Volume 1 / Part 5 — CHAP. IV.

CEYLON AS KNOWN TO THE MOORS, GENOESE, AND VENETIANS.

The rapid survey of the commerce of India during the middle ages, which it has been necessary to introduce into the preceding narrative, will also serve to throw light on a subject hitherto but imperfectly investigated.

The most remarkable of the many tribes which inhabit Ceylon are the Mahometans, or, as they are generally called on the island, the "Moor-men," energetic and industrious communities of whom are found on all parts of the coast, but whose origin, adventures, and arrival are amongst the historical mysteries of Ceylon.

The meaningless designation of "Moors," applied to them, is the generic term by which it was customary at one time, in Europe, to describe a Mahometan, from whatsoever country he came, as the word Gentoo[1] was formerly applied in England to the inhabitants of Hindustan, without distinction of race. The practice probably originated from the Spaniards having given that name to the followers of the Prophet, who, traversing Morocco, overran the peninsula in the seventh and eighth centuries.[2] The epithet was borrowed by the Portuguese, who, after their discovery of the passage by the Cape of Good Hope, bestowed it indiscriminately upon the Arabs and their descendants, whom, in the sixteenth century, they found established as traders in every port on the Asian and African coast, and whom they had good reason to regard as their most formidable competitors for the commerce of the East.

Particular events have been assumed as marking the probable date of their first appearance in Ceylon. Sir Alexander Johnston, on the authority of a tradition current amongst their descendants, says, that "the first Mahometans who settled there were driven from Arabia in the early part of the eighth century, and established themselves at Jaffna, Manaar, Koodramali, Putlam, Colombo, Barberyn, Point de Galle, and Trincomalie."[1] The Dutch authorities, on the other hand, hold that the Moors were Moslemin only by profession, that by birth they were descendants of a mean and detestable Malabar caste, who in remote times had been converted to Islam through intercourse with the Arabs of Bassora and the Red Sea; that they had frequented the coasts of India as seamen, and then infested them as pirates; and that their first appearance in Ceylon was not earlier than the century preceding the landing of the Portuguese.[2]

The truth, however, is, that there were Arabs in Ceylon ages before the earliest date named in these conjectures[1]; they were known there as traders centuries before Mahomet was born, and such was their passion for enterprise, that at one and the same moment they were pursuing commerce in the Indian Ocean[2], and manning the galleys of Marc Antony in the fatal sea-fight at Actium.[3] The author of the Periplus found them in Ceylon about the first Christian century, Cosmas Indico-pleustes in the sixth; and they had become so numerous in China in the eighth, as to cause a tumult at Canton.[4] From the tenth till the fifteenth century, the Arabs, as merchants, were the undisputed masters of the East; they formed commercial establishments in every country that had productions to export, and their vessels sailed between every sea-port from Sofala to Bab-el-Mandeb, and from Aden to Sumatra.[5] The "Moors," who at the present day inhabit the coasts of Ceylon, are the descendants of these active adventurers; they are not purely Arabs in blood, but descendants from Arabian ancestors by intermarriage with the native races who embraced the religion of the Prophet.[6] The Singhalese epithet of "Marak-kala-minisu" or "Mariners," describes at once their origin and occupation; but during the middle ages, when Ceylon was the Tyre of Asia, these immigrant traders became traders in all the products of the island, and the brokers through whose hands they passed in exchange for the wares of foreign countries. At no period were they either manufacturers or producers in any department; their genius was purely commercial, and their attention was exclusively devoted to buying and selling what had been previously produced by the industry and ingenuity of others. They were dealers in jewelry, connoisseurs in gems, and collectors of pearls; and whilst the contented and apathetic Singhalese in the villages and forests of the interior passed their lives in the cultivation of their rice-lands, and sought no other excitement than the pomp and ceremonial of their temples; the busy and ambitious Mahometans on the coast built their warehouses at the ports, crowded the harbours with their shipping, and collected the wealth and luxuries of the island, its precious stones, its dye-woods, its spices and ivory, to be forwarded to China and the Persian Gulf.

