Note 1 — Chapter I

: I have not thought it necessary to advert to the romance of JAMBULUS, the scene of which has been conjectured, but without any justifiable grounds, to be laid in Ceylon; and which is strangely incorporated with the authentic work of DIODORUS SICULUS, written in the age of Augustus. DIODORUS professes to give it as an account of the recent discovery of an island to which it refers; a fact sufficiently demonstrative of its inapplicability to Ceylon, the existence of which had been known to the Greeks three hundred years before. It is the story of a merchant made captive by pirates and carried to Æthiopia, where, in compliance with a solemn rite, he and a companion were exposed in a boat, which, after a voyage of four months, was wafted to one of the Fortunate Islands, in the Southern Sea, where he resided seven years, whence having been expelled, he made his way to Palibothra, on the Ganges, and thence returned to Greece. In the pretended account of this island given by JAMBULUS I cannot discover a single attribute sufficient to identify it with Ceylon. On the contrary, the traits which he narrates of the country and its inhabitants, when they are not manifest inventions, are obviously borrowed from the descriptions of the continent of India, given by CTESIAS and MEGASTHENES. PRINSEP, in his learned analysis of the Sanchi Inscription, shows that what JAMBULUS says of the alphabet of his island agrees minutely with the character and symbols on the ancient Buddhist lats of Central India. Journ. Asiat. Soc. Ben., vol. vi. p. 476. WILFORD, in his Essay on the Sacred Isles of the West, Asiat. Res. x. 150, enumerates the statements of JAMBULUS which might possibly apply to Sumatra, but certainly not to Ceylon, an opinion in which he had been anticipated by RAMUSIO, vol. i. p. 176. LASSEN, in his Indische Alterthumskunde, vol. iii. p. 270, assigns his reasons for believing that Bali, to the east of Java, must be the island in which JAMBULUS laid the scene of his adventures. DIODORUS SICULUS, lib. ii. ch. lv., &c. An attempt has also been made to establish an identity between Ceylon and the island of Panchoea, which Diodoras describes in the Indian Sea, between Arabia and Gedrosia (lib. v. 41, &c.); but the efforts of an otherwise ingenious writer have been unsuccessful. See GROVER's Voice from Stonehenge, P. i. p. 95.

2: PLINY, lib. xxii. ch. liii. iv. ch. xxiv. vii. ch. ii.

3: "Legatos quatuor misit principe eoram Rachia."—PLINY, lib. vi. c. 24. This passage is generally understood to indicate four ambassadors, of whom the principal was one named Rachias. CASIE CHITTY, in a learned paper on the early History of Jaffna, offers another conjecture that "Rachia" may mean Arachia, a Singhalese designation of rank which exists to the present day; and in support of his hypothesis he instances the coincidence that "at a later period a similar functionary was despatched by the King Bhuwaneka-Bahu VIII. as ambassador to the court of Lisbon."—Journal Ceylon Asiat. Soc., p. 74, 1848. The event to which he refers is recorded in the Rajavali: it is stated that the king of Cotta, about the year 1540, "caused a figure of the prince his grandson to be made of gold, and sent the same under the care of Sallappoo Arachy, to be delivered to the King of Portugal. The Arachy having arrived and delivered the presents to the King of Portugal, obtained the promise of great assistance," &c.—Rajavali, p. 286. See also VALENTYN, Oud en Nieuw Oost-Indien, ch. vi.; TURNOUR'S Epitome, p. 49; RIBEYRO'S History, trans, by Lee, ch. v. But as the embassy sent to the Emperor Claudius would necessarily have been deputed by one of the kings of the Wijayan dynasty, it is more than probable that the rank of the envoy was Indian rather than Singhalese, and that "Rachia" means raja rather than arachy.

It may, however, be observed that Rackha is a name of some renown in Singhalese annals. Rackha was the general whom Prakrama Bahu sent to reduce the south of Ceylon when in arms in the 12th century (Mahawanso, ch. lxxiii.); and it is also the name of one of the heroes of the Paramas. WILFORD, As. Res., vol. ix. p. 41.