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

1: VALENTYN, Oud en Nieuw Oost-Indien, &c., ch. xiii. p. 174.

The British, on the capture of Colombo in 1796, were equally solicitous to obtain possession of the records of the Dutch Government. By Art. XIV. of the capitulation they were required to be "faithfully delivered over;" and, by Art. XI., all "surveys of the island and its coasts" were required to be surrendered to the captors.[1] But, strange to say, almost the whole of these interesting and important papers appear to have been lost; not a trace of the Portuguese records, so far as I could discover, remains at Colombo; and if any vestige of those of the Dutch be still extant, they have probably become illegible from decay and the ravages of the white ants.[2]

1: Amongst a valuable collection of documents presented to the Royal Asiatic Society of London, by the late Sir Alexander Johnston, formerly Chief Justice of Ceylon, there is a volume of Dutch surveys of the Island, containing important maps of the coast and its harbours, and plans of the great works for irrigation in the northern and eastern provinces.

2: Note to the second edition.—Since the first edition was published, I have been told by a late officer of the Ceylon Government, that many years ago, what remained of the Dutch records were removed from the record-room of the Colonial Office to the cutcherry of the government agent of the western province: where some of them may still be found.

But the loss is not utterly irreparable; duplicates of the Dutch correspondence during their possession of Ceylon are carefully preserved at Amsterdam; and within the last few years the Trustees of the British Museum purchased from the library of the late Lord Stuart de Rothesay the Diplomatic Correspondence and Papers of SEBASTIAÕ JOZÉ CARVALHO E MELLO (Portuguese Ambassador at London and Vienna, and subsequently known as the Marquis de Pombal), from 1738 to 1747, including sixty volumes relating to the history of the Portuguese possessions in India and Brazil during the 16th, 17th, and 18th centuries. Amongst the latter are forty volumes of despatches relative to India entitled Collecçam Authentica de todas as Leys, Regimentos, Alvarás e mais ordens que se expediram para a India, desde o establecimento destas conquístas; Ordenáda por proviram de 28 de Marco de 1754.[1] These contain the despatches to and from the successive Captains-General and Governors of Ceylon, so that, in part at least, the replacement of the records lost in the colony may be effected by transcription.

1: MSS. Brit Mus. No. 20,861 to 20,900.

Meanwhile in their absence I had no other resource than the narratives of the Dutch and Portuguese historians, chiefly VALENTYN, DE BARROS, and DE COUTO, who have preserved in two languages the least familiar in Europe, chronicles of their respective governments, which, so far as I am aware, have never been republished in any translation.

The present volumes contain no detailed notice of the Buddhist faith as it exists in Ceylon, of the Brahmanical rites, or of the other religious superstitions of the island. These I have already described in my history of Christianity in Ceylon.[1] The materials for that work were originally designed to form a portion of the present one; but having expanded to too great dimensions to be made merely subsidiary, I formed them into a separate treatise. Along with them I have incorporated facts illustrative of the national character of the Singhalese under the conjoint influences of their ancestral superstitions and the partial enlightenment of education and gospel truth.

1: Christianity in Ceylon: its Introduction and Progress under the Portuguese, the Dutch, the British and American Missions; with an Historical Sketch of the Brahmanical and Buddhist Superstitons by Sir JAMES EMERSON TENNENT. London, Murray, 1850.

Respecting the Physical Geography and Natural History of the colony, I found an equal want of reliable information; and every work that even touched on the subject was pervaded by the misapprehension which I have collected evidence to correct; that Ceylon is but a fragment of the great Indian continent dissevered by some local convulsion; and that the zoology and botany of the island are identical with those of the mainland.[1]