The Project Gutenberg eBook, Ceylon; an Account of the Island Physical, Historical, and Topographical with Notices of Its Natural History, Antiquities and Productions, Volume 1 (of 2), by James Emerson Tennent This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.net Title: Ceylon; an Account of the Island Physical, Historical, and Topographical with Notices of Its Natural History, Antiquities and Productions, Volume 1 (of 2) Author: James Emerson Tennent Release Date: September 28, 2004 [eBook #13552] Language: English Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 ***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CEYLON; AN ACCOUNT OF THE ISLAND PHYSICAL, HISTORICAL, AND TOPOGRAPHICAL WITH NOTICES OF ITS NATURAL HISTORY, ANTIQUITIES AND PRODUCTIONS, VOLUME 1 (OF 2)*** E-text prepared by Carnegie Mellon University, Juliet Sutherland, Leonard Johnson, and the Project Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team Note: Project Gutenberg also has an HTML version of this file which includes the original illustrations. See 13552-h.htm or 13552-h.zip: (http://www.gutenberg.net/dirs/1/3/5/5/13552/13552-h/13552-h.htm) or (http://www.gutenberg.net/dirs/1/3/5/5/13552/13552-h.zip) CEYLON; AN ACCOUNT OF THE ISLAND PHYSICAL, HISTORICAL, AND TOPOGRAPHICAL WITH NOTICES OF ITS NATURAL HISTORY, ANTIQUITIES AND PRODUCTIONS by SIR JAMES EMERSON TENNENT, K.C.S. LL.D. &c. Illustrated by Maps, Plans and Drawings Fourth Edition, Thoroughly Revised VOLUME I LONDON 1860 [Illustration: Frontispiece for Vol I NOOSING WILD ELEPHANTS--Vol 2 p 359 368 &c] CONTENTS OF THE FIRST VOLUME PART I. PHYSICAL GEOGRAPHY. CHAPTER I. GEOLOGY.--MINERALOGY.--GEMS. I. General Aspect. Singular beauty of the island Its ancient renown in consequence Fable of its "perfumed winds" (note) Character of the scenery II. Geographical Position Ancient views regarding it amongst the Hindus,--"the Meridian of Lanka" Buddhist traditions of former submersions (note) Errors as to the dimensions of Ceylon Opinions of Onesicritus, Eratosthenes, Strabo, Pliny, Ptolemy, Agathemerus 8, The Arabian geographers Sumatra supposed to be Ceylon (note) True latitude and longitude General Eraser's map of Ceylon (note) Geological formation Adam's Bridge Error of supposing Ceylon to be a detached fragment of India III. The Mountain System Remarkable hills, Mihintala and Sigiri Little evidence of volcanic action Rocks, gneiss Rock temples Laterite or "Cabook" Ancient name Tamba-panni (note) Coral formation Extraordinary wells Darwin's theory of coral wells examined (note) The soil of Ceylon generally poor "Patenas," their phenomena obscure Rice lands between the hills Soil of the plains, "Talawas" IV. Metals.--Tin Gold, nickel, cobalt Quicksilver (note) Iron V. Minerals.--Anthracite, plumbago, kaolin, nitre caves List of Ceylon minerals (note) VI. Gems, ancient fame of Rose-coloured quartz (note) Mode of searching for gems Rubies Sapphire, topaz, garnet, and cinnamon stone, cat's-eye, amethyst, moonstone 37, Diamond not found in Ceylon (note) Gem-finders and lapidaries VII. Rivers.--Their character The Mahawelli-ganga Table of the rivers VIII. Singular coast formation, and its causes The currents and their influence Word "Gobb" explained (note) Vegetation of the sand formations Their suitability for the coconut IX. Harbours.--Galle and Trincomalie Tides Red infusoria Population of Ceylon CHAP. II. CLIMATE.--HEALTH AND DISEASE. Uniformity of temperature Brilliancy of foliage Colombo.--January--long shore wind February--cold nights (note) March, April May--S.W. monsoon Aspect of the country before it Lightning Rain, its violence June July and August, September, October, November. N.E. monsoon December Annual quantity of rain in Ceylon and Hindustan (note) Opposite climates of the same mountain Climate of Galle Kandy and its climate Mists and hail Climate of Trincomalie (text and note) Jaffna and its climate Waterspouts Anthelia Buddha rays Ceylon as a sanatarium.--Neuera-ellia Health Malaria Food and wine 76, Effects of the climate of Ceylon on disease Precautions for health CHAP. III VEGETATION.--TREES AND PLANTS. The Flora of Ceylon imperfectly known Vegetation similar to that of India and the Eastern Archipelago Trees of the sea-borde.