Ceylon; an Account of the Island Physical, Historical, and / Topographical with Notices of Its Natural History, Antiquities and / Productions, Volume 1

by Sir James Emerson Tennent

INDIAN, ARABIAN, AND PERSIAN AUTHORITIES.

On closing the volume of Cosmas, we part with the last of the Greek writers whose pages guide us through the mist that obscures the early history of Ceylon. The religion of the Hindus is based on a system of physical error, so incompatible with the extension of scientific truth, that in their language the term "geography" is unknown.[1] But still it is remarkable as an illustration of the uninquiring character of the people, that the allusions of Indian authors to Ceylon, an island of such magnitude, and so close to their own country, are pre-eminent for absurdity and ignorance. Their "Lanka" and its inhabitants are but the distortion of a reality into a myth. ALBYROUNI, the Arabian geographer, writing in the eleventh century, says that the Hindus at that day thought the island haunted; their ships sailing past it, kept at a distance from its shores; and even within the present century, it was the popular belief on the continent of India that the interior of Ceylon was peopled by demons and monkeys.[2]

1: The Arabians began the study so late, that they, too, had to borrow a word from the Greeks, whence their term "djagrafiya."

2: MOOR'S Hindu Pantheon, p. 318. MOOR speaks of an educated Indian gentleman who was attached as Munshi to the staff of Mr. North, Governor of Ceylon, in 1804, and who, on his return to the continent, wrote a history of the island, in which he repeats the belief current among his countryment, that "the interior was not inhabited by human beings of the ordinary shapes."—P. 320.

But the century in which Cosmos wrote witnessed the rise of a power whose ascendant energy diffused a new character over the policy and literature of the East. Scarcely twenty years elapsed between his death and the birth, of Mahomet—and during the two centuries that ensued, so electric was the influence of Islam, that its supremacy was established with a rapidity beyond parallel, from the sierras of Spain to the borders of China. The dominions of the Khalifs exceeded in extent the utmost empire of the Romans; and so undisputed was the sway of the new religion, that a follower of the Prophet could travel amidst believers of his own faith, from the Atlantic to the Indian Ocean, and from the chain of the Atlas to the mountains of Tartary.

Syria and Egypt were amongst its earliest conquests; and the power thus interposed between the Greeks and their former channels of trade, effectually excluded them from the commerce of India. The Persians and the Arabs became its undisputed masters, and Alexandria and Seleucia declined in importance as Bassora and Bagdad rose to the rank of Oriental emporiums.[1]

1: ROBERTSON was of opinion, that such was the aversion of the Persions to the sea, that "no commercial intercourse took place between Persia and India."—India, s. i. p. 9. But this is at variance with the testimony of COSMAS INDICO-PLEUSTES, as well as of HAMZA of Ispahan and others.

Early in the sixth century, the Persians under Chosroes Nouschirvan held a distinguished position in the East, their ships frequented the harbours of India, and their fleet was successful in an expedition against Ceylon to redress the wrongs done to some of their fellow-countrymen who had settled there for purposes of trade.[1]

1: HAMZA ISPAHANENSIS, Annal. vol. ii. c. 2. p. 43. Petropol, 1848, 8vo. REINAUD, Mémoire sur l' Inde, p. 124.

The Arabs, who had been familiar with India before it was known to the Greeks,[1] and who had probably availed themselves of the monsoons long before Hippalus ventured to trust to them, began in the fourth and fifth centuries to establish themselves as merchants at Cambay and Surat, at Mangalore, Calicut, Coulam, and other Malabar ports[2], whence they migrated to Ceylon, the government of which was remarkable for its toleration of all religious sects[3], and its hospitable reception of fugitives.

1: There is an obscure sentence in PLINY which would seem to imply that the Arabs had settled in Ceylon before the first century of our Christian era:—"Regi cultum Liberi patris, coeteris Arabum."—Lib. vi. c. 22.

2: GILDEMEISTER; Scriptores Arabi de Rebus Indicis, p. 40.

3: EDRISI, tom. i p. 72.

It is a curious circumstance, related by BELADORY, who lived at the court of the Khalif of Bagdad in the ninth century, that an outrage committed by Indian pirates upon some Mahometan ladies, the daughters of traders who had died in Ceylon, and whose families the King Daloopiatissa II., A.D. 700, was sending to their homes in the valley of the Tigris, served as the plea under which Hadjadj, the fanatical governor of Irak, directed the first Mahometan expedition for subjugating the valley of the Indus.[1]

1: The chief of the Indus was the Buddhist Prince Daher, whose capital was at Daybal, near the modern Karachee. The story, as it appears in the MS. of Beladory in the library of Leyden, has been extracted by REINAUD in his Fragmens Arabes et Persans relatifs á l'Inde, No. v. p. 161, with the following translation:—

"Sous le gouvernement de Mohammed, le roi de l'ile du Rubis (Djezyret-Alyacout) offrit à Hadjadj des femmes musulmanes qui avaient reçu le jour dans ses états, et dont les pères, livrés à la profession du commerce, étaient morts. Le prince esperuit par là gagner l'amitié de Hadjadj; mais le navire où l'on avait embarqué ces femmes fut attaqué par une peuplade de race Meyd, des environs de Daybal, qui était montóe sur des burques. Les Meyds enlevèrent le navire avec ce qu'il renfermait. Dans cette extrémité, une de ces femmes de la tribu de Yarboua, s'écria: 'Que n'es-tu la, oh Hadjadj!' Cette nouvelle étant parvenue à Hadjadj, il répondit: 'Me voilà.' Aussitót il envoya un députe à Dâher pour l'inviter à faire mettre ces femmes en liberté. Mais Dâher répondit: 'Ce sont des pirates qui ont enlevé ces femmes, et je n'ai aucune autorité sur les ravisseurs.' Alors Hadjadj engagea Obeyd Allah, fils de Nabhan, à faire une expédition contre Daybal."—P. 190.

The "Island of Rubies" was the Persian name for Ceylon, and in this particular instance FERISHTA confirms the identical application of these two names, vol. ii. p. 402. See Journal Asiat. vol. xlvi. p. 131, 163; REINAUD, Mém. sur l'Inde, p. 180; Relation des Voyages, Disc. p. xli ABOULFEDA, Introd. vol. i. p. ccclxxxv.; ELPHINSTONE'S India, b. v. ch. i, p. 260.

From the eighth till the eleventh century the Persians and Arabs continued to exercise the same influence over the opulent commerce of Ceylon which was afterwards enjoyed by the Portuguese and Dutch in succession between A.D. 1505, and the expulsion of the latter by the British in A.D. 1796. During this early period, therefore, we must look for the continuation of accounts regarding Ceylon to the literature of the Arabs and the Persians, and more especially to the former, by whom geography was first cultivated as a science in the eighth and ninth centuries under the auspices of the Khalifs Almansour and Almamoun. On turning to the Arabian treatises on geography, it will be found that the Mahometan writers on these subjects were for the most part grave and earnest men who, though liable equally with the imaginative Greeks to be imposed on by their informants, exercised somewhat more caution, and were more disposed to confine their writings to statements of facts derived from safe authorities, or to matters which they had themselves seen.

In their hands scientific geography combined theoretic precision, which had been introduced by their predecessors, with the extended observation incident to the victories and enlarged dominion of the Khalifs. Accurate knowledge was essential for the civil government of their conquests[1]; and the pilgrimage to Mekka, indispensable once at least in the life of every Mahometan[2], rendered the followers of the new faith acquainted with many countries in addition to their own.[3]

1: "La science géographique, comme les autres sciences en général, notammement l'astronomie, commença à se former chez les Arabes, dans la dernière moitié du viii^{e} siècle, et se fixa dans la première moitié du ix^{e}. On fit usage des itinéraires tracés par les chefs des armées conquérantes et des tableaux dressés par les gouveneurs de provinces; en même temps on mit à la contribution les méthodes propagées par les Indians, les Persans, et surtout les Grees; qui avaient apporté le plus de précision dans leurs opérations."—REINAUD, Introd. Aboulfeda, &c., p. xl.

