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 foreigners, who held the harbours and the chief seats of commerce, leaving the interior to the aboriginal inhabitants.

Ptolemy speaks also of many small islands west of Ceylon—doubtless the Maldives—and of those to the eastward, now called the Sunda Islands, more especially of Jabadia (now Java), which he describes as the richest of them all. Many other islands are also noticed by him which cannot now be identified; it seems also probable that he knew something of the Straits of Sunda, between Java and Sumatra. Indeed, he mentions boats peculiar to the Java sea, as observed also by Pliny, constructed of planks fastened together by trenails instead of iron. Moreover, his account of India beyond the Ganges, and of the various ports and cities of the peninsulas of Malacca and Serica (China), proves at least this, that long before his time these countries were accessible to navigators, and that Ceylon was the common mart for the trade of all the vessels bound thence to the westward.

From the "Periplus" of Arrian still more accurate information is obtainable, and especially with regard to the Malabar coast he himself visited: from his report we learn that Cochin and Travancore then carried on a flourishing trade, and that Palæsimundum, the capital of Ceylon, was considered by him to contain upwards of two hundred thousand inhabitants, an estimate more likely to be true of the whole island than of the capital alone. Palæsimundum was on the northern side of the island, probably on or near the bay of Trincomalee, one of the finest harbours in India, although then, as now, the port and harbour of Galle on the south appears to have been