--Mangroves--Screw-pines, Sonneratia The Northern Plains.--Euphorbiæ Cassia.--Mustard-tree of Scripture Western coast.--Luxurious vegetation Eastern coast Pitcher plant.--Orchids Vines Botany of the Mountains.--Iron-wood, Bamboo, European fruit-trees Tea-plant--_Rhododendron_--_Mickelia_ Rapid disappearance of dead trees in the forests Trees with natural buttresses Flowering Trees.--Coral tree The Murutu--Imbul--Cotton tree--Champac The Upas Tree--Poisons of Ceylon The Banyan The Sacred Bo-tree The India Rubber-tree--The Snake-tree Kumbuk-tree: lime in its bark Curious Seeds.--The Dorian, _Sterculia foetida_ The Sea Pomegranate Strychnos, curious belief as to its poison _Euphorbia_--The Cow-tree, error regarding (note) Climbing plants, Epiphytes, and flowering creepers Orchids--Brilliant terrestrial orchid, the Wanna-raja.--Square-stemmed Vine Gigantic climbing Plants Enormous bean Bonduc seeds.--Ratans--Ratan bridges Thorny Trees.--Raised as a natural fortification by the Kandyans The buffalo thorn, _Acacia tomentosa_ Palms Coco-nut--Talipat Palmyra Jaggery Palm--Arcea Palm Betel-chewing, its theory and uses Pingos Timber Trees Jakwood--Del--Teak Suria Cabinet Woods.--Satin-wood--Ebony--Cadooberia Calamander, its rarity and beauty Tamarind Fruit-trees Remarkable power of trees to generate cold and keep their fruit chill Aquatic Plants--Lotus, red and blue Desmanthus natans, an aquatic sensitive plant PART II. ZOOLOGY. CHAPTER I. MAMMALIA. Neglect of Zoology in Ceylon Monkeys Wanderoo Error regarding the _Silenus Veter_ (note) Presbytes Cephalopterus P. Ursinus in the Hills P. Thersites in the Wanny P. Priamus, Jaffna and Trincomalie No dead monkey ever found Loris Bats Flying fox Horse-shoe bat Carnivora.--Bears Their ferocity Singhalese belief in the efficacy of charms (note) Leopards Curious belief Anecdotes of leopards Palm-cat Civet Dogs Jackal The horn of the jackal Mungoos Its fights with serpents Theory of its antidote Squirrels Flying squirrel Tree rat Story of a rat and a snake Coffee rat Bandicoot Porcupine Pengolin _Ruminantia_.--The Gaur Oxen Humped cattle Encounter of a cow and a leopard Buffaloes Sporting buffaloes Peculiar structure of the hoof Deer Meminna Elephants Whales General view of the mammalia of Ceylon List of Ceylon mammalia Curious parasite of the bat (note) CHAP. II. BIRDS. Their numbers Songsters Hornbills, the "bird with two heads" Pea fowl Sea birds, their number I. _Accipitres_.--Eagles Falcons and hawks Owls--the devil bird II. _Passeres_.--Swallows Kingfishers--sunbirds Bul-bul--tailor bird--and weaver Crows, anecdotes of III. _Scansores_.--Parroquets IV. _Columbiæ_.--Pigeons V. _Gallinæ_.--Jungle-fowl VI. _Grallæ_.--Ibis, stork, &c. VII. _Anseres_.--Flamingoes Pelicans Game.--Partridges, &c.176 List of Ceylon birds List of birds peculiar to Ceylon CHAP. III. REPTILES. Lizards.--Iguana Kabragoya, barbarous custom in preparing the cobra-tel poison (note) The green calotes Chameleon Ceratophora Geckoes,--their power of reproducing limbs 185, Crocodiles Their power of burying themselves in the mud Tortoises--Curious parasite Land tortoises Edible turtle Huge Indian tortoises (note) Hawk's-bill turtle, barbarous mode of stripping it of the tortoise-shell Serpents.--Venomous species rare Cobra de capello Instance of land snakes found at sea Tame snakes (note) Singular tradition regarding the cobra de capello Uropeltidæ.--New species discovered in Ceylon Buddhist veneration for the cobra de capello Anecdotes of snakes The Python Water snakes Snake stones Analysis of one Cæcilia Large frogs Tree frogs List of Ceylon reptiles CHAP. IV. FISHES. Ichthyology of Ceylon, little known Fish for table, seir fish Sardines, poisonous? Sharks Saw-fish Fish of brilliant colours Curious fish described by Ælian (note) Fresh-water fish, little known,--not much eaten Fresh-water fish in Colombo Lake Immense profusion of fish in the rivers and lakes Their re-appearance after rain Mode of fishing in the ponds Showers of fish Conjecture that the ova are preserved, not tenable Fish moving on dry land Instances in Guiana (note) Perca Scandens, ascends trees Doubts as to the story of Daldorf Fishes burying themselves during the dry season The _protopterus_ of the Gambia Instances in the fish of the Nile Instances in the fish of South America