2: REINAUD, Introd. Aboulfeda, p. cxxii.

3: Ibid., vol. i. p. xl.

Hence the records of their voyages, though presenting numerous exaggerations and assertions altogether incredible, exhibit a superiority over the productions of the Greeks and Romans. To avoid the fault of dulness, both the latter were accustomed to enliven their topographical itineraries, not so much by "moving accidents," and "hair-breadth 'scapes," as by mingling fanciful descriptions of monsters and natural phenomena, with romantic accounts of the gems and splendours of the East. Hence from CTESIAS to Sir JOHN MANDEVILLE, every early traveller in India had his "hint to speak," and each strove to embellish his story by incorporating with the facts he had witnessed, improbable reports collected from the representations of others. Such were their excesses in this direction, that the Greeks formed a class of "paradoxical" literature, by collecting into separate volumes the marvels and wonders gravely related by their voyagers and historians.[1]

1: Such are the Mirabiles Auscultationes of ARISTOTLE, the Incredibilia of PALEPHATES, the Historiarum Mirabilium Collectio of ANTIGONUS CARYSTIUS, the Historiæ Mirabiles of APOLLONIUS THE MEAGRE, and the Collections of PHILEGON of Tralles, MICHAEL BELLUS, and many other Greeks of the Lower Empire. For a succinct account of these compilers, see WESTERMAN'S Hapre [Greek: doxographoi], Scriptores Rerum Mirabilium Græci Brunswick, 1830.

The Arabs, on the contrary, with sounder discretion, generally kept their "travellers' histories" distinct from their sober narratives, and whilst the marvellous incidents related by adventurous seamen were received as materials for the story-tellers and romancers, the staple of their geographical works consisted of truthful descriptions of the countries visited, their forms of government, their institutions, their productions, and their trade.

In illustration of this matter-of-fact character of the Arab topographers, the most familiar example is that known by the popular title of the Voyages of the two Mahometans[1], who travelled in India and China in the beginning of the ninth century. The book professes to give an account of the countries lying between Bassora and Canton; and in its unpretending style, and useful notices of commerce in those seas, it resembles the record, which the merchant ARRIAN has left us in the Periplus, of the same trade as it existed seven centuries previously, in the hands of the Greeks. The early portion of the book, which was written A.D. 851, was taken down, from the recital of Soleyman, a merchant who had frequently made the voyages he describes, at the epoch when the commerce of Bagdad, under the Khalifs, was at the height of its prosperity. The second part was added sixty years later, by Abou-zeyd Hassan, an amateur geographer, of Bassora (contemporary with Massoudi), from the reports of mariners returning from China, and is, to a great extent, an amplification of the notices supplied by Soleyman.

1: It was first published by RENAUDOT in 1718, and from the unique MS., now in the Bibliothèque impériale of Paris, and again by REINAUD in 1845, with a valuable discourse prefixed on the nature and extent of the Indian trade prior to the tenth century.—Relation des Voyages faits par les Arabes et les Persans dans l'Inde et Chine dans le IX'e Siècle, &c. 2 vols. 18mo. Paris, 1845.

SOLEYMAN describes the sea of Herkend, as it lay between the Laccadives and Maldives[1], on the west, and swept round eastward by Cape Comorin and Adam's Bridge to Ceylon, thus enclosing the precious fishery for pearls. In Serendib, his earliest attention was devoutly directed to the sacred footstep on Adam's Peak; in his name for which, "Al-rohoun," we trace the Buddhist name for the district, Rohuna, so often occurring in the Mahawanso.[2] This is the earliest notice of the Mussulman tradition, which associates the story of Adam with Ceylon, though it was current amongst the Copts in the fourth and fifth centuries.[3] On all sides of the mountain, he adds, are the mines of rubies, hyacinths, and other gems; the interior produces aloes; and the sea the highly valued chank shells, which served the Indians for trumpets.[4] The island was subject to two kings; and on the death of the chief one his body was placed on a low carriage, with the head declining till the hair swept the ground, and, as it was drawn slowly along, a female, with a bunch of leaves, swept dust upon the features, crying: "Men, behold your king, whose will, but yesterday, was law! To-day, he bids farewell to the world, and the Angel of Death has seized his spirit. Cease, any longer, to be deluded by the shadowy pleasures of life." At the conclusion of this ceremony, which lasted for three days, the corpse was consumed on a pyre of sandal, camphor, and aromatic woods, and the ashes scattered to the winds.[5] The widow of the king was sometimes burnt along with his remains, but compliance with the custom was not held to be compulsory.

1: The "Divi" of Ammianus Marcellinus, who along with the Singhalese "Selendivi" sent ambassadors to the Emperor Julian, l xxii. c. 7.

2: A portion of the district near Tangalle is known to the present day as "Rouna."—Mahawanso, ch. ix. p. 57; ch. xxii. p. 130, &c.

3: See the account of Adam's Peak, Vol. II. Pt. VII. ch. ii.

4: ABOU-ZEYD, Relation, &c., vol. i. p. 5.

5: lb., p. 50. The practice of burning the remains of the kings and of persons of exalted rank, continued as long as the native dynasty held the throne of Kandy.—See KNOX's Historical Relation of Ceylon, A.D. 1681, Part iii. c. ii.

Such is the account of SOLEYMAN, but, in the second part of the manuscript, ABOU-ZEYD, on the authority of another informant, IBN WAHAB, who had sailed to the same countries, speaks of the pearls of Ceylon, and adds, regarding its precious stones, that they were obtained in part from the soil, but chiefly from those points of the beach at which the rivers flowed into the sea and to which the gems are carried down by the torrents from the hills.[1]

1: Ibid., vol. i. p. 127.

ABOU-ZEYD describes the frequent conventions of the heads of the national religion, and the attendance of scribes to write down from their dictation the doctrines of Buddhism, the legends of its prophets, and the precepts of its law. This statement has an obvious reference to the important events recorded in the Mahawanso[1] of the reduction of the tenets, orally delivered by Buddha, to their written form, as they appear in the Pittakatayan; to the translation of the Atthakatha, from Singhalese into Pali, in the reign of Mahanamo, A.D. 410-432; and to the singular care displayed, at all times, by the kings and the priesthood, to preserve authentic records of every event connected with the national religion and its history.

1: Mahawanso, ch. xxxiii. p. 207; ch. xxxvii. p. 252.

ABOU-ZEYD adverts to the richness of the temples of the Singhalese, and to the colossal dimensions of their statues, and dwells with particularity on their toleration of all religious sects as attested by the existence there, in the ninth century, of a sect of Manichæans, and a community of Jews.[1]

1: It was to Ceylon that the terrified worshippers of Siva betook themselves in their flight, when Mahmoud of Ghuznee smote the idol and overthrew the temple of Somnaut, A.D. 1025. (FERISHTA, transl. by Briggs, vol. i. p. 71; REINAUD, Introd. to ABOULFEDA, vol. i. p. cccxlix. Mémoires sur l'Inde, p. 270.) Twenty years previously, when the same orthodox invader routed the schismatic Carmathians at Moultan, the fugitive chief of the Sheahs found an asylum in Ceylon. (REINAUD, Journ. Asiat., vol. xlv. p. 283; vol. xlvi. p. 129.) The latter circumstance serves to show that the Mahometans in Ceylon have not been uniformly Sonnees, and it may probably throw light on a fact of much local interest connected with Colombo. There formerly stood there, in the Mahometan Cemetery, a stone with an ancient inscription in Cufic characters, which no one could decipher, but which was said to record the virtues of a man of singular virtue, who had arrived in the island in the tenth century. About the year 1787 A.D., one of the Dutch officials removed the stone to the spot where he was building, "and placed it where it now stands, at one of the steps to his door." This is the account given by Sir Alexander Johnston, who, in 1827, sent a copy of the inscription to the Royal Asiatic Society of London. GILDEMEISTER pronounces it to be written in Carmathic characters, and to commemorate an Arab who died A.D. 848. "Karmathacis quæ dicuntur literis exarata viro cuidam Arabo Mortuo, 948 A.D. posita," Script. Arabi de Rebus Indicis, p. 59. A translation of the inscription by Lee was published in Trans, Roy. Asiat. Soc., vol. i. p. 545, from which it appears that the deceased, Khalid Ibn Abou Bakaya, distinguished himself by obtaining "security for religion, with other advantages, in the year 317 of the Hejira." LEE was disposed to think that this might be the tomb of the Imaum Abu Abd Allah; who first taught the Mahometans the route by which pilgrims might proceed from India to the sacred footstep on Adam's Peak. But besides the discrepancy of the names, the Imaum died in the year A.D. 953, and interred at Shiraz, where Ibn Batata made a visit to his tomb. (Travels, transl. DEFRÉMERY, &c., tom. ii. p. 79.)

