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The Name of China and its Geography in Cosmas Indicopleustes |
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时间：2009-7-24 13:48:43 来源：不详
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In his Christian Topography, a medley of theology and geography, Cosmas Indicopleustes, a Byzantine Greek who is believed to have sailed to Ceylon and India in the very beginning of the 6th century, mentions “the country of silk” with the name of Tzinitza (Tzίnitza) and a slightly variant Tzinista (Tzίnista), offering, in the book ii, a passage on the geography of the country:
“Now this country of silk is situated in the remotest of all the Indies, and lies to the left of those who enter the Indian sea, far beyond the Persian Gulf, and the island called by the Indians Selediba and by the Greeks Taprobanê. It is called Tzinitza, and is surrounded on the left by the ocean, just as Barbaria is surrounded by it on the right. The Indian philosophers, called the Brachmans, say that if you stretch a cord from Tzinitza to pass through Persia, onward to the Roman dominions, the middle of the earth would be quite correctly traced, and they are perhaps right.”[1]
He also notices the different distances from Tzinitza to Persia from the two directions:
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