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| 0076 |
Southern Tibet : vol.1 |
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CHAPTER III.
PTOLEMY.
The greatest geographer amongst the Greeks and Romans of antiquity was
Ptolemy, and it should require ages before he, in a modern period of history,
was surpassed. The discoveries made during Alexander's campaign were a re-
velation to the west; at one blow the east had been opened up to the Greek world.
Through the campaigns of Seleucus Nicator more reliable information was won
about the countries on the Ganges. The journeys and the trade of the Ptolemæans
in Egypt to India, and the foundation of Greek kingdoms in Bactria and Cappa-
docia promoted a better knowledge of the east with the western world.
Eratosthenes already had a fairly good idea of the great outlines of Asia;
he knew Paropamisus and Imaus, and even the Seres. That knowledge was en-
larged by Rome, more especially by the Syrian and Parthian wars, and by a more
developed and widespread trade on land and by sea.¹ Strabo supersedes Eratos-
thenes, but is himself in a much higher degree superseded by Ptolemy, who is
the first to speak of India extra Gangem, and has collected a much greater
amount of information about the mountains in Central Asia than his Greek and Ro-
man predecessors had been able to do.
Ptolemy wrote about 150 and 160 of our era. A very considerable part of
the knowledge which has made his name so famous, he borrowed from Marinus of
Tyre. The backbone in the orographical skeleton of Asia which had been founded
by Eratosthenes and accepted by Strabo was strongly confirmed as a fundamental
fact by Ptolemy, in whose geographical system it formed a partition wall between
the plains of Scythia on the north and the countries of Ariana and India on the
south. Regarding the names of the great mountain system, Strabo had the following
order: Paropamisus, Emodi Montes, Imaus. In accordance with him Pliny applied
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