Volume 1 / Part 5 — CHAP. II

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]

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]

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]

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.

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]

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]

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]

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.

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.

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]

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.

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]

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.

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]

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.

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]

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.

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.

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."

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]

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]

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.

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]

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.

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]

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]

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]

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.

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,—

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]

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.

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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.

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."