Ceylon/Seilani
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Ceylon, today's Sri Lanka, “the resplendent”, can be traced back to Marco Polo’s 13th century tale, where it appears as Saylam.
To Eratosthenes, Strabo, Pliny, Ptolemy, and others, the isle was Taprobane. This name was lost with the eclipse of classical Greek and Roman civilizations. Taprobane started appearing in 14th century maps as part of southeast Asia.
With the “discovery” and revival of Ptolemaic geography in the 15th century, confusion set in as to which was Taprobane, now being applied to Sumatra, and which was Ceylon (spelled variously Salam, Silan, Xilana, Seilan, etc.). The world map of Giovanni Matteo Contarini, 1506, shows three places, “Seilan”, Taprobana, and Seila isula. On Johannes Ruysch's world map of 1507, three Seilans are to be found.
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[edit] Antonio Pigafetta's "Ceylõ"
Amidst this confusion, travelers and sailors set on their own quests for the true Taprobane and the real Ceylon. Within this context we find Antonio Pigafetta’s Ceilon, Francisco Albo’s Seilani and Maximilian Transylvanus’s Selani one of the little islands in the Philippine archipelago seen during the Magellan voyage. Pigafetta was the Vicentine diarist who wrote the most comprehensive account of the circumnavigation; Albo, Greek pilot, wrote a detailed log of it which is the authority for most treatises on the track of the voyage; and Maximilian, secretary to Charles V who was married to the daughter of Cristòbal de Haro, representative of the Fuggers, German financier of the expedition, who was the first to write an account of the Magellan’s trip based on his interviews of survivors of the voyage.
[edit] Amoretti makes a part the entire of Leyte
In 1798 Carlo Amoretti, the Augustinian encyclopedist who was director of the Ambrosian library, discovered the lost handwritten Italian manuscript of Pigafetta’s account. He transcribed the codex, edited it, made some notations and published his Italian transcription in 1800, its French translation in 1801. Amoretti, in a footnote, assigned to Pigafetta’s Ceylon the identity of the whole of Leyte, a sizeable province in central Philippines. The map of the Ambrosiana codex spells the isle Ceylon. In three other extant manuscripts of Pigafetta’s account, all in French, the island is spelled differently: Ceilon in MS 5,650; Ceylõ with tilde above o in MS24224; the name scrolls in the Nancy-Libri-Phillipps-Beinecke-Yale codex are empty.
This toponymic dictum of Amoretti was uncritically accepted by Western and Philippine historians and Magellan scholars, e.g., Andrea da Mosto, Lord Stanley of Alderley, F.H.H. Guillemard, James Alexander Robertson, Pablo Pastells, S.J., and many others. Notable exceptions are R.A. Skelton and Donald F. Lach who both identify Ceylon correctly as Panaon Island, the southmost island of present-day Leyte.
[edit] Amoretti's toponymy misled historians and scholars
Amoretti’s error—taking “Ceylon” as the whole of Leyte--led to a confused picture of the 16th century geography of Surigao Strait, the theater of the greatest naval battle in World War II. By making a part—Ceylon--the whole of Leyte, this made it difficult for geographers and navigation historians to detect the absurdity and impossibility of the tracks drawn by both Antonio Pigafetta and Francisco Albo as Magellan’s fleet departed from Mazaua for Cebu. “We departed from Mazaba (Mazaua) and went N., making for the island of Seilani,“ wrote Albo. Mazaua is believed to be today’s Limasawa, a skerry west of Panaon, believed to be Mazaua. If Limasawa were Mazaua, coming from its west port it is absurd to shape a north course sailing towards Panaon (Seilani) when the destination is Cebu. A northwest course is the sensible normal track. And in any case, it’s a physical impossibility to reach Panaon taking a north track from west Limasawa. With Ceylon wrongly seen as the entire of Leyte, it was still possible to conceive of the fleet sailing towards Baibay since it’s part of Leyte. Pigafetta’s map showing “Ceylon” also shows Baibai, a town in Leyte that has retained its name, a fact remarked upon by James A. Robertson in note 216 (B&R, vol. 33, p.325), “Baibai and Ceilon (together forming the island of Leyte…).”
[edit] Pigafetta broke up Leyte into isles
Actually another Pigafetta map shows other parts of Leyte contiguous to it that are broken up as islands and, thus, resulting in the erroneous classification this time by Andrea da Mosto. The islands are Cenalo, Hiunanghan, Ibusson, and Abarien. Mosto suggested Cenalo is Dinagat Is., Hiunanghan is Cabugan Is., Ibusson Gibuson and Abarien Cabalarian. Robertson, whose English translation of the Ambrosiana is universally considered as the most eminent, proposed Manicani Island as Abarien. By correlating the westsouth west track drawn by the fleet sailing from Homonhon, it will be shown Mosto’s and Robertson’s geographical notions are mistaken. And that, save for Ibusson, Pigafetta’s islands are really places contiguous to Leyte. Pigafetta said, “…We shaped our course toward the west southwest between four small islands, namely, Cenalo, Hiunanghan, Ibusson, and Abarien.” Directly across WSW of Homonhon is today’s Silago (Cenalo), below that are Hinunangan (Hiunanghan) and Cabalian (Abarien). Only Ibusson is not part of Leyte; it is none other than today’s Hibuson Is. which belongs to the Dinagat island chain which are part of today’s Surigao Norte province.
Mosto’s Cabalarian at 11 deg. N and Robertson’s Manicani at 10 deg. 59’ N are patently wrong. From Homonhon (10°44’ N) the fleet will have to sail north going up, not west southwest which is downward, to reach either, a course inconsistent with the one drawn by Pigafetta.
[edit] Pigafetta's Ceylon is today's Panaon
Thus, Pigafetta’s 1521 Leyte is composed of Cenalo, Hiunanghan, Abarien, Ceylon and Baibai. Pigafetta's Ceylon which is Albo's Seilani and which is Maximilian's Selani is today’s Panaon Island at 10°2'N and 125°13'E.
