This intriguing map of the world in outline does in fact approximate to geographical reality, and shows the principal cities visited by the biblical characters, ie Calicut in southern India is included for its association with Thomas the Apostle. America appears in the lower left-hand corner, and part of what might well be mistaken for Western Australia is placed in the near-correct position lower right: labelled India Meridionalis, a quarter of a century before the first confirmed charting of any part of the Australian coast. Its appearance here has given rise to “speculation that it reflects knowledge of an early discovery, perhaps by Portuguese navigators. The placement of Africa and India Meridionalis on the same parallel is remarkably accurate… India Meridionalis is better explained as a survival from Ptolemy’s “Geography”. If Bunting’s map had extended a few degrees further east, it would have shown two ‘legs’ connected to India proper: Ptolemy’s Aurea Chersonesus (Malay Peninsular) and ‘the Dragon’s Tail’ (an imaginary peninsula that formed the eastern arm of a non-existent Great Gulf). In the year the Itinerarium was published, the Spanish and Portuguese crowns were united under Philip II, and in 1594 he issued an instruction that the states of India Meridionalis were to be incorporated in the crown of Portugal. His successor, Philip III, commissioned a Malay/Portuguese cosmographer, Manuel Gondinho de Eredia, to acquire them. Like his monarchs, Eredia believed that India Meridionalis existed, and for nine years, while unsuccessfully trying to mount an expedition from Malacca, he strove to reconcile Marco Polo’s ‘greatest island in the world’ (Java la Grande) with the travellers’ tales he gathered from the Indonesian archipelago and the report of an agent he sent into Dutch-dominated Java. In the end, he claimed to have discovered Luca Antara, a rich Javanese land in the southern hemisphere. Alas, its people, topography and location were all fanciful” (Granville Allen Mawer for “Mapping our World: Terra Incognita to Australia”, National Library of Australia, page 87). The book describes the travels of the religious figures of the Old and New Testaments of the Bible as well as its geography, accompanied by some interesting maps that take more than a little liberty with the actualities.
Along with the early representation of America the Caspian Sea is greatly exaggerated in size and the Mediterranean Sea is linked to the Black Sea by a waterway that extends all the way through Europe, presumably to the Arctic. Taprobana (Ceylon) is labelled but no landmass is charted. The seas are adorned with sea monsters and many major cities are indicated and named. Though crudely drawn the map remains a favourite amongst collectors
Shirley illustrates a different block with minor changes in his book The Mapping of the World, the most significant being Mare Mediterrraneum. In this edition, the name is written in the Mediterranean Sea itself, while in Shirley’s copy, Mare Mediterraneum is written on the African landmass. Other variations in the nomenclature exist and a section of the engraved bottom right hand corner, missing in Shirley’s example, is present in this one.
Reference:Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Shirley 143, pl.120; Changing Coastlines, map 11; Clancy Terra Australis, illust. p.66
The historical fiction ‘The Bunting Quest’ by Steven Marcuson (Published Hybrid Publishers, Melbourne 2016) imagines Bunting travelling to the ‘unknown country’ thirty years prior to European discovery.
