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The 1507 Martin Waldseemüller map shows ''Patala'' in this location.
In the late 2nd century BC, Agatharchides of Cnidus recorded merchants from Patala, or as he called it, ''Potana,'' coming to the island of 
The eighteenth century French geographer, Jean-Baptiste Bourguignon d'Anville, also identified Thatta with Patala:“Tatta is not only a town, but also a province of India, according to modern travellers; this town has taken the place of the ancient Patala or Pattala, which formerly gave name to the country included between the mouths of the Indus.” This opinion was shared by Alexander Burnes, who voyaged up the Indus on a diplomatic mission in 1831–32, and wrote:"The antiquity of Tatta is unquestioned. The Pattala of the Greeks has been sought for in this position, and, I believe, with good reason; for the Indus here divides into two great branches; and these are the words of the historian:- ‘Near Pattala, the river Indus divides itself into two vast branches’ (
The Flemish cosmographer and map maker Gerard Mercator produced a map of the world in 1538 which, though modelled on that of Fine of 1531, departed from it by showing Fine's southern continent much smaller, unnamed and bearing the inscription, ''Terra hic esse certum est sed quãtus quibusque limitibus finitas incertum'' (“It is certain that there is a land here, but its size and the limits of its boundaries are uncertain”). The outline of Fine's ''Regio Patalis,'' though shown as a promontory of this smaller Antarctic continent, is likewise unnamed.
In 1564, Mercator's Flemish contemporary,
''Regio Patalis'' is Latin for “the region of Patala”, that is the region around the ancient city of Patala at the mouth of the 
While the Patala was well known to mariners and traders of the
] at the well-known port of Patale the sun rises on the right and shadows fall southward”.
The geographer Strabo (c.64 BC–c.24 AD) had said: “The Indus falls into the southern sea by two mouths, encompassing the country of Patalênê, which resembles the Delta in Egypt”. He noted: “All these ationswere conquered by Alexander, and last of all he reduced Patalênê, which the Indus forms by splitting into two branches… Patalênê contains a considerable city, Patala, which gives its name to the island”.
Indus River
The Indus ( ) is a transboundary river of Asia and a trans-Himalayan river of South and Central Asia. The river rises in mountain springs northeast of Mount Kailash in Western Tibet, flows northwest through the disputed region of Kashmi ...
in Sindh
Sindh (; ; ur, , ; historically romanized as Sind) is one of the four provinces of Pakistan. Located in the southeastern region of the country, Sindh is the third-largest province of Pakistan by land area and the second-largest province ...
, Pakistan
Pakistan ( ur, ), officially the Islamic Republic of Pakistan ( ur, , label=none), is a country in South Asia. It is the world's List of countries and dependencies by population, fifth-most populous country, with a population of almost 24 ...
. The historians of Alexander the Great
Alexander III of Macedon ( grc, Ἀλέξανδρος, Alexandros; 20/21 July 356 BC – 10/11 June 323 BC), commonly known as Alexander the Great, was a king of the ancient Greek kingdom of Macedon. He succeeded his father Philip II to ...
state that the Indus parted into two branches at the city of Patala before reaching the sea, and the island thus formed was called Patalene, the district of Patala. Alexander constructed a harbour at Patala.
While the Patala was well known to mariners and traders of the Ancient Mediterranean
The history of the Mediterranean region and of the cultures and people of the Mediterranean Basin is important for understanding the origin and development of the Mesopotamian, Egyptian, Canaanite, Phoenician, Hebrew, Carthaginian, Minoan, Gree ...
, by the European Middle Ages
In the history of Europe, the Middle Ages or medieval period lasted approximately from the late 5th to the late 15th centuries, similar to the post-classical period of global history. It began with the fall of the Western Roman Empire ...
, mapmakers no longer knew its location. ''Regio Patalis'' appeared on late 15th and early 16th century maps and globes in a variety of increasingly erroneous locations, further and further east and south of India. It even appeared on some maps as a promontory of '' Terra Australis''.
The ''Regio Patalis'' in classical literature
Pliny the Elder
Gaius Plinius Secundus (AD 23/2479), called Pliny the Elder (), was a Roman author, naturalist and natural philosopher, and naval and army commander of the early Roman Empire, and a friend of the emperor Vespasian. He wrote the encyclopedic ' ...