EDRISI, in his Geography writing in the twelfth century, confirms the account of Abou-zeyd as to the toleration of all sects in Ceylon, and illustrates it by the fact, that of the sixteen officers who formed the council of the king, four were Buddhists, four Mussulmans, four Christians, and four Jews.—GILDEMEISTER, Script. Arabi, &c., p. 53; EDRISI, 1 clim. sec. 6.

Ibn Wahab, his informant, appears to have looked back with singular pleasure to the delightful voyages which he had made through the remarkable still-water channels, elsewhere described, which form so peculiar a feature in the seaborde of Ceylon, and to which the Arabs gave the obscure term of "gobbs."[1] Here months were consumed by the mariners, amidst flowers and overhanging woods, with the enjoyments of abundant food and exhilarating draughts of arrack flavoured with honey. The natives of the island were devoted to pleasure, and their days were spent in cock-fighting and games of chance, into which they entered with so much eagerness as to wager the joints of their fingers when all else was lost.

1: "Aghbah," Arab. For an account of those of Ceylon, see [Vol. I. Pt I. ch. i. p. 42.] The idea entertained by the Arabs of these Gobbs, will be found in a passage from Albyrouni, given by REINAUD, Fragmens Arabes, &c., 119, and Journ. Asiat. vol. xlv. p. 201. See also EDRISI, Geog., tom. i. p. 73.

But the most interesting passages in the narrative of Abou-zeyd are those which allude to the portion of Ceylon which served as the emporium for the active and opulent trade of which the island was then, in every sense of the word, the centre. Gibbon, on no other ground than its "capacious harbour," pronounces Trincomalie to be the port which received and dismissed the fleets of the East and West.[1] But the nautical grounds are even stronger than the historical for regarding this as improbable;—the winds and the currents, as well as its geographical position, render Trincomalie difficult of access to vessels coming from the Red Sea or the Persian Gulf; and it is evident from the narrative of Soleyman and Ibn Wahab, that ships availing themselves of the monsoons to cross the Indian Ocean, crept along the shore to Cape Comorin; and passed close by Adam's Bridge to reach their destined ports.[2]

1: Decline and Fall, ch. xl.

2: ABOU-ZEYD, vol. i. p. 128; REINAUD, Discours; &c., pp. lx.—lxix.; Introd. ABOULFEDA, p. cdxii.

An opinion has been advanced by Bertolacci that the entrepôt was Mantotte, at the northern extremity of the Gulf of Manaar. Presuming that the voyages both ways were made through the Manaar channel, he infers that the ships of Arabia and India, rather than encounter the long delay of waiting for the change of the monsoon to effect the passage, would prefer to "flock to the Straits of Manaar, and those which, from their size, could not pass the shallow water, would be unloaded, and their merchandise trans-shipped into other vessels, as they arrived from the opposite coast, or deposited in stores to await an opportunity of conveyance."[1] Hence Mantotte, he concludes, was the station chosen for such combined operations.

1: BERTOLACCI'S Ceylon, pp. 18,19.

But Bertolacci confines his remarks to the Arabian and Indian crafts alone: he leaves out of consideration the ships of the largest size called in the Periplus [Greek: kolandiophônta], which kept up the communication between the west and east coast of India, in the time of the Romans, and he equally overlooks the great junks of the Chinese, which, by aid of the magnetic compass[1], made bold passages from Java to Malabar, and from Malabar to Oman,—vessels which (on the authority of an ancient Arabic MS.) Reinaud says carried from four to five hundred men, with arms and naphtha, to defend themselves against the pirates of India.[2]

1: The knowledge of the mariner's compass probably possessed by the Chinese prior to the twelfth century, is discussed by KLAPROTH in his "Lettre à M. le Baron Humboldt sur l'invention de la boussole." Paris, 1834.

2: See the "Katab-al-adjajab," probably written by MASSOUDI. REINAUD, Mémoires sur l'Inde, p. 200; Relation et Discours, pp. lx. lxviii.; ABOULFEDA, Introd. cdxii. May not this early mention of the use of "naphtha" by the Chinese for burning the ships of an enemy, throw some light on the disquisitions adverted to by GIBBON, ch. lii., as to the nature of "the Greek fire," so destructive to the fleets of their assailants during the first and second siege of Constantinople in the seventh and eighth centuries? GIBBON says that the principal ingredient was naphtha, and that the Greek emperor learned the secret of its composition from a Syrian who deserted from the service of the Khalif. Did the Khalif acquire the knowledge from the Chinese, whose ships, it appears, were armed with some preparation of this nature in their voyages to Bassora?

On this point we have the personal testimony of the Chinese traveller Fa Hian, who at the end of the fourth century sailed direct from Ceylon for China, in a merchant vessel so large as to accommodate two hundred persons, and having in tow a smaller one, as a precaution against dangers by sea[1]:—and Ibn Batuta saw, at Calicut, in the fourteenth century, junks from China capable of accommodating a thousand men, of whom four hundred were soldiers, and each of these large ships was followed by three smaller.[2] With vessels of such magnitude, it would be neither expedient nor practicable to navigate the shallows in the vicinity of Manaar; and besides, Mantotte, or, as it was anciently called, Mahatitta or Maha-totta, "the great ferry," although it existed as a port upwards of four hundred years before the Christian era, was at no period an emporium of commerce. Being situated so close to the ancient capital, Anarajapoora, it derived its notoriety from being the point of arrival and departure of the Malabars who resorted to the island; and the only trade for which it afforded facilities was the occasional importation of the produce of the opposite coast of India.[3] It is not only probable, but almost certain that during the middle ages, and especially prior to the eleventh century, when the trade with Persia and Arabia was at its height, Mantotte afforded the facilities indicated by Bertolacci to the smaller craft that availed themselves of the Paumbam passage; but we have still to ascertain the particular harbour which was the centre of the more important commerce between China and the West. That harbour I believe to have been Point de Galle.

1: Foĕ-kouĕ-ki, ch. xl. p. 359). In a previous passage, FA HIAN describes the large vessels in which the trade was carried between Tamlook, on the Hoogly, and Ceylon:—"A cette époque, des marchands, se mettant en mer avec de grands vaisseaux, firent route vers le sud-ouest; et au commencement de l'hiver, le vent étant favorable, après une navigation de quatorze nuits et d'autant de jours, on arriva au Royaume des Lions."—Ibid. chap. xxxvi. p. 328.

2: IBN BATUTA, Lee's translation, p. 172.

3: Mahawanso, ch. vii. p. 51; ch. xxv. p. 155; ch. xxxv. p. 217.