MARCO POLO, in the thirteenth century, found the Moors in uncontested possession of this busy and lucrative trade, and BARBOSA, in his account of the island, A.D. 1519, says, that not only were they to be found in every sea-port and city, conducting and monopolising its commerce, but Moors from the coast of Malabar were continually arriving to swell their numbers, allured by the facilities of commerce and the unrestrained freedom enjoyed under the government.[1] In process of time their prosperity invested them with political influence, and in the decline of the Singhalese monarchy they took advantage of the feebleness of the king of Cotta, to direct armed expeditions against parts of the coast, to plunder the inhabitants, and supply themselves with elephants and pearls.[2] They engaged in conspiracies against the native princes; and Wijayo Bahu VII., who was murdered in 1534, was slain by a turbulent Moorish leader called Soleyman, whom his eldest son and successor had instigated to the crime.[3]

The appearance of the Portuguese in Ceylon at this critical period, served not only to check the career of the Moors, but to extinguish the independence of the native princes; and looking to the facility with which the former had previously superseded the Malabars, and were fast acquiring an ascendency over the Singhalese chiefs, it is not an unreasonable conjecture that, but for this timely appearance of a Christian power in the Island, Ceylon, instead of a possession of the British crown, might at the present day have been a Mahometan kingdom, under the rule of some Arabian adventurer.

But although the position of the Arabs in relation to the commerce of the East underwent no unfavourable change prior to the arrival of the Portuguese in the Indian seas, numerous circumstances combined in the early part of the sixteenth century to bring other European nations into communication with the East.

The productions of India, whether they passed by the Oxus to the Caspian, or were transported in caravans from the Tigris to the shores of the Black Sea, were poured into the magazines of Constantinople, the merchants of which, previous to the fall of the Lower Empire, were the most opulent in the world. During the same period, Egypt commanded the trade of the Red Sea; and received, through Aden, the luxuries of the far East, with which she supplied the Moorish princes of Spain, and the countries bordering on the Mediterranean.[1]

Even when the dominion of the Khalifs was threatened by the rising power of the Turks, and long after the subsidence of the commotions and vicissitudes which marked the period of the Crusades, part of this lucrative commerce was still carried to Alexandria, by the Nile and its canals. The Genoese and Venetians, each eager to engross the supply of Europe, sought permission from the Emperors to form establishments on the shores of the Black Sea and the Mediterranean. The former advanced their fortified factories as far eastward as Tabriz, to meet the caravans returning from the Persian Gulf[1], and the latter, in addition to the formation of settlements at Tyre, Beyrout, and Acre[2], acquired after the fourth crusade, succeeded (in defiance of the interdict of the Popes against trading with the infidel) in negotiating a treaty with the Mamelukes for a share in the trade of Alexandria.[3] It was through Venice that England and the western nations obtained the delicacies of India and China, down to the period when the overland route and the Red Sea were deserted for the grander passage by the Cape of Good Hope.[4]

Another great event which stimulated the commercial activity of the Italians in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, was the extraordinary progress of the Mongols, who in an incredibly short space of time absorbed Central Asia into one powerful empire, overthrew the ancient monarchy of China, penetrated to the heart of Russia, and directed their arms with equal success both against Poland and Japan. The popes and the sovereigns of Europe, alike alarmed for their dominions and their faith, despatched ambassadors to the Great Khan; the mission resulted in allaying apprehension for the further advance of their formidable neighbours towards the west, and the vigilant merchants of Venice addressed themselves to effect an opening for trade in the new domains of the Tartar princes.

It is to this commercial enterprise that we are indebted for the first authentic information regarding China and India, that reached Europe after the silence of the middle ages; and the voyages of the Venetians, in some of which the realities of travel appear as extra-ordinary as the incidents of romance, contain accounts of Ceylon equally interesting and reliable.

MARCO POLO, who left Venice as a youth, in the year 1271, and resided seventeen years at the court of Kubla Khan, was the first European who penetrated to China Proper; whence he embarked in A.D. 1291, at Fo-Kien, and passing through the Straits of Malacca, rested at Ceylon, on his homeward route by Ormuz.