(Gaius Plinius Secundus, 23-79 AD) referring to “the island of Patale, at the mouth of the Indus”, wrote in ''Historia Naturalis'': “Also in India s_well_as_at_Aswan_in_Ancient_Egypt.html" "title="Aswan.html" ;"title="s well as at Aswan">s well as at Aswan in Ancient Egypt">Egypt
Egypt ( ar, مصر , ), officially the Arab Republic of Egypt, is a List of transcontinental countries, transcontinental country spanning the North Africa, northeast corner of Africa and Western Asia, southwest corner of Asia via a land bridg ...
The 1507 Martin Waldseemüller map shows ''Patala'' in this location.
In the late 2nd century BC, Agatharchides of Cnidus recorded merchants from Patala, or as he called it, ''Potana,'' coming to the island of Socotra
Socotra or Soqotra (; ar, سُقُطْرَىٰ ; so, Suqadara) is an island of the Republic of Yemen in the Indian Ocean, under the ''de facto'' control of the UAE-backed Southern Transitional Council, a secessionist participant in Yemen ...
to trade with Alexandrian merchants. The 2nd century AD author Dionysios Periegetes said in his ''Orbis Descriptio'': “This river he Indushas two mouths, and dashes against the island enclosed between them, called in the tongue of the natives, Patalênê”. Or, as Priscian put it in his popular rendition of Periegetes: “the River Indus... Patalene is girt by its divided waters.”
Some scholars identify Patala with Thatta, a one-time capital of Sindh
Sindh (; ; ur, , ; historically romanized as Sind) is one of the four provinces of Pakistan. Located in the southeastern region of the country, Sindh is the third-largest province of Pakistan by land area and the second-largest province ...
. But the identity of Patala is much debated among scholars. However, as 'Regio' is Latin for 'region', one might expect that 'Patalis' may also be of Latin origin. This indeed appears to be the case, as in ancient Latin 'patalis' meant 'broad-horned', usually used in conjunction with 'bos', meaning an ox or a bull or all sorts of oxen homas Morell, An Abridgement of Ainsworth's Dictionary, English and Latin, Camden Town, London: A. Wilson, 1817 rendering 'region of the broad-horns (bulls)'.
Siltation has caused the Indus to change its course many times since the days of Alexander the Great
Alexander III of Macedon ( grc, Ἀλέξανδρος, Alexandros; 20/21 July 356 BC – 10/11 June 323 BC), commonly known as Alexander the Great, was a king of the ancient Greek kingdom of Macedon. He succeeded his father Philip II to ...
, and the site of ancient Patala has been subject to much conjecture. Ahmad Hasan Dani, director of the Taxila Institute of Asian Civilisations, Islamabad, concluded: “There has been a vain attempt to identify the city of Patala. If ‘Patala’ is not taken as a proper name but only refers to a city, it can be corrected to ‘Pattana’, that is, anskrit fora city or port city par excellence, a term applied in a later period to Thatta [onetime capital of Sindh
Sindh (; ; ur, , ; historically romanized as Sind) is one of the four provinces of Pakistan. Located in the southeastern region of the country, Sindh is the third-largest province of Pakistan by land area and the second-largest province ...
], which is ideally situated in the way the Greek historians describe”.
The eighteenth century French geographer, Jean-Baptiste Bourguignon d'Anville, also identified Thatta with Patala:“Tatta is not only a town, but also a province of India, according to modern travellers; this town has taken the place of the ancient Patala or Pattala, which formerly gave name to the country included between the mouths of the Indus.” This opinion was shared by Alexander Burnes, who voyaged up the Indus on a diplomatic mission in 1831–32, and wrote:"The antiquity of Tatta is unquestioned. The Pattala of the Greeks has been sought for in this position, and, I believe, with good reason; for the Indus here divides into two great branches; and these are the words of the historian:- ‘Near Pattala, the river Indus divides itself into two vast branches’ (Arrian
Arrian of Nicomedia (; Greek: ''Arrianos''; la, Lucius Flavius Arrianus; )
was a Greek historian, public servant, military commander and philosopher of the Roman period.
''The Anabasis of Alexander'' by Arrian is considered the best ...