Abou-zeyd describes the rendezvous of the ships arriving from Oman, where they met those bound for the Persian Gulf, as lying half-way between Arabia and China. "It was the centre," he says, "of the trade in aloes and camphor, in sandal-wood, ivory and lead."[1] This emporium he denominates "Kalah," and when we remember that lie is speaking of a voyage which he had not himself made, and of countries then very imperfectly known to the people of the West, we shall not be surprised that he calls it an island, or rather a peninsula.

1: ABOU-ZEYD, Relation, &c., vol. i. p. 93; REINAUD, Disc. p. lxxiv.

According to him, it was at that period subject to the Maharaja of Zabedj, the sovereign of a singular kingdom of which little is known, but which appears to have been formed about the commencement of the Christian era; and which, in the eighth and ninth centuries, extended over the groups of islands south and west of Malacca, including Borneo, Java, and Sumatra, which had become the resort of a vast population of Indians, Chinese, and Malays.[1] The sovereign of this opulent empire had brought under his dominion the territory of the King of Comar, the southern extremity of the Dekkan[2], and at the period when Abou-zeyd wrote, he likewise claimed the sovereignty of "Kalah."

1: Journ. Asiat. vol. xlix. p. 206; ELPHINSTONE's India, b. iii. ch. x. p. 168; REINAUD, Mémoires sur l'Inde, p. 39; Introd. ABOULFEDA, p. cccxc. Baron Walckenaer has ascertained, from the puranas and other Hindu sources, that the Great Dynasty of the Maharaja continued till A.D. 628, after which the islands were sub-divided into numerous sovereignties. See MAJOR's Introduction to the Indian Voyages in the Fifteenth Century, in the Hakluyt Soc. Publ. p. xxvii.

2: MASSOUDI relates the conquest of the kingdom of Comar by the Maharaja of Zabedj, nearly in the same words as it is told by Abou-zeyd; GILDEMEISTER, Script. Arab., pp. 145, 146. REINAUD. Memoires sur l'Inde, p. 225.

This incident is not mentioned in the Singhalese chronicles, but their silence is not to be regarded as conclusive evidence against its probability; the historians of the Hindus ignore the expedition of Alexander the Great, and it is possible that those of Ceylon, indifferent to all that did not directly concern the religion of Buddha, may have felt little interest in the fortunes of Galle, situated as it was at the remote extremity of the island, and in a region that hardly acknowledged a nominal allegiance to the Singhalese crown.

The assertion of Abou-zeyd as to the sovereignty of the Maharaja of Zabedj, at Kalah, is consistent with the statement of Soleyman in the first portion of the work, that "the island was in subjection to two monarchs;"[1] and this again agrees with the report of Sopater to Cosmas Indico-pleustes, who adds that the king who possessed the hyacinth was at enmity with the king of the country in which were the harbour and the great emporium.[2]

1: Relation, vol. i. p. 6.

2: [Greek: Duo ie basileis eisin en tê nêsô enantioi allêlôn, ho eis echôn ton huakinthon, kai d eteros to meros to allo en ps esti emporion kai hê lêinê.

COSMAS INDIC.

But there is evidence that the subjection of this portion of Ceylon to the chief of the great insular empire was at that period currently believed in the East. In the a "Garsharsp-Namah" a Persian poem of the tenth century, by Asedi, a manuscript of which was in the possession of Sir William Ouseley, the story turns on a naval expedition, fitted out by Delak, whose dominions extended from Persia to Palestine, and despatched at the request of the Maharaja against Baku, the King of Ceylon, and in the course of the narrative, Garsharsp and his fleet reach their destination at Kalah, and there achieve a victory over the "Shah of Serendib."[1]

1: OUSELEY'S Travels, vol. i. p. 48.

It must be observed, that one form of the Arabic letter K is sounded like G, so that Kalah would be pronounced Gala.[1] The identity, however, is established not merely by similarity of sound, but by the concurrent testimony of Cosmas and the Arabian geographers[2], as to the nature and extent of the intercourse between China and Persia, statements which are intelligible if referred to that particular point, but inapplicable to any other.

1: Kalah may possibly be identical with the Singhalese word gala, which means an "enclosure," and the deeply bayed harbour of Galle would serve to justify the name. Galla signifies a rock, and this derivation would be equally sustained by the natural features of the place, and dangerous coral reefs which obstruct the entrance to the port.

2: DULAURIER, in the Journal Asiatique for Sept. 1846, vol. xlix. p. 209, has brought together the authorities of Aboulfeda, Kazwini, and others to show that Kalah be situated in Ceylon, and he has combated the conjecture of M. Alfred Maury that it may be identical with Kedsh in the Malay Peninsula.—REINAUD, Relation, &c. Disc., pp. xli.—lxxxiv., Introd. ABOULFEDA, p. ccxviii.

Coupled with these considerations, however, the identity of name is not without its significance. It was the habit of the Singhalese to apply to a district the name of the principal place within it; thus Lanka, which in the epic of the Hindus was originally the capital and castle of Ravana, was afterwards applied to the island in general; and according to the Mahawanso, Tambapani, the point of the coast where Wijayo landed, came to designate first the wooded country that surrounded it, and eventually the whole area of Ceylon.[1] In the same manner Galla served to describe not only the harbour of that name, but the district north and east of it to the extent of 600 square miles, and De Barros, De Couto, and Ribeyro, the chroniclers of the Portuguese in Ceylon, record it as a tradition of the island, that the inhabitants of that region had acquired the name of the locality, and were formerly known as "Gallas."[2]

1: Mahawanso, ch. vii. p. 50.

2: A notice of this tribe will be found in another place. See Vol. II. Pt. VII. ch. ii.

Galle therefore, in the earlier ages, appears to have occupied a position in relation to trade of equal if not of greater importance than that which attaches to it at the present day. It was the central emporium of a commerce which in turn enriched every country of Western Asia, elevated the merchants of Tyre to the rank of princes, fostered the renown of the Ptolemies, rendered the wealth and the precious products of Arabia a gorgeous mystery[1], freighted the Tigris with "barbaric pearl and gold," and identified the merchants of Bagdad and the mariners of Bassora with associations of adventure and romance. Yet, strange to say, the native Singhalese appear to have taken no part whatever in this exciting and enriching commerce; their name is never mentioned in connection with the immigrant races attracted by it to their shores, and the only allusions of travellers to the indigenous inhabitants of the island are in connection with a custom so remarkable and so peculiar as at once to identify the tribes to whom it is ascribed with the remnant of the aboriginal race of Veddahs, whose descendants still haunt the forests in the east of Ceylon.

1: " ... intactis opulentior Thesauris Arabum, et divitis Indiæ." HORACE.

Such is the aversion of this untamed race to any intercourse with civilised life, that when in want of the rude implements essential to their savage economy, they repair by night to the nearest village on the confines of their hunting-fields, and indicating by well-understood signs and models the number and form of the articles required, whether arrow-heads, hatchets, or cloths, they deposit an equivalent portion of dried deer's flesh or honey near the door of the dealer, and retire unseen to the jungles, returning by stealth within a reasonable time, to carry away the manufactured articles, which they find placed at the same spot in exchange.

This singular custom has been described without variation by numerous writers on Ceylon, both in recent and remote times. To trace it backwards, it is narrated, nearly as I have stated it, by Robert Knox in 1681[1]; and it is confirmed by Valentyn, the Dutch historian of Ceylon[2]; as well as by Ribeyro, the Portuguese, who wrote somewhat earlier.[3] Albyrouni, the geographer, who in the reign of Mahomet of Ghuznee, A.D. 1030, described this singular feature in the trade with the island, of which he speaks under the name of Lanka, says that it was the belief of the Arabian mariners that the parties with whom they held their mysterious dealings were demons or savages.[4]

1: KNOX, Historical Relation, &c., part iii. ch. i. p. 62.

2: VALENTYN, Oud en Nieuw Oost-Indien, ch. iii. p. 49.