He does not name the port in Ceylon at which he landed, but he calls the king Sender-naz, a name which may possibly be identified with the Malay Chandra-banu, who twice invaded the island during the reign of Pandita Prakrama-bahu III.[1]

He repeats the former exaggerated account as to the dimensions of Ceylon; he says that it was believed to have been anciently larger still, and he shows incidentally that as early as the thirteenth century, the Arab sailors possessed charts of the island which they used in navigating the Indian seas.[1] Then, as now, the universal costume of the Singhalese was the cotton "comboy," worn only on the lower half of the body[2], their grains were sesamum and rice; their food the latter with milk and flesh-meat; and their drink coco-nut toddy, which Marco calls "wine drawn from the trees." He dwells with rapture on the gems and costly stones, and, above all, on the great ruby, a span long, for which Kubla Khan offered the value of a city. With singular truth he says, "the people are averse to a military life, abject and timid, and when they have occasion to employ soldiers, they procure them from other countries in the vicinity of the Mahometans." From this it would seem that six hundred years ago, it was the practice in Ceylon, as it is at the present day, to recruit the forces of the island from the Malays.

The next Venetian whose travels qualified him to speak of Ceylon was the Minorite friar ODORIC, of Portenau in Friuli[1], who, setting out from the Black Sea in 1318, traversed the Asian continent to China, and returned to Italy after a journey of twelve years. In Ceylon he was struck by the number of serpents, and the multitude of wild animals, lions (leopards?), bears, and elephants. "In it he saw the mountain on which Adam for the space of 500 years mourned the death of Abel, and on which his tears and those of Eve formed, as men believed, a fountain;" but this Odoric discovered to be a delusion, as he saw the spring gushing from the earth, and its waters "flowing over jewels, but abounding with leeches and blood-suckers." The natives were permitted by the king to collect the gems; and in doing so they smear their bodies with the juice of lemons to protect them from the leeches. The wild creatures, they said, however dangerous to the inhabitants of the island, were harmless to strangers. In that island Odoric saw "birds with two heads," which possibly implies that he saw the hornbill[2], whose huge and double casque may explain the expression.

In the succeeding century[1] the most authentic account of Ceylon is given by NICOLO DI CONTI, another Venetian, who, though of noble family, had settled as a merchant at Damascus, whence he had travelled over Persia, India, the Eastern Archipelago, and China. Returning by way of Arabia and the Red Sea, in 1444, he fell into danger amongst some fanatical Mahometans, and was compelled to renounce the faith of a Christian, less from regard for his own safety than apprehension for that of his children and wife. For this apostacy he besought the pardon of Pope Eugenius IV., who absolved him from guilt on condition that he should recount his adventures to the apostolic secretary, Poggio Bracciolini, by whom they have been preserved in his dissertation on "The Vicissitudes of Fortune."[2]

Di Conti is, I believe, the first European who speaks of cinnamon as a production of Ceylon. "It is a tree," he says, "which grows there in abundance, and which very much resembles our thick willows, excepting that the branches do not grow upwards, but spread horizontally; the leaves are like those of the laurel, but somewhat larger; the bark of the branches is thinnest and best, that of the trunk thick and inferior in flavour. The fruit resembles the berries of the laurel; the Indians extract from it an odoriferous oil, and the wood, after the bark has been stripped from it, is used by them for fuel."[1]

The narrative of Di Conti, as it is printed by Ramusio, from a Portuguese version, contains a passage not found in Poggio, in which it is alleged that a river of Ceylon, called Arotan, has a fish somewhat like the torpedo, but whose touch, instead of electrifying, produces a fever so long as it is held in the hand, relief being instantaneous on letting it go.[1]

The sixteenth century was prolific in navigators, the accounts of whose adventures served to diffuse throughout Europe a general knowledge of Ceylon, at least as it was known superficially before the arrival of the Portuguese. Ludovico Barthema, or Varthema, a Bolognese[1], remained at a port on the west coast[2] for some days in 1506. The four kings of the island being busily engaged in civil war[3], he found it difficult to land, but he learned that permission to search for jewels at the foot of Adam's Peak might be obtained by the payment of five ducats, and restoring as a royalty all gems over ten carats. Fruit was delicious and abundant, especially artichokes and oranges[4], but rice was so insufficiently cultivated that the sovereigns of the island were dependent for their supplies upon the King of Narsingha, on the continent of India.[5] This statement of Barthema is without qualification; there can be little doubt that it applied chiefly to the southern parts of the island, and that the north was still able to produce food sufficient for the wants of the inhabitants.