, lib.vi). Both Robertson and Vincent appear to have entertained the opinion of its identity with Tatta".
The reason for Pliny mentioning Patala, or as he called it, ''Patale,'' was to indicate that it, like the other places mentioned in the same chapter of his Natural History, particularly Syene ( Aswan, in Egypt), was situated on or below the Tropic of Cancer and so shadows there were cast southward in midsummer, thus demonstrating the rotundity of the Earth. Pliny, writing in Latin, used the form, Patale: in accordance with convention, he treats Patala, being for him a Greek-derived noun, as a third declension Latin noun with the genitive form Patalis, as though its nominative case was Patale: hence, Regio Patalis not Regio Patalae.
Syene is connected with the measurement of Earth's circumference
Earth's circumference is the distance around Earth. Measured around the Equator, it is . Measured around the poles, the circumference is .
Measurement of Earth's circumference has been important to navigation since ancient times. The first k ...
by Eratosthenes
Eratosthenes of Cyrene (; grc-gre, Ἐρατοσθένης ; – ) was a Greek polymath: a mathematician, geographer, poet, astronomer, and music theorist. He was a man of learning, becoming the chief librarian at the Library of Alexandr ...
of Cyrene in c.240 BC, although the method traditionally considered a used by Eratosthenes is actually a simplification of another author, Cleomedes, who proposed his readers to imagine to observe the angle of a shadow cast at Alexandria on the day of the summer solstice — eighty-three degrees — and deducting that from the ninety-degree right angle of the sun over Syene on the same day, from that deducing the acute angle — seven degrees — at the apex of the segment of the Earth's circumference represented by the known distance from Syene to Alexandria — 500 stadia — and then multiplying that distance by the value of that angle and dividing it by the 360 degrees of the whole circumference of the Earth: 250,000 stadia (instead of the 252,000 actually measured by Eratosthenes), or 39,690 km, an error of less than one per cent.
The ''Regio Patalis'' in Renaissance cosmography
The map of the world by the French mathematician and cosmographer Oronce Fine published in 1531 shows a large promontory attached to the continent of ''TERRA AVSTRALIS'' and extending northward almost to the Tropic of Capricorn: this promontory is named ''REGIO PATALIS'' (“Region of Patala”). Fine's ''TERRA AVSTRALIS'' with its ''REGIO PATALIS'' is apparently drawn from the globe of the German cosmographer Johann Schoener produced in Nuremberg in 1523. On this globe the Antarctic continent, called ''TERRA AVSTRALIS RECENTER INVENTA SED NONDUM PLENE COGNITA'' (“Terra Australis, recently discovered but not yet fully known”) also has a large promontory bearing the name ''REGIO PATALIS''. Schoener developed his globe from the globe made by Martin Behaim in Nuremberg in 1492. On Behaim's globe, ''India potalis'' is located south of the Equator on the ''Hoch India'' (High India, or India Superior) peninsula, the actual Indochina, on the eastern side of the '' Sinus Magnus'' ("Great Gulf", theGulf of Thailand
The Gulf of Thailand, also known as the Gulf of Siam, is a shallow inlet in the southwestern South China Sea, bounded between the southwestern shores of the Indochinese Peninsula and the northern half of the Malay Peninsula. It is around in le ...
). An inscription on Behaim's globe explains that ''Hoch India'' (India Superior ), was situated so far to the South that the Pole Star was no longer visible: “because this land lies at the antipodes to our land”.
Martin Behaim's source of knowledge of ''India Patalis'' was the ''Ymago Mundi'' of Pierre D'Ailly, a revised edition of earlier standard cosmographical works which d’Ailly wrote between 1410 and 1419. D’Ailly wrote: “according to Pliny we find there to be habitation under the Tropic of Capricorn and beyond. For the island called the Regio Pathalis has a well-known port where the Sun’s shadow falls southward, therefore the inhabitants always have the Sun to their North… I say therefore that the southern side of India extends to the Tropic of Capricorn near the region of Pathalis”.
In discussing the habitability of lands under the Torrid Zone and Tropic of Capricorn, D'Ailly drew on the ''Opus Majus'', written around the year 1267 English monk and scholar Roger Bacon
Roger Bacon (; la, Rogerus or ', also '' Rogerus''; ), also known by the scholastic accolade ''Doctor Mirabilis'', was a medieval English philosopher and Franciscan friar who placed considerable emphasis on the study of nature through emp ...