3: "Lorsqu'ils ont besoin de haches on de flèches, ils font un modèle avec des feuilles d'arbre, et vont la nuit porter ce modèle, et la moitié d'un cerf on d'un sanglier, à la porte d'un armurier, qui voyant le matin cette viande penduë à sa porte, sçait ce que cela veut dire: il travaille aussi-tôt et 3 jours après il pend les flêches ou les haches au même endroit où étoit la viande, et la nuit suivante le Beda les vient prendre."—RIBEYRO, Hist. de Ceylan, A.D. 1686, ch. xxiv. p. 179.

4: "Les marins se réunissent pour dire que lorsque les navires sont arrivés dans ces parages, quelques uns de l'équipage montent sur des chaloupes et descendent à terre pour y déposer, soit de l'argent, soit des objets utiles à la personne des habitans, tels que des pagnes, du sel, etc. Le lendemain, quand ils reviennent, ils trouvent à la place de l'argent des pagnes et du sel, une quantité de girofle d'une valeur égale. On ajoute que ce commerce se fait avec des génies, ou, suivant d'autres; avec des hommes restés à l'état sauvage."—ALBYROUNI, transl. by REINAUD, Introd. to ABOULFEDA, sec. iii. p. ccc. See also REINAUD, Mém. sur l'Inde, p. 343. I have before alluded (p. 538, n.) to the treatise De Moribus Brachmanorum, ascribed to Palladius, one version of which is embodied in the spurious Life of Alexander the Great, written by the Pseudo-Callisthenes. In it the traveller from Thebes, who is the author's informant, states, that when in Ceylon, he obtained pepper from the Besadæ, and succeeded in getting so near them as to be able to describe accurately their appearance, their low stature and feeble configuration, their large heads and shaggy uncut hair,—a description which in every particular agrees with the aspect of the Veddahs at the present day. His expression that he succeeded in "getting near" them, [Greek: ertasa engus tôn kaloumenôn Besadôn] shows their propensity to conceal themselves even when bringing the articles which they had collected in the woods to sell.—PSEUDO-CALLISTHENES, lib. iii. ch. vii. Paris, 1846, p. 103.

Concurrent testimony, to the same effect, is found in the recital of the Chinese Buddhist, Fa Hian, who in the third century describes, in his travels, the same strange peculiarity of the inhabitants in those days, whom he also designates "demons," who deposited, unseen, the precious articles which they come down to barter with the foreign merchants resorting to their shores.[1]

1: "Les marchands des autre royaumes y faisaient le commerce: quand le temps de ce commerce était venu, les génies et les démons ne paraissaient pas; mais ils mettaient en avant des choses précieuses dont ils marquaient le juste prix,—s'il convenait aux marchands, ceuxci l'acquittaient et prenaient le marchandise."—FA HIAN, Foeĕ-kouĕ-ki. Transl. RÉMUSAT, ch. xxxviii. p. 332

There are a multitude of Chinese authorities to the same effect. One of the most remarkable books in any language is a Chinese Encyclopædia which under the title of Wen-hian-thoung-khao, or "Researches into ancient Monuments," contains a history of every art and science form the commencement of the empire to the era of the author MA-TOUAN-LIN, who wrote in the thirteenth century. M. Stanislas Julien has published in the Journal Asiatique for July 1836 a translation of that portion of this great work which has relation to Ceylon. It is there stated of the aborigines that when "les marchands des autres royaumes y venaient commercer, ils ne laissaient pas voir leurs corps, et montraient au moyen de pierres précieuses le prix que pouvaient valoir les merchandises. Les marchands venaient et en prenaient une quantité équivalente à leurs marchandises."—Journ. Asiat. t. xxviii. p. 402; xxiv. p. 41. I have extracts from seven other Chinese works, written between the seventh and the twelfth centuries, in all of which there occurs the same account of Ceylon,—that it was formerly supposed to be inhabited by dragons and demons, and that when "merchants from all nations come to trade with the, they are invisible, but leave their precious wares spread out with an indication of the value set on them, and the Chinese take them at the prices stipulated."—Leang-shoo, "History of the Leang Dynasty," A.D. 630, b. liv. p. 13. Nân-shè, "History of the Southern Empire," A.D. 650, p. xxxviii. p. 14. Jung-teen, "Cyclopædia of History," A.D. 740, b. cxciii. p. 8. The Tae-pîng, a "Digest of History," compiled by Imperial command, A.D. 983, b. dccxciii. p. 9. Tsih-foo-yuen-kwei, the "Great Depositary of the National Archives," A.D. 1012, b. cccclvi. p. 21. Sin-Jang-shoo, "New History of the Tang Dynasty," A.D. 1060, b. cxlvi. part ii. p. 10. Wan heen-túng-Kwan, "Antiquarian Researches," A.D. 1319, b. cccxxxviii. p. 24.

The chain of evidence is rendered complete by a passage in Pliny, which, although somewhat obscure (facts relating to the Seres being confounded with statements regarding Ceylon), nevertheless serves to show that the custom in question was then well known to the Singhalese ambassadors sent to the Emperor Claudius, and was also familiar to the Greek traders resorting to the island. The envoys stated, at Rome, that the habit of the people of their country was, on the arrival of traders, to go to "the further side of some river where wares and commodities are laid down by the strangers, and if the natives list to make exchange, they have them taken away, and leave other merchandise in lieu thereof, to content the foreign merchant."[1]

1: PLINY, Nat. Hist., lib. vi. ch. xxiv. Transl. Philemon Holland, p. 130. This passage has been sometimes supposed to refer to the Seræ, but a reference to the text will confirm the opinion of MARTIANUS and SOLINUS, that Pliny applies it to the Singhalese; and that the allusion to red hair and grey eyes, "rutilis comis" and "cæruleis oculis" applies to some northern tribes whom the Singhalese had seen in their overland journeys to China, "Later travellers," says COOLEY, "have likewise had glimpses, on the frontiers of India, of these German features; but nothing is yet known with certainty of the tribe to which they properly belonged."—Hist. Inland and Maritime Discovery, vol. i. p. 71.

The fact, thus established, of the aversion to commerce, immemorially evinced by the southern Singhalese, and of their desire to escape from intercourse with the strangers resorting to trade on their coasts, serves to explain the singular scantiness of information regarding the interior of the island which is apparent in the writings of the Arabians and Persians, between the eighth and thirteenth centuries. Their knowledge of the coast was extensive, they were familiar with the lofty mountain which served as its landmark, they dwell with admiration on its productions, and record with particularity the objects of commerce which were to be found in the island; but, regarding the Singhalese themselves and their social and intellectual condition, little, if any, real information is to be gleaned from the Oriental geographers of the middle ages.

ALBATENY and MASSOUDI, the earliest of the Arabian geographers[1], were contemporaries of Abou-zeyd, in the ninth century, and neither adds much to the description of Ceylon, given in the narratives of "The two Mahometans." The former assigns to the island the fabulous dimensions ascribed to it by the Hindus, and only alludes to the ruby and the sapphire[2] as being found in the rivers that flow from its majestic mountains. MASSOUDI asserts that he visited Ceylon[3], and describes, from actual knowledge, the funeral ceremonies of a king, and the incremation of his remains; but as these are borrowed almost verbatim from the account given by Soleyman[4], there is reason to believe that he merely copied from Abou-zeyd the portions of the "Meadows of Gold"[5] that have relation to Ceylon.

1: Probably the earliest allusion to Ceylon by any Arabian or Persian author, is that of Tabari, who was born in A.D. 838; but he limits his notices to an exaggerated account of Adam's Peak, "than which the whole world does not contain a mountain of greater height."—OUSELLY'S Travels, vol i. p. 34, n.

2: "Le rubis rouge, et la pierre qui est couleur de ciel." ALBATENY, quoted by Reinaud, Introd. ABOULFEDA p. ccclxxxv.

3: MASSOUDI in Gildemeister, Script. Arab. p. 154. Gildemeister discredits the assertion of Massoudi, that he had been in Ceylon. (Ib. p. 154, n.) He describes Kalah as an island distinct from Serendib.

