English: Philippus Baldaeus’s 17th-century account of Ceylon and the Malabar and Coromandel coasts of India included cultural as well as geographical information. His depictions of episodes from Hindu mythology were almost certainly based on Indian originals. Baldaeus spent the years 1658 to 1665 in Ceylon, and his extensive and factual account contributed to Europeans’ understanding that eastern civilizations had literary and iconographic traditions as complex and sophisticated as those of the western world. CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY LIBRARY (BALDAEUS, NAAUKEURIGE BESCHRYVINGE…, 1672