. With regard to the ''Regio Patalis,'' Bacon said: “the southern frontier of India reaches the Tropic of Capricorn near the Region of Patale and the neighbouring lands which are washed by a great arm of the sea flowing from the Ocean”. Patala was on or just south of the Tropic of Cancer, not south of the Equator, but somehow Roger Bacon had confused the Tropic of Capricorn with the Tropic of Cancer under which, on the day of the summer solstice, shadows at Patala were cast southward.
D’Ailly's ''Ymago Mundi'' served as the standard text book on cosmography during the 15th and early 16th centuries and so made widely current the view that there was a part of India, or of what was later called Indo-China, where the sun's shadow always fell southward at noon: this part was the Region of Patala. This theory found expression on Martin Behaim's globe of 1492, where ''India potalis'' is located south of the Equator on the ''Hoch India'' peninsula on the eastern side of the Sinus Magnus, the actual Indochina. This concept of the Region of Patala is shown as ''Patalie regiã'' in the world map included in ''La Salade,'' a textbook of the studies necessary for a prince written by Antoine de La Sale and published in 1444.
Following Magellan’s circumnavigation voyage of 1519-1522, Johann Schoener identified South America with the extended India Superior (Indochina) peninsula, and so depicted it on his 1523 globe. He also split the Region of Patala (''Regio Patalis'') off from this peninsula and transferred it across the ocean to become a promontory of the ''Terra Australis''. In this he was followed by Oronce Fine, whose mappemonde of 1531 shows the large ''REGIO PATALIS'' promontory on the continent of ''TERRA AVSTRALIS''.
The ''REGIO PATALIS'' is shown on the globe in an armillary clock made by of Lyon in 1560, in a fashion similar to that on Schoener’s globe of 1523 and on Fine’s map of 1531. It is also shown on the Nancy Globe, made c.1535.
The world maps of the school of cartographers centred in and around the Norman port of Dieppe (the Dieppe Maps), include the Harleian, so-called after its former owner, Edward Harley, made by an unknown cartographer in the mid-1540s, that made by Pierre Desceliers in 1546, and also Guillaume Le Testu’s ''Cosmographie Universelle'' of 1555. On these maps, Fine’s ''REGIO PATALIS'' has evolved into the great promontory of ''Jave la Grande
La grande isle de Java ("the great island of Java") was, according to Marco Polo, the largest island in the world; his Java Minor was the actual island of Sumatra, which takes its name from the city of Samudera (now Lhokseumawe) situated on its n ...
'' (Greater Java) which extends, like the ''Regio Patalis,'' northward from the Austral continent. This development may have been influenced by the phrase used by the Italian traveler Ludovico di Varthema in describing Java which, he said, “''prope in inmensum patet'' (extends almost beyond measure)”. Although the word ''patet'' (“extends”) has no connection with Patala, the superficial resemblance may have misled them.
''Terra Java'' in the '' Vallard Atlas'' of 1547, another product of the Dieppe school, bears the vestigial toponym ''patallis'' inscribed on its west coast. “Patal(l)is” is the genitive form of Patala, and therefore simply means “of Patala” without specifying the “what” of Patala—region, land, kingdom, port, or city—indicating that it is no more than a vestige of the original “Regio Patalis”.
The cosmography of the Dieppe mapmakers, particularly as regards the Austral continent, developed from that of Johann Schoener, through the work of Oronce Fine. Albert Anthiaume wrote in 1911: “Whence had the Norman cartographers drawn the idea of this continent a Terre Australe From the bicordiform wo-heart shapedmappemonde of Oronce Fine (1531), which he in turn had borrowed from Schoener....Most of the Norman cartographers, and particularly Le Testu, knew the works of Oronce Fine”.
In his study of Schöner's globes, Franz von Wieser, found that the derivation of Fine's mappemonde from them was “unmistakeable (''unverkennbar'')”.
Schoener's idea of the ''Regio Patalis'' developed, as explained above, from the earlier globe of Martin Behaim which itself was based on the works of Pierre d’Ailly, Roger Bacon and Pliny the Elder, and not on the accounts of any voyages to the unknown Austral continent, the ''Terra Australis Incognita''.
