscure names in Ptolemy. Christian Lassen, the famed Indologist, known for his encyclopaedic knowledge wrote exhaustively on the antiquities of India, sourced from classical and Sanskrit texts. But his enunciation wasn't up to the mark, according to the author of the present work"Ancient India as Described by Ptolemy", John McCrindle. Lassen's work found its cartographer in Henri Kiepert, who made the first serious attempt to draw the map of the ancient India. The map, although faulty, does being out the errors in Ptolemy's system. Next in line is the towering Father of Geography of Ancient India, M. Vivien de Saint-Martin, who brings together eclectic understandings from Vedic, Classical and Chinese sources in understanding the geography of ancient India and Central Asia. A particular hagiographical note made by Alexander Cunningham about Saint-Martin is gentle reminder.
"St-Martin's identifications have been made with so much care and success that few places have escaped his research and most of these have escaped only because the imperfection or want of fullness in the maps rendered actual identifications quite impossible."
No such inquiry can ever be complete without invoking the Giant of Indian Archaeology, Sir Alexander Cunningham. Cunningham's magnus "The Ancient Geography of India" and 23 volumes of Archaeological Surveys has not only given a summary of Lassen and St-Martin's works, but also corrected and revised then in the light of his extensive researches and discoveries. John McCrindle owes a lot on these works for his commentaries, which are well laid out in the editorial notes towards the end of the present book.
John W McCrindle taught at the prestigious Patna College, and this work first saw the light of the day in 1885. McCrindle's primary contribution is translating Ptolemy's difficult Greek text into English, making it accessible to a wider audience. The book features a scholarly introduction, extensive commentary, and two detailed maps to help readers visualize ancient Indian geography and place names. A certain critique notes Ptolemy's work is "mathematical, not descriptive." While invaluable for coordinates, it offers little description of India's people, customs, or daily life compared to other ancient sources. There is certain repetitiveness in McCrindle, especially when it comes to linguistics, this compelling disengagement at times.
While the title focuses on India, the book's scope is broader. It includes McCrindle's translation of Ptolemy's chapters describing not only India but also:
· Central Asia and the provinces adjacent to India, such as Hyrkania, Margiane, Baktriane, and Sogdiana.
· The Indo-Chinese region, which Ptolemy termed "India beyond the Ganges."
· The island of Taprobane, which is modern-day Sri Lanka.
· The Sinai region, referring to what is now Southern China.
The book, was part of a larger, ambitious project by McCrindle. He aimed to translate and compile all significant references to India found in classical Greek and Roman literature. This particular volume on Ptolemy was the fourth in a series that also included translations of works by Megasthenes, Arrian, and others. McCrindle's goal was to consolidate these "multifarious sources which are not easily accessible" into a single, useful compendium for both general readers and scholars. Thus, the work has a niche following, and rightly so.
October 16, 2018
Nice at the start but gets boring & uninteresting to wake the middle. History could be much more drawing but sadly it's a wasted opportunity in this case.
October 12, 2020
Sadly repetitive. Attempt is great but the author is carried away with linguistic stuff & misinterpretation of certain facts
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews