EARLY COMMERCE, SHIPPING, AND PRODUCTIONS.
TRADE.—At a very early period the mass of the people of Ceylon were essentially agricultural, and the proportion of the population addicted to other pursuits consisted of the small number of handicraftsmen required in a community amongst whom civilisation and refinement were so slightly developed, that the bulk of the inhabitants may be said to have had few wants beyond the daily provision of food.
Upon trade the natives appear to have looked at all times with indifference. Other nations, both of the east and west of Ceylon, made the island their halting-place and emporium; the Chinese brought thither the wares destined for the countries beyond the Euphrates, and the Arabians and Persians met them with their products in exchange; but the Singhalese appear to have been uninterested spectators of this busy traffic, in which they can hardly be said to have taken any share. The inhabitants of the opposite coast of India, aware of the natural wealth of Ceylon, participated largely in its development, and the Tamils, who eagerly engaged in the pearl fishery, gave to the gulf of Manaar the name of Salabham, "the sea of gain."[l]
1: The Tamils gave the same name to Chilaw, which was the nearest town to the pearl fishery (and which Ibn Batuta calls Salawat); and eventually they called the whole island Salabham.
Native Shipping.—The only mention made of native ships in the sacred writings of the Singhalese, is in connection with missions, whether for the promotion of Buddhism, or for the negotiation of marriages and alliances with the princes of India.[1] The building of dhoneys is adverted to as early as the first century, but they were only intended by a devout king to be stationed along the shores of the island, covered by day with white cloths, and by night illuminated with lamps, in order that from them priests, as the royal almoners, might distribute gifts and donations of food.[2]
1: TURNOUR'S Epitome, App. p. 73.
2: By King Maha Dailiya, A.D. 8. Mahawanso, ch. xxxiv. p. 211; Rajavali, p. 228; Rajaratnacari, p. 52.
The genius of the people seems to have never inclined them to a sea-faring life, and the earliest notice which occurs of ships for the defence of the coast, is in connection with the Malabars who were taken into the royal service from their skill in naval affairs.[1] A national marine was afterwards established for this purpose, A.D. 495, by the King Mogallana.[2] In the Suy-shoo, a Chinese history of the Suy dynasty, it is stated that in A.D. 607, the king of Ceylon "sent the Brahman Kew-mo-lo with thirty vessels, to meet the approaching ships which conveyed an embassy from China."[3] And in the twelfth century, when Prakrama I. was about to enter on his foreign expeditions, "several hundreds of vessels were equipped for that service within five months."[4]
1: B.C. 247. Mahawanso, ch. xxi. p. 127.
2: Mahawanso, ch. xl. TURNOUR'S MS. Transl.
3: Suy-shoo, b. lxxxi. p. 3.
4: TURNOUR'S Epitome, &c., App. p. 73.
It is remarkable that the same apathy to navigation, if not antipathy to it, still prevails amongst the inhabitants of an island, the long sea-borde of which affords facilities for cultivating a maritime taste, did any such exist. But whilst the natives of Hindustan fit out sea-going vessels, and take service as sailors for distant voyages, the Singhalese, though most expert as fishers and boatmen, never embark in foreign vessels, and no instance exists of a native ship, owned, built, or manned by Singhalese.
The boats which are in use at the present day, and which differ materially in build at different parts of the island, appear to have been all copied from models supplied by other countries. In the south the curious canoes, which attract the eye of the stranger arriving at Point de Galle by their balance-log and outrigger, were borrowed from the islanders of the Eastern Archipelago; the more substantial canoe called a ballam, which is found in the estuaries and shallow lakes around the northern shore, is imitated from one of similar form on the Malabar coast; and the catamaran is common to Ceylon and Coromandel. The awkward dhoneys, built at Jaffna, and manned by Tamils, are imitated from those at Madras; while the Singhalese dhoney, south of Colombo, is but an enlargement of the Galle canoe with its outrigger, so clumsily constructed that the gunwale is frequently topped by a line of wicker-work smeared with clay, to protect the deck front the wash of the sea.[1]
1: The gunwale of the boat of Ulysses was raised by hurdles of osiers to keep off the waves.