4: ABOU-ZEYD, Relation, &c., p. 50.

5: A translation of MASSOUDI'S Meadows of Gold in English was begun by Dr. Sprenger for the "Oriental Translation Fund," but it has not advanced beyond the first volume, which was published in 1841.

In the order of time, this is the place to allude to another Arabian mariner, whose voyages have had a world-wide renown, and who, more than any other author, ancient or modern, has contributed to familiarise Europe with the name and wonders of Serendib. I allude to "Sindbad of the Sea," whose voyages were first inserted by Galland, in his French translation of the "Thousand-and-one Nights." Sindbad, in his own tale, professes to have lived in the reign of the most illustrious Khalif of the Abbassides,—

"Sole star of all that place and time;—

And saw him, in his golden prime,

The good Haroun Alraschid."

But Haroun died, A.D. 808, and Sindbad's narrative is so manifestly based on the recitals of Abou-zeyd and Massoudi, that although the author may have lived shortly after, it is scarcely possible that he could have been a contemporary of the great ruler of Bagdad.[1]

1: REINAUD notices the Ketab-ala-jayb, or "Book of Wonders," of MASSOUDI, as one of the works whence the materials of Sindbad's Voyages were drawn. (Introd. ABOULFEDA, vol. i. p. lxxvii.) HOLE published in 1797 A.D. his learned Remarks on the Origin of Sindbad's Voyages, and in that work, as well as in LANGLE'S edition of Sindbad; and in the notes by LANE to his version of the "Arabian Nights' Entertainment," Edrisi, Kazwini, and many other writers are mentioned whose works contain parallel statements. But though Edrisi and Kazwini wrote in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, it does not follow that the author of Sindbad lived later than they, as both may have borrowed their illustrations from the same early sources.

One inference is clear, from the story of Sindbad, that whilst the sea-coast of Ceylon was known to the Arabians, the interior had been little explored by them, and was so enveloped in mystery that any tale of its wonders, however improbable, was sure to gain credence. Hence, what Sindbad relates of the shore and its inhabitants is devoid of exaggeration: in his first visit the natives who received him were Malabars, one of whom had learned Arabic, and they were engaged in irrigating their rice lands from a tank. These are incidents which are characteristic of the north-western coast of Ceylon at the present day; and the commerce, for which the island was remarkable in the ninth and tenth centuries is implied by the expression of Sindbad, that on the occasion of his next voyage, when bearing presents and a letter from the Khalif to the King of Serendib, he embarked at Bassora in a ship, and with him "were many merchants."

Of the Arabian authors of the middle ages the one who dwells most largely on Ceylon is EDRISI, born of a family who ruled over Malaga after the fall of the Khalifs of Cordova. He was a protégé of the Sicilian king, Roger the Norman, at whose desire he compiled his Geography, A.D. 1154. But with regard to Ceylon, his pages contain only the oft-repeated details of the height of the holy mountain, the gems found in its ravines, the musk, the perfumes, and odoriferous woods which abound there.[1] He particularises twelve cities, but their names are scarcely identifiable with any now known.[2] The sovereign, who was celebrated for the mildness of his rule, was assisted by a council of sixteen, of whom four were of the national religion, four Christians, four Mussulmans, and four Jews; and one of the chief cares of the government was given to keeping up the historical records of the reigns of their kings, the lives of their prophets, and the sacred books of their law.

1: EDRISI mentions, that at that period the sugar-cane was cultivated in Ceylon.

2: Marnaba, (Manaar?) Aghna Perescouri, (Periatorre?) Aide, Mahouloun, (Putlam?) Hamri, Telmadi, (Talmanaar?) Lendouma, Sedi; Hesli, Beresli and Medouna (Matura?). "Aghna" or "Ana," as Edrisi makes it the residence of the king, must be Anarajapoora.

Ships from China and other distant countries resorted to the island, and hither "came the wines of Irak, and Fars, which are purchased by the king, and sold again to his subjects; for, unlike the princes of India, who encourage debauchery but strictly forbid wine, the King of Serendib recommends wine and prohibits debauchery." The exports of the island he describes as silk, precious stones of every hue, rock-crystal, diamonds, and a profusion of perfumes.[1]

1: EDRISI, Géogr. Transl. de Jaubert, 4to. Paris, 1836, t. i. p. 71, &c. Edrisi, in his "Notice of Ceylon," quotes largely and verbatim from the work of Abou-zeyd.

The last of this class of writers to whom it is necessary to allude is KAZWINI, who lived at Bagdad in the thirteenth century, and, from the diversified nature of his writings, has been called the Pliny of the East. In his geographical account of India, he includes Ceylon, but it is evident from the details into which he enters of the customs of the court and the people, the burning of the widows of the kings on the same pile with their husbands, that the information he had received had been collected amongst the Brahmanical, not the Buddhist portion of the people. This is confirmatory of the actual condition of the people of Ceylon at the period as shown by the native chronicles, the king being the Malabar Magha, who invaded the island from Caligna 1219 A.D., overthrew the Buddhist religion, desecrated its monuments and temples, and destroyed the edifices and literary records of the capital.[1]

1: Mahawanso, ch. lxxx. Rajaratnacari, p. 93; Rajavali, p. 256. TURNOUR'S Epitome, &c., p. 44.

KAZWINI, as usual, dwells on the productions of the island, its spices, and its odours, its precious woods and medical drugs, its profusion of gems, its gold and silver work, and its pearls[1]: but one circumstance will not fail to strike the reader as a strange omission in these frequent enumerations of the exports of Ceylon. I have traced them from their earliest notices by the Greeks and Romans to the period when the commerce of the East had reached its climax in the hands of the Persians and Arabians; the survey extends over fifteen centuries, during which Ceylon and its productions were familiarly known to the traders of all countries, and yet in the pages of no author, European or Asiatic, from the earliest ages to the close of the thirteenth century, is there the remotest allusion to Cinnamon as an indigenous production, or even as an article of commerce in Ceylon. I may add, that I have been equally unsuccessful in finding any allusion to it in any Chinese work of ancient date.[2]

1: KAZWINI, in Gildemeister, Script. Arab. p. 108.

2: In the Chinese Materia Medica, "Pun-tsao-kang-muh," cinnamon or cassia is described under the name of "kwei" but always as a production of Southern China and of Cochin China. In the Ming History, a production of Ceylon is mentioned under the name of "Shoo-heang," or "tree-perfume;" but my informant, Mr. Wylie, of Shanghae, is unable to identify it with cinnamon oil.

This unexpected result has served to cast a suspicion on the title of Ceylon to be designated par excellence the "Cinnamon Isle," and even with the knowledge that the cinnamon laurel is indigenous there, it admits of but little doubt that the spice which in the earlier ages was imported into Europe through Arabia, was obtained, first from Africa, and afterwards from India; and that it was not till after the twelfth or thirteenth century that its existence in Ceylon became known to the merchants resorting to the island. So little was its real history known in Europe, even at the latter period, that Phile, who composed his metrical treatise, [Greek: Peri Zôôn Idiotêtos], for the information of the Emperor Michael XI. (Palæologus), about the year 1310, repeats the ancient fable of Herodotus, that cinnamon grew in an unknown Indian country, whence it was carried by birds, from whose nests it was abstracted by the natives of Arabia.[1]

1:

[Greek:

Ornis ho kinnamômos ônomasmenos

To kinnamômon euren agnooumenon,

Huph ou kalian organoi tois philtatois

Mallon ie tois melasin Indois, autanax

Arômatikên hêdonên diaplekei.]

PHILE, xxviii.