''Jave la Grande'' on the Dieppe maps, which was derived from the ideas of Johann Schoener, can be seen to be a construct of the cosmographical concepts of the early 16th century and not derived from the discovery of the coasts of Australia made by unknown voyagers of that time. This is seen on Guillaume Le Testu’s 1556 ''Cosmographie Universel, 4me projection,'' where the northward extending promontory of the ''Terre australle'', called ''Regio Patalis'' by Schöner and Fine, is called ''Grande Jaue''. French geographer Numa Broc has noted that the Dieppe cartographers, including Le Testu, replaced the ''Regio Patalis'' of Oronce Fine with a ''Grande Jave,'' more or less attached to an enormous austral land mass, and that their insistence on speaking of “la Grande Jave” permitted the erection of the hypothesis of a Portuguese or French “pre-discovery” of Australia between 1520 and 1530.
The Flemish cosmographer and map maker Gerard Mercator produced a map of the world in 1538 which, though modelled on that of Fine of 1531, departed from it by showing Fine's southern continent much smaller, unnamed and bearing the inscription, ''Terra hic esse certum est sed quãtus quibusque limitibus finitas incertum'' (“It is certain that there is a land here, but its size and the limits of its boundaries are uncertain”). The outline of Fine's ''Regio Patalis,'' though shown as a promontory of this smaller Antarctic continent, is likewise unnamed.
In 1564, Mercator's Flemish contemporary, Abraham Ortelius
Abraham Ortelius (; also Ortels, Orthellius, Wortels; 4 or 14 April 152728 June 1598) was a Brabantian cartographer, geographer, and cosmographer, conventionally recognized as the creator of the first modern atlas, the '' Theatrum Orbis Terraru ...
published a world map, ''Typus Orbis Terrarum'', on which he identified the ''Regio Patalis'' with ''Locach'' as a northward extension of the ''Terra Australis'': ”This tract is called by some Patalis"; and "The Region of Locach seems to be placed here by Marco Polo
Marco Polo (, , ; 8 January 1324) was a Venetian merchant, explorer and writer who travelled through Asia along the Silk Road between 1271 and 1295. His travels are recorded in '' The Travels of Marco Polo'' (also known as ''Book of the Marv ...
the Venetian". The great promontory terminated in the north with New Guinea
New Guinea (; Hiri Motu: ''Niu Gini''; id, Papua, or , historically ) is the world's second-largest island with an area of . Located in Oceania in the southwestern Pacific Ocean, the island is separated from Australia by the wide Torres ...
, "recently discovered, so called because its nature and climate do not differ from the African Guinea; apparently this tract was called Terra de Piccinacoli by Andrea Corsali".Günter Schilder, ''Monumenta Cartographica Neerlandica,'' Alphen aan den Rijn, Uitgevermaatschappij Canaletto, 1986, Vol.2.
From that time on, the outline of the ''Regio Patalis/Jave la Grande/Locach'' promontory gradually faded from the maps of the world.
See also
*Sigerdis
Sigerdis is a name given by the ancient Greeks to a part of the northwestern South Asia. It seems to correspond to the ''Sindhu'', the delta of the Indus river, today's area of Sindh in southern Pakistan.
Referring to the conquests of the Indo-Gr ...
* Thatta
* Dieppe Maps
* Jave la Grande
La grande isle de Java ("the great island of Java") was, according to Marco Polo, the largest island in the world; his Java Minor was the actual island of Sumatra, which takes its name from the city of Samudera (now Lhokseumawe) situated on its n ...
* Theory of Portuguese discovery of Australia
References
Bibliography
* * {{citation , last=Dani , first=Ahmad Hasan , authorlink=Ahmad Hasan Dani , chapter=Sindhu-Sauvira , editor=Hamida Khuhro , title=Sind through the centuries: proceedings of an international seminar held in Karachi in Spring 1975 , url=https://books.google.com/books?id=k-Y8AAAAMAAJ , year=1981 , publisher=Oxford University Press , isbn=978-0-19-577250-0 , pages=35–42 , ref={{sfnref, Dani, Sindhu-Sauvira, 1981 Age of Discovery History of Sindh European exploration of Australia Thatta District Tourist attractions in Thatta