[Greek: Phraxe de min rhipessi diamperes oisuinêsi Kumatos eilar emen pollên d' epecheuato hulên.] Od. v. 256.
One peculiarity in the mode of constructing the native shipping of Ceylon existed in the remotest times, and is retained to the present day. The practice is closely connected with one of the most imaginative incidents in the medieval romances of the East Their boats and canoes, like those of the Arabs and other early navigators who crept along the shores of India, are put together without the use of iron nails[1], the planks being secured by wooden bolts, and stitched together with cords spun from the fibre of the coconut.[2]
PALLADIUS, a Greek of the lower empire, to whom is ascribed an account of the nations of India, written in the fifth century[3], adverts to this peculiarity of construction, and connects it with the phenomenon which forms so striking an incident in one of the tales in the Arabian Nights' Entertainments. In the story of the "Three Royal Mendicants," the "Third Calender," as he is called in the old translation, relates to the ladies of Bagdad, in whose house he is entertained, how he and his companions lost their course, when sailing in the Indian Ocean, and found themselves in the vicinity of "the mountain of loadstone towards which the current carried them with violence, and when the ships approached it they fell asunder, and the nails and everything that was of iron flew from them towards the loadstone."
1: DELAURIER, Études sur la "Relation des voyages faits par les Arabes et les Persans dans l'Inde." Journ. Asiat. tom. xlix. p. 137. See also MALTE BRUN, Hist. de Géogr. tom. i. p. 409, with the references to the Periplus Mar. Erythr., Strabo, Procopius, &c. GIBBON, Decl. and Fall, vol. v. ch. xl.
2: Boats thus sewn together existed at an early period on the coast of Arabia as well as of Ceylon. Odoric of Friuli saw them at Ormus in the fourteenth century (Hakluyt, vol. ii. p. 35); and the construction of ships without iron was not peculiar to the Indian seas, as Homer mentions that the boat built by Ulysses was put together with woolen pegs, [Greek: gomphoisin], instead of bolts. Odys. v. 249.
3: The tract alluded to is usually known as tne treatise de Moribus Brachmanorum, and ascribed to St. Ambrose. For an account of it see [Vol. I. Pt. v. ch. i. p. 538.]
The learned commentator, LANE, says that several Arab writers describe this mountain of loadstone, and amongst others he instances El Caswini, who lived in the latter half of the thirteenth century.[1] EDRISI, the Arab geographer, likewise alludes to it; but the invention belongs to an earlier age, and Palladius, in describing Ceylon, says that the magnetic rock is in the adjacent islands called Maniolæ (Maldives?), and that ships coming within the sphere of its influence are irresistibly drawn towards it, and lose all power of progress except in its direction. Hence it is essential, he adds, that vessels sailing for Ceylon should be fastened with wooden instead of iron bolts.[2]
1: LANE'S Arabian Nights, vol. i. ch. iii, p. 72, p. 242.
2: [Greek: "Esti de idikôs ta diaperônta ploia eis ekeinên tên megalên nêson aneu sidêrou epiouriois xylinois kataskeuasmena">[—PALLADIUS, in Pseudo-Callisthenes, lib. iii. c. vii. But the fable of the loadstone mountain is older than either the Arabian sailors or the Greeks of the lower empire. Aristotle speaks of a magnetic mountain on the coast of India, and Pliny repeats the story, adding that "si sint clavi in calciamentis, vestigia avelli in altero non posse in altero sisti."—Lib. ii. c. 98, lib. xxxvi. c. 25. Ptolemy recounts a similar fable in his geography. Klaproth, in his Lettre sur la Boussole, says that this romantic belief was first communicated to the West from China. "Les anciens auteurs Chinois parlent aussi de montagnes magnétiques de la mer méridionale sur les côtes de Tonquin et de la Cochin Chine; et disent que si les vaisseaux étrangers qui sont garnis de plaques de fer s'en approchent ils y sont arrètés et aucun d'eux ne peut passer par ces endroits."—KLAPROTH, Lett. v. p. 117, quoted by SANTAREM, Essai sur l'Histo. de Cosmogr., vol. i. p. 182.