VINCENT, in scrutinising the writings of the classical authors, anterior to Cosmas, who treated of Taprobane, was surprised to discover that no mention of cinnamon as a production of Ceylon was to be met with in Pliny, Dioscorides, or Ptolemy, and that even the author of the mercantile Periplus was silent regarding it. (Vol. ii. p. 512.) D'Herbelot has likewise called attention to the same fact. (Bibl. Orient. vol. iii. p. 308.) This omission is not to be explained by ascribing it to mere inadvertence. The interest of the Greeks and Romans was naturally excited to discover the country which produced a luxury so rare as to be a suitable gift for a king; and so costly, that a crown of cinnamon tipped with gold was a becoming offering to the gods. But the Arabs succeeded in preserving the secret of its origin, and the curiosity of Europe was baffled by tales of cinnamon being found in the nest of the Phoenix, or gathered in marshes guarded by monsters and winged serpents. Pliny appears to have been the first to suspect that the most precious of spices came not from Arabia, but from Æthiopia (lib. xii. c. xlii.); and COOLEY, in an argument equally remarkable for ingenuity and research, has succeeded in demonstrating the soundness of this conjecture, and establishing the fact that the cinnamon brought to Europe by the Arabs, and afterwards by the Greeks, came chiefly from the eastern angle of Africa, the tract around Cape Gardafui, which is marked on the ancient maps as the Regio Cinnamomifera. (Journ. Roy. Georg. Society, 1849, vol. xix. p. 166.) COOLEY has suggested in his learned work on "Ptolemy and the Nile," that the name Gardafui is a compound of the Somali word gard, "a port," and the Arabic afhaoni, a generic term for aromata and spices. It admits of no doubt that the cinnamon of Ceylon was unknown to commerce in the sixth century of our era; although there is evidence of a supply which, if not from China, was probably carried in Chinese vessels at a much earlier period, in the Persian name dar chini, which means "Chinese wood," and in the ordinary word "cinn-amon," "Chinese amomum," a generic name for aromatic spices generally. (NEES VON ESENBACH, de Cinnamono Disputatio, p. 12.) Ptolemy, equally with Pliny, placed the "Cinnamon Region" at the north-eastern extremity of Africa, now the country of the Somaulees; and the author of the Periplus, mindful of his object, in writing a guidebook for merchant-seamen, particularises cassia amongst the exports of the same coast; but although he enumerates the productions of Ceylon, gems, pearls, ivory, and tortoiseshell, he is silent as to cinnamon. Dioscorides and Galen, in common with the travellers and geographers of the ancients, ignore its Singhalese origin, and unite with them in tracing it to the country of the Troglodytæ. I attach no importance to those passages in WAGENFELD'S version of Sanchoniathon, in which, amongst other particulars, obviously describing Ceylon under the name of "the island of Rachius," which he states to have been visited by the Phoenicians; he says, that the western province produced, the finest cinnamon ([Greek: kinnamô pollô te kai diapheronti]), that the mountains abounded in cassia (Greek: kasia arômatikôtatê]), and that the minor kings paid their tribute in both, to the paramount sovereign. (SANCHONIATHON, ed. Wagenfeld, Bremen, 1837, lib. vii. ch. xii.). The MS. from which Wagenfeld printed, is evidently a mediæval forgery (see [note (A) to vol. i. ch. v. p. 547]). Again, it is equally strange that the writers of Arabia and Persia preserve a similar silence as to the cinnamon of the island, although they dwell with due admiration on its other productions, in all of which they carried on a lucrative trade. Sir WILLIAM OUSELEY, after a fruitless search through the writings of their geographers and travellers, records his surprise at this result, and mentions especially his disappointment, that Ferdousi, who enriches his great poem with glowing descriptions of all the objects presented by surrounding nations to the sovereigns of Persia,—ivory, ambergris, and aloes, vases, bracelets, and jewels,—never once adverts to the exquisite cinnamon of Ceylon.—Travels, vol. i, p. 41.

The conclusion deducible from fifteen centuries of historic testimony is, that the earliest knowledge of cinnamon possessed by the western nations was derived from China, and that it first reached Judea and Phoenicia overland by way of Persia (Song of Solomon, iv. 14: Revelation xviii, 13). At a later period when the Arabs, "the merchants of Sheba," competed for the trade of Tyre, and earned to her "the chief of all spices" (Ezekiel xvii. 22), their supplies were drawn from their African possessions, and the cassia of the Troglodytic coast supplanted the cinnamon of the far East, and to a great extent excluded it from the market. The Greeks having at length discovered the secret of the Arabs, resorted to the same countries as their rivals in commerce, and surpassing them in practical navigation and the construction of ships, the Sabæans were for some centuries reduced to a state of mercantile dependence and inferiority. In the meantime the Roman Empire declined; the Persians under the Sassanides engrossed the intercourse with the East, the trade of India now flowed through the Persian Gulf, and the ports of the Red Sea were deserted. "Thus the downfall, and it may be the extinction, of the African spice trade probably dates from the close of the sixth century, and Malabar succeeded at once to this branch of commerce."—COOLEY, Regio Cinnamomifera, p. 14. Cooley supposes that the Malabars may have obtained from Ceylon the cinnamon with which they supplied the Persians; as Ibn Batuta, in the fourteenth century, saw cinnamon trees drifted upon the shores of the island, whither they had been carried by torrents from the forests of the interior (Ibn Batuta, ch. xx. p. 182). The fact of their being found so is in itself sufficient evidence, that down to that time no active trade had been carried on in the article; and the earliest travellers in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, MARCO POLO, JOHN OF HESSE, FRA JORDANUS and others, whilst they allude to cinnamon as one of the chief productions of Malabar, speak of Ceylon, notwithstanding her wealth in jewels and pearls, as if she were utterly destitute of any spice of this kind. NICOLA DE CONTI, A.D. 1444, is the first European writer, in whose pages I have found Ceylon described as yielding cinnamon, and he is followed by Varthema, A.D. 1506, and Corsali, A.D. 1515.

Long after the arrival of Europeans in Ceylon, cinnamon was only found in the forests of the interior, where it was cut and brought away by the Chalias, the caste who, from having been originally weavers, devoted themselves to this new employment. The Chalias are themselves an immigrant tribe, and, according to their own tradition, they came to the island only a very short time before the appearance of the Portuguese. (See a History of the Chalias, by ADRIAN RAJAPAKSE, a Chief of the Caste, Asiat. Reser. vol. iii. p. 440.) So difficult of access were the forests, that the Portuguese could only obtain a full supply from them once in three years; and the Dutch, to remedy this uncertainty, made regular plantations in the vicinity of their forts about the year 1770 A.D., "so that the cultivation of cinnamon in Ceylon is not yet a century old"—COOLEY, p. 15. It is a question for scientific research rather than for historical scrutiny, whether the cinnamon laurel of Ceylon, as it exists at the present day, is indigenous to the island, or whether it is identical with the cinnamon of Abyssinia, and may have been carried thence by the Arabs; or whether it was brought to the island from the adjacent continent of India; or imported by the Chinese from islands still further to the east. One fact is notorious at the present day, that nearly the whole of the cinnamon grown in Ceylon is produced in a small and well-defined area occupying the S.W. quarter of the island, which has been at all times the resort of foreign shipping. The natives, from observing its appearance for the first time in other and unexpected places, believe it to be sown by the birds who carry thither the undigested seeds; and the Dutch, for this reason, prohibited the shooting of crows,—a precaution that would scarcely be necessary for the protection of the plant, had they believed it to be not only indigenous, but peculiar to the island. We ourselves were led, till very recently, to imagine that Ceylon enjoyed a "natural monopoly" of cinnamon.

Mr. THWAITES, of the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kandy, is of opinion from his own observation, that cinnamon is indigenous to Ceylon, as it is found, but of inferior quality, in the central mountain range, as high as 3000 feet above the level of the sea—and again in the sandy soil near Batticaloa on the east coast, he saw it in such quantity as to suggest the idea that it must be the remains of former cultivation. This statement of Mr. Thwaites is quite in consistency with the narrative of VALENTYN (ch. vii.), that the Dutch, on their first arrival in Ceylon, A.D. 1601-2, took on board cinnamon at Batticaloa,—and that the surrounding district continued to produce it in great abundance in A.D. 1726. (Ib. ch. xv. p. 223, 224.) Still it must be observed that its appearance in these situations is not altogether inconsistent with the popular belief that the seeds may have been carried there by birds.