Barthema found the supply of cinnamon small, and so precarious that the cutting took place but once in three years. The Singhalese were at that time ignorant of the use of gunpowder[1], and their arms were swords and lance-heads mounted on shafts of bamboo; "with these they fought, but their battles were not bloody." The Moors were in possession of the trade, and the king sent a message to Varthema and his companions, expressive of his desire to purchase their commodities; but in consequence of a hint that payment would be regulated by the royal discretion, the Italians weighed anchor at nightfall and bade a sudden adieu to Ceylon.

Early in the sixteenth century, ODOARDO BARBOSA, a Portuguese captain, who had sailed in the Indian seas, compiled a summary of all that was then known concerning the countries of the East[1], with which the people of Portugal had been brought into connection by their recent discovery of the passage round the Cape of Good Hope. Writing partly from personal observation, but chiefly from information obtained from the previous accounts of Di Conti, Barthema and Corsali[2], he speaks of that "grandest and most lovely island, which the Moors of Arabia, Persia, and Syria call Zeilam, but the Indians, Tenarisim, or the land of delights." Its ports were crowded with Moors, who monopolised commerce, and its inhabitants, whose complexions were fair and their stature robust and stately, were altogether devoted to pleasure and indifferent to arms.

Barbosa appears to have associated chiefly with the Moors, whose character and customs he describes almost as they exist at the present day. He speaks of their heads, covered with the finest handkerchiefs; of their ear-rings, so heavy with jewels that they hang down to their shoulders; of the upper parts of their bodies exposed, but the lower portions enveloped in silks and rich cloths, secured by an embroidered girdle. He describes their language as a mixture of Arabic and Malabar, and states that numbers of their co-religionists from the Indian coast resorted constantly to Ceylon, and established themselves there as traders, attracted by the delights of the climate, and the luxury and abundance of the island, but above all by the unlimited freedom which they enjoyed under its government. The duration of life was longer in Ceylon than in any country of India. With a profusion of fruits of every kind, and of animals fit for food, grain alone was deficient; rice was largely imported from the Coromandel coast, and sugar from Bengal.

Di Conti and Barthema had ascertained the existence of cinnamon as a production of the island, but Barbosa was the first European who asserted its superiority over that of all other countries. Elephants captured by order of the King, were tamed, trained, and sold to the princes of India, whose agents arrived annually in quest of them. The pearls of Manaar and the gems of Adam's Peak were the principal riches of Ceylon. The cats-eye, according to Barbosa, was as highly valued as the ruby by the dealers in India; and the rubies themselves were preferred to those of Pegu on account of their density[1]; but, compared with those of Ava, they were inferior in colour, a defect which the Moors were skilled in correcting by the of fire.

The residence of the King was at "Colmucho" (Colombo), whither vessels coming for elephants, cinnamon, and gems brought fine cloths from Cambay, together with saffron, coral, quicksilver, vermilion, and specie, and above all silver, which was more in demand than all the rest.

Such is the sum of intelligence concerning Ceylon recorded by the Genoese and Venetians during the three centuries in which they were conversant with the commerce of India. Their interest in the island had been rendered paramount by the events of the first Crusades, but it was extinguished by the discovery of the passage round the Cape of Good Hope. In the period which intervened the word traveller may be said to have been synonymous with merchant[1], and when the occupation of the latter was withdrawn, the adventures of the other were suspended. The vessels of the strangers, in a very few years after their first appearance in the Indian seas, began to divert from its accustomed channel, the stream of commerce which for so many ages had flowed in the direction of the Red Sea and the Persian Gulf; and the galleons of Portugal superseded the caravans of Arabia and the argosies of Venice.

In his dismay the Sultan of Egypt threatened to demolish the sacred remains of Jerusalem, should the infidels of Europe persist in annihilating the trade of the Desert. Stimulated by the Doge, he attacked the Portuguese merchantmen in the Indian seas, and destroyed a convoy off the coast of Cochin; an outrage for which Albuquerque meditated a splendid revenge by an expedition to plunder Mecca and Medina, and to consummate the desolation of Egypt by diverting the Nile to the Red Sea, across Nubia or Abyssinia![1]

But the catastrophe was inevitable; the rich freights of India and China were carried round the "Cape of Storms," and no longer slowly borne on the Tigris and the Nile. The harbours of Ormus and of Bassora became deserted; and on the shores of Asia Minor, where the commerce of Italy had intrenched itself in castles of almost feudal pretension, the rivalries of Genoa and Venice were extinguished in the same calamitous decay.

END OF THE FIRST VOLUME.