Another peculiarity of the native craft on the west coast of Ceylon is their construction with a prow at each extremity, a characteristic which belongs also to the Massoula boats of Madras, as well as to others on the south of India. It is a curious illustration of the abiding nature of local usages when originating in necessities and utility, that STRABO, in describing the boats in which the traffic was carried on between Taprobane and the continent, says they were "built with prows at each end, but without holds or keels."[1]
1: [Greek: "Kateskeuasmenas de amphoterôthen enkoiliôn mêtrôn chôris.">[—Lib xv. c. i. s. 14. Pliny, who makes the same statement, says the Singhalese adopted this model to avoid the necessity of tacking in the narrow and shallow channels, between Ceylon and the mainland of India (lib. vi. c. 24).
In connection with foreign trade the Mahawanso contains repeated allusions to ships wrecked upon the coast of Ceylon[1], and amongst the remarkable events which signalised the season, already rendered memorable by the birth of Dutugaimunu, B.C. 204, was the "arrival on the same day of seven ships laden with golden utensils and other goods;"[2] and as these were brought by order of the king to Mahagam, then the capital of Rohuna, the incident is probably referable to the foreign trade which was then carried on in the south of the island[3] by the Chinese and Arabians, and in which, as I have stated, the native Singhalese took no part.
1: B.C. 543. Mahawanso, ch. vii. p. 49: B.C. 306. Ibid. ch. xi. p. 68, &c.
2: Mahawanso, ch. xxii. p. 135.
3: The first direct intimation of trading carried on by native Singhalese, along the coast of Ceylon, occurs in the Rajavali, but not till the year A.D. 1410,—the king, who had made Cotta his capital, being represented as "loading a vessel with goods and sending it to Jaffna, to carry on commerce with his son."—Rajavali, p. 289.
Still, notwithstanding their repugnance to intercourse with strangers, the Singhalese were not destitute of traffic amongst themselves, and their historical annals contain allusions to the mode in which it was conducted. Their cities exhibited rows of shops and bazaars[1], and the country was traversed by caravans much in the same manner as the drivers of tavalams carry goods at the present day between the coast and the interior.[2]
1: B.C. 204, a visitor to Anarajapoora is described as "purchasing aromatic drugs from the bazaars, and departing by the Northern Gate" (Mahawanso, ch. xxiii. p. 139); and A.D. 8, the King Maha Dathika "ranged shops on each side of the streets of the capital."—Mahawanso, ch. xxxiv. p. 213.
2: B.C. 170. Mahawanso ch. xxii. p. 138.
Whatever merchandise was obtained in barter from foreign ships, was by this means conveyed to the cities and the capital[1], and the reference to carts which were accustomed to go from Anarajapoora to the division of Malaya, lying round Adam's Peak, "to procure saffron and ginger," implies that at that period (B.C. 165) roads and other facilities for wheel carriages must have existed, enabling them to traverse forests and cross the rivers.[2]
1: In the reign of Elala, B.C. 204, the son of "an eminent caravan chief" was despatched to a Brahman, who resided near the Chetiyo mountain (Mihintala), in whose possession there were rich articles, frankincense, sandal-wood, &c., imported from beyond the ocean.—Mahawanso ch. xxiii. p. 138.
2: Mahawanso ch. xxviii. p, 167.
