Cosmas Indicopleustes (literally "who sailed to India") of Alexandria was a Greek merchant and later monk probably of Nestorian tendencies.[1] He was a 6th century traveller, who made several voyages to India during the reign of emperor Justinian. His Topografia Christiana (Christian Topography) contained some of the earliest and most famous world maps. [2]
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Voyage
Around 550 Cosmas wrote the once-copiously illustrated Christian Topography, a work partly based on his personal experiences as a merchant on the Red Sea and Indian Ocean in the early 6th century. His description of India and Sri Lanka during the 6th century is invaluable to historians. Cosmas seems to have personally visited the Kingdom of Axum in modern Ethiopia, as well as Eritrea, India, and Sri Lanka.
Indicopleustes
"Indicopleustes" means "Indian voyager". While it is known from classical literature, especially the Periplus Maris Erythraei that there had been trade between the Roman Empire and India from the first century BCE onwards, Cosmas's report is one of the few from individuals who had actually made the journey. He described and sketched some of what he saw in his Topography. Some of these have been copied into the existing manuscripts, the oldest dating to the ninth century. In 522 CE, he visited the Malabar Coast (South India). He is the first traveller to mention about Syrian Christians in India. He wrote, "In the Island of Taprobane (Ceylon), there is a church of the Christians, and clerks and faithful. Likewise at Malé where the pepper grows; and in the town of Kalliana there is also a bishop consecrated in Persia." (Reference: Travancore Manual, page 248).
Topographia
A major feature of his Topographia is Cosmas' worldview that the world is flat, and that the heavens form the shape of a box with a curved lid. He was scornfull of Ptolemy and others who held that the world was spherical. Cosmas aimed to prove that pre-Christian geographers had been wrong in asserting that the earth was spherical and that it was in fact modelled on the tabernacle, the house of worship described to Moses by God during the Jewish Exodus from Egypt. However, his idea that the earth is flat has been a small minority view in educated Western opinion since the third century BCE.[3] Cosmas's view has never been influential even in religious circles; a near-contemporary Christian, John Philoponus, disagreed with him as did most Christian philosophers of the era. [2]
Cosmology aside, Cosmas proves to be an interesting and reliable guide, providing a window into a world that has since disappeared. He happened to be in Adulis at the Red Sea Coast of modern Eritrea at the time (ca 525CE) when the King of Axum was preparing a military expedition to attack the Jewish king Dhu Nuwas in Yemen, who had recently been persecuting Christians. On request of the Axumite king and in preparation for this campaign he recorded now-vanished inscriptions such as the Monumentum Adulitanum (which he mistakenly attributed to Ptolemy III Euergetes).
See also
References
- ^ Beatrice Nicolini, Penelope-Jane Watson, Makran, Oman, and Zanzibar: Three-terminal Cultural Corridor in the Western Indian Ocean (1799-1856), 2004, BRILL, ISBN 9004137807
- ^ a b Encycopedia Britannica, 2008, O.Ed., Cosmas Indicopleustes
- ^ Russell, Jeffrey B.. "The Myth of the Flat Earth". American Scientific Affiliation. http://www.asa3.org/ASA/topics/history/1997Russell.html. Retrieved 2007-03-14.
Further Reading
- Kenneth Willis Clark collection of Greek Manuscripts: Cosmas Indicopleustes, 'Topographia'.
- Cosmas Indicopleustes, Eric Otto Winstedt, The Christian topography of Cosmas Indicopleustes, 1909, The University press
- Jeffrey Barton Russell. Inventing the Flat Earth Myth, 1997. Praeger Press
- Dr. Jerry H Bentley. Traditions and Encounters, 2005. McGraw Hill.
External links
- The Christian Topography by Cosmas Indicopleustes
- The Christian Topography by Cosmas Indicopleustes (other site)
- Greek Opera Omnia by Migne Patrologia Graeca with analytical indexes
This article uses text taken from the Preface to the Online English translation of the Christian Topography, which is in the public domain.
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