Finding that the Singhalese works accessible to me, the Mahawanso, the Rajavali, the Rajaratnacari, &c., although frequently particularising the aromatic shrubs and flowers planted by the pious care of the native sovereigns, made no mention of cinnamon, I am indebted to the good offices of the Maha-Moodliar de Sarem, of Mr. De Alwis, the translator of the Sidath-Sangara, and of Mr. Spence Hardy, the learned historian of Buddhism, for a thorough, examination of such native books as were likely to throw light on the question. Mr. Hardy writes to me that he has not met with the word cinnamon (kurundu) in any early Singhalese books; but there is mention of a substance called "paspalawata" of which cinnamon forms one of the ingredients. Mr. de Alwis has been equally unsuccessful, although in the Saraswate Nigardu, an ancient Sanskrit Catalogue of Plants, the true cinnamon is spoken of as Sinhalam, a word which signifies "belonging to Ceylon" to distinguish it from cassia, which is found in Hindustan. The Maha-Moodliar, as the result of an investigation made by him in communication with some of the most erudite of the Buddhist priesthood familiar with Pali and Singhalese literature, informs me that whilst cinnamon is alluded to in several Sanskrit works on Medicine, such as that of Susrata, and thence copied into Pali translations, its name has been found only in Singhalese works of comparatively modern date, although it occurs in the treatise on Medicine and Surgery popularly attributed to King Bujas Raja, A.D. 339. Lankagodde, a learned priest of Galle, says that the word lawanga in an ancient Pali vocabulary means cinnamon, but I rather think this is a mistake, for lawanga or lavanga is the Pali name for "cloves," that for cinnamon being lamago.

The question therefore remains in considerable obscurity. It is difficult to understand how an article so precious could exist in the highest perfection in Ceylon, at the period when the island was the very focus and centre of Eastern commerce, and yet not become an object of interest and an item of export. And although it is sparingly used in the Singhalese cuisine, still looking at its many religious uses for decoration and incense, the silence of the ecclesiastical writers as to its existence is not easily accounted for.

The explanation may possibly be, that cinnamon, like coffee, was originally a native of the east angle of Africa; and that the same Arabian adventurers who carried coffee to Yemen, where it flourishes to the present day, may have been equally instrumental in introducing cinnamon into India and Ceylon. In India its cultivation, probably from natural causes, proved unsuccessful; but in Ceylon the plant enjoyed that rare combination of soil, temperature, and climate, which ultimately gave to its qualities the highest possible development.

The first authentic notice which we have of Singhalese cinnamon occurs in the voyages of Ibn Batuta the Moor, who, impelled by religious enthusiasm, set out from his native city Tangiers, in the year 1324, and devoted twenty-eight years to a pilgrimage, the record of which has entitled him to rank amongst the most remarkable travellers of any age or country.

On his way to India, he visited, in Shiraz, the tomb of the Imaum Abu Abd Allah, "who made known the way from India to the mountain of Serendib." As this saint died in the year of the Hejira 331, his story serves to fix the origin of the Mahometan pilgrimages to Adam's Peak, in the early part of the tenth century. When steering for the coast of India, from the Maldives, Ibn Batuta was carried by the south-west monsoon towards the northern portion of Ceylon, which was then (A.D. 1347) in the hands of the Malabars, the Singhalese sovereign having removed his capital southward to Gampola. The Hindu chief of Jaffna was at this time in possession of a fleet in "which he occasionally transported his troops against the Mahometans on other parts of the coast;" where the Singhalese chroniclers relate that the Tamils at this time had erected forts at Colombo, Negombo, and Chilaw.

Ibn Batuta was permitted to land at Battala (Putlam) and found the shore covered with "cinnamon wood," which "the merchants of Malabar transport without any other price than a few articles of clothing which are given as presents to the king. This may be attributed to the circumstance that it is brought down by the mountain torrents, and left in great heaps upon the shore."

This passage is interesting, though not devoid of obscurity, for cinnamon is not known to grow farther north than Chilaw, nor is there any river in the district of Putlam which could bear the designation of a "mountain torrent." Along the coast further south the cinnamon district commences, and the current of the sea may have possibly carried with it the uprooted laurels described in the narrative. The whole passage, however, demonstrates that at that time, at least, Ceylon had no organised trade in the spice.

The Tamil chieftain exhibited to Ibn Batuta his wealth in "pearls," and under his protection he made the pilgrimage to the summit of Adam's Peak accompanied by four jyogees who visited the foot-mark every year, "four Brahmans, and ten of the king's companions, with fifteen attendants carrying provisions." The first day he crossed a river, (the estuary of Calpentyn?) on a boat made of reeds, and entered the city of Manar Mandali; probably the site of the present Minneri Mundal. This was the "extremity of the territory of the infidel king," whence Ibn Batuta proceeded to the port of Salawat (Chilaw), and thence (turning inland) he reached the city of the Singhalese sovereign at Gampola, then called Ganga-sri-pura, which he contracts into Kankar or Ganga.[1]

1: As he afterwards writes, Galle "Kale."

He describes accurately the situation of the ancient capital, in a valley between two hills, upon a bend of the river called, "the estuary of rubies." The emperor he names "Kina," a term I am unable to explain, as the prince who then reigned was probably Bhuwaneka-bahu IV., the first Singhalese monarch who held his court at Gampola.

The king on feast days rode on a white elephant, his head adorned with very large rubies, which are found in his country, imbedded in "a white stone abounding in fissures, from which they cut it out and give it to the polishers." Ibn Batuta enumerates three varieties, "the red, the yellow, and the cornelian;" but the last must mean the sapphire, the second the topaz; and the first refers, I apprehend, to the amethyst; for in the following passage, in describing the decorations of the head of the white elephant, he speaks of "seven rubies, each of which was larger than a hen's egg," and a saucer made of a ruby as broad as the palm of the hand.

In the ascent from Gampola to Adam's Peak, he speaks of the monkeys with beards like a man (Presbytes ursinus, or P. cephalopterus), and of the "fierce leech," which lurks in the trees and damp grass, and springs on the passers by. He describes the trees with leaves that never fall, and the "red roses" of the rhododendrons which still characterise that lofty region. At the foot of the last pinnacle which crowns the summit of the peak, he found a minaret named after Alexander the Great[1]; steps hewn out of the rock, and "iron pins to which chains are appended" to assist the pilgrims in their ascent; a well filled with fish, and last of all, on the loftiest point of the mountain, the sacred foot-print of the First Man, into the hollow of which the pilgrims drop their offerings of gems and gold.

1: In oriental tradition, Alexander is believed to have visited Ceylon in company with the "philosopher Bolinus," by whom De Sacy believes that the Arabs meant Apollonius of Tyana. There is a Persian poem by ASHREP, the Zaffer Namah Skendari, which describes the conqueror's voyage to Serendib, and his devotions at the foot-mark of Adam, for reaching which, he and Bolinus caused steps to be hewn in the rock, and the ascent secured by rivets and chains.—See OUSELEY'S Travels, vol. i. p. 58.

In descending the mountain, Ibn Batuta passed through the village of Kalanga, near which was a tomb, said to be that of Abu Abd Allah Ibn Khalif[1]; he visited the temple of Dinaur (Devi-Neuera, or Dondera Head), and returned to Putlam by way of Kale (Galle), and Kolambu (Colombo), "the finest and largest city in Serendib."

1: Abu Abd Allah was the first who led the Mahometan pilgrims to Ceylon. The tomb alluded to was probably a cenotaph in his honour; as Ibn Batuta had previously visited his tomb at Shiraz.

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