Early Exports of Ceylon.—The native historians give an account of the exports of Ceylon, which corresponds in all particulars with the records left by the early travellers and merchants, Greek, Roman, Arabian, Indian, and Chinese. They consisted entirely of natural productions, aromatic drugs, gems, pearls, and shells; and it is a strong evidence of the more advanced state of civilisation in India at the same period that, whilst the presents sent from the kings of Ceylon to the native princes of Hindustan and the Dekkan were always of this precious but primitive character, the articles received in return were less remarkable for the intrinsic value of the material, than for the workmanship bestowed upon them. Devenipiatissa sent by his ambassadors to Asoca, B.C. 306, the eight varieties of pearls, viz., haya (the horse), gaja (the elephant), ratha (the chariot wheel), maalaka (the nelli fruit), valaya (the bracelet), anguliwelahka (the ring), kakudaphala (the kabook fruit), and pakatika, the ordinary description. He sent sapphires, lapis lazuli[1], and rubies, a right hand chank[2], and three bamboos for chariot poles, remarkable because their natural marking resembled the carvings of flowers and animals.
1: Lapis lazuli is not found in Ceylon, and must have been brought by the caravans from Budakshan. It is more than once mentioned in the Mahawanso, ch. xi. p. 69; ch. xxx. p. 185.
2: A variety of the Turbinella rapa with the whorls reversed, to which the natives attach a superstitions value; professing that a shell so formed is worth its weight in gold.
The gifts sent by the king of Magadha in return, indicate the advanced state of the arts in Bengal, even at that early period: they were "a chowrie (the royal fly flapper), a diadem, a sword of state, a royal parasol, golden slippers, a crown, an anointing vase, asbestos towels, to be cleansed by being passed through the fire, a costly howdah, and sundry vessels of gold." Along with these was sacred water from the Anotatto lake and from the Ganges, aromatic and medicinal drugs, hill paddi and sandal-wood; and amongst the other items "a virgin of royal birth and of great personal beauty."[1]
1: Mahawanso ch, xi. pp. 69, 70.
Early Imports.—Down to a very late period, gems, pearls, and chank shells continued to be the only products taken away from Ceylon, and cinnamon is nowhere mentioned in the Sacred Books as amongst the exports of the island.[1] In return for these exports, slaves, chariots, and horses were frequently transmitted from India. The riding horses and chargers, so often spoken of[2], must necessarily have been introduced from thence, and were probably of Arab blood; but I have not succeeded in discovering to what particular race the "Sindhawa" horses belonged, of which four purely white were harnessed to the state carriage of Dutugaimunu.[3] Gold cloth[4], frankincense, and sandal-wood were brought from India[5], as was also a species of "clay" and of "cloud-coloured stone," which appear to have been used in the construction of dagobas.[6] Silk[7] and vermilion[8] indicate the activity of trade with China; and woollen cloth[9] and carpets[10] with Persia and Kashmir.
1: For an account of the earliest trade in cinnamon, see post [Part v. ch. ii.] on the Knowledge of Ceylon possessed by the Arabians.
2: Mahawanso, ch. xxii. p. 134, &c. &c.
3: Ibid., ch. xxiii. p. 142; ch. xxxi. p. 186.
4: A.D.459. Mahawanso, ch. xxxviii. p. 258.
5: Ibid, ch. xxiii. p. 138.
6: Ibid, ch. xxix. p. 169; ch. xxx. p. 179.
7: Ibid., ch. xxiii. p. 139; Rajaratnacari, p. 49.
8: Ibid, ch. xxix. p. 169; Rajaratnacari p. 51.
9: Mahawanso, ch. xxx. p. 177; Rajavali, p. 269. Woollen cloth is described as "most valuable"—an epithet which indicates its rarity, and probably foreign origin.
10: Mahawanso, ch. xiv. p. 82; ch. xv. p. 87; ch. xxv. p. 151; carpets of wool, ib. ch. xxvii. p. 164.
Intercourse with Kashmir.—Possibly the woollen cloths referred to may have been shawls, and there is evidence in the Rajatarangini[1], that at a very early period the possession of a common religion led to an intercourse between Ceylon and Kashmir, originating in the sympathies of Buddhism, but perpetuated by the Kashmirians for the pursuit of commerce. In the fabulous period of the narrative, a king of Kashmir is said to have sent to Ceylon for a delicately fine cloth, embroidered with golden footsteps.[2] In the eighth century of the Christian era, Singhalese engineers were sent for to construct works in Kashmir[3]; and Kashmir, according to Troyer, took part in the trade between Ceylon and the West.[4]
1: The Rajatarangini resembles the Mahawanso, in being a metrical chronicle of Kashmir written at various times by a series of authors, the earliest of whom lived in the 12th century. It has been translated into French by M. Troyer, Paris, 1840.
2: Rajatarangini, b. i. sl. 294.
3: Rajatarangini, b. iv. sl. 502, &c.
4: "La communication entre Kachmir et Ceylan n'a pas eu lieu seulement par les entreprises guerrières que je viens de rappeler, mais aussi par un commerce paisible; c'est du cette ile que venaient des artistes qu'on appelait Rakchasas à cause du merveilleux de leur art; et qui exécutaient des ouvrages pour l'utilité et pour l'ornement d'un pays montagneux et sujet aux inondations. Ceci confirme ce que nous apprennent les géographes Grecs, que Ceylan, avant et après le commencement de notre ère, était un grand point de réunion pour le commerce de l'Orient et de l'Occident."—Rajatarangini, vol. ii. p. 434.
Of the trade between Ceylon and Kashmir and its progress, the account given by Edrisi, the most renowned of the writers on eastern geography, who wrote in the twelfth century[1], is interesting, inasmuch as it may be regarded as a picture of this remarkable commerce, after it had attained its highest development.
1: Abou-abd-allah Mahommed was a Moor of the family who reigned over Malaga after the fall of the Kalifat of Cordova, in the early part of the 11th century, and his patronymic of Edrisi or Al Edrissy implies that he was descended from the princes of that race who had previously held supreme power in what is at the present day the Empire of Morocco. He took up his residence in Sicily under the patronage of the Norman king, Roger II., A.D. 1154, and the work on geography which he there composed was not only based on the previous labours of Massoudi, Ibn Haukul, Albyrouni, and others, but it embodied the reports of persons commissioned specially by the king to undertake voyages for the purpose of bringing back correct accounts of foreign countries. See REINAUD'S Introduction to the Geography of Abulfeda, p. cxiii.
Edrisi did not write from personal knowledge, as he had never visited either Ceylon or India; but compiling as he did, by command of Roger H., of Sicily, a compendium, of geographical knowledge as it existed in his time, the information which he has systematised may be regarded as a condensation of such facts as the eastern seamen engaged in the Indian trade had brought back with them from Ceylon.
"In the mountains around Adam's Peak," says Edrisi, "they collect precious stones of every description, and in the valleys they find those diamonds by means of which they engrave the setting of stones on rings."
"The same mountains produce aromatic drugs perfumes, and aloes-wood, and there too they find the animal, the civet, which yields musk. The islanders cultivate rice, coco-nuts, and sugar-cane; in the rivers is found rock crystal, remarkable both for brilliancy and size, and the sea on every side has a fishery of magnificent and priceless pearls. Throughout India there is no prince whose wealth can compare with the King of Serendib, his immense riches, his pearls and his jewels, being the produce of his own dominions and seas; and thither ships of China, and of every neighbouring country resort, bringing the wines of Irak and Fars, which the king buys for sale to his subjects; for he drinks wine and prohibits debauchery; whilst other princes of India encourage debauchery and prohibit the use of wine. The exports from Serendib consist of silk, precious stones, crystals, diamonds, and perfumes."[1]
1: Edrisi, Géographie, Trad. JAUBERT, tom. i. p. 73.