Living fish dug out of the ground in the dry tanks in Ceylon Other animals that so bury themselves, Melaniæ, Ampullariæ, &c. The animals that so bury themselves in India (note) Analogous case of (note) Theory of æstivation and hybernation Fish in hot-water in Ceylon List of Ceylon fishes Instances of fishes failing from the clouds Overland migration of fishes known to the Greeks and Romans Note on Ceylon fishes by Professor Huxley Comparative note by Dr. Gray, Brit. Mus.231 CHAP. V. MOLLUSCA, RADIATA, AND ACALEPHÆ. I. Conchology--General character of Ceylon shells Confusion regarding them in scientific works and collections List of Ceylon shells II. _Radiata_.--Star fish Sea slugs Parasitic worms Planaria III. _Acalephæ_, abundant Corals little known CHAP. VI. INSECTS. Profusion of insects in Ceylon Imperfect knowledge of I. _Coleoptera_.--Beetles Scavenger beetles Coco-nut beetles Tortoise beetles II. _Orthoptera_.--Mantis and leaf-insects Stick-insects III. _Neuroptera_--Dragon flies Ant-lion White ants Anecdotes of their instinct and ravages (text and note) V. _Hymenoptera_.--Mason Wasps Wasps Bees Carpenter Bee Ants Burrowing ants VI. _Lepidoptera_.--Butterflies Sylph Lycænidæ Moths Silk worms (text and note) Wood-carrying Moths Pterophorus VII. _Homoptera_ Cicada VIII. _Hemiptera_ Bugs IX. _Aphaniptera_ X. _Diptera_.--Mosquitoes General character of Ceylon insects List of insects in Ceylon CHAP. VII. ARACHNIDE, MYRIOPODA, CRUSTACEA, ETC. Spiders Strange nests of the wood spiders _Olios Taprobanius_ _Mygale fasciata_ Ticks Mites.--_Trombidium tinctorum_ Myriapods.--Centipedes Cermatia Scolopendra crassa S. pollipes _Millipeds_--Iulus _Crustacea_ Calling crabs Land crabs Painted crabs Paddling crabs _Annelidæ_, Leeches.--The land leech Medical leech Cattle leech List of Articulata, &c.307 PART III. THE SINGHALESE CHRONICLES. CHAPTER I. SOURCES OF SINGHALESE HISTORY--THE MAHAWANSO. Ceylon formerly thought to have no authentic history Researches of Turnour Biographical sketch of Turnour (note) The Mahawanso Recovery of the "tika" on the Mahawanso Outline of the Mahawanso Turnour's epitome of Singhalese history Historical proofs of the Mahawanso Identity of Sandracottus and Chandragupta Ancient map of Ceylon (note) List of Ceylon sovereigns CHAP. II. THE ABORIGINES. Singhalese histories all illustrative of Buddhism A Buddha Gotama Buddha, his history Amazing prevalence of his religion (note) His three visits to Ceylon Inhabitants of the island at that time supposed to be of Malayan type Legend of their Chinese origin Probably identical with the aborigines of the Dekkan Common basis of their language Characteristics of vernacular Singhalese State of the aborigines before Wijayo's invasion Story of Wijayo The natives of Ceylon described as _Yakkos_ and _Nagas_ Traces of serpent-worship in Ceylon Coincidence of the Mahawanso with the Odyssey (note) CHAP. III. CONQUEST OF WIJAYO, B.C. 543.--ESTABLISHMENT OF BUDDHISM, B.C. 307. Early commerce of Ceylon described by the Chinese Wijayo as a colonizer His treatment of the native population B.C. 505. His death and successors A number of petty kingdoms formed Ceylon divided into three districts: Pihiti, Rohuna, and Maya The village system established Agriculture introduced Irrigation imported from India The first tank constructed, B.C. 504 (note) Rapid progress of the island Toleration of Wijayo and his followers Establishment of Buddhism, 307 B.C. Preaching of Mahindo Planting of the sacred Bo-tree CHAP. IV. THE BUDDHIST MONUMENTS. Buddhist architecture introduced in Ceylon The first _dagobas_ built Their mode of construction and vast dimensions The earliest Buddhist temples Images and statues a later innovation First residences of the priesthood The formation of monasteries and _wiharas_ The first wihara built Form of the modern wiharas Inconvenient numbers of the Buddhist priesthood Originally fed by the kings and the people Caste annulled in the case of priests The priestly robe and its peculiarities CHAP. V. SINGHALESE CHIVALRY.--ELALA AND DUTUGAIMUNU. Progress of civilisation The new settlers agriculturists Malabars enlisted as soldiers and seamen B.C. 237. The revolt of Sena and Gutika B.C. 205. Usurpation of Elala His character and renown The victory of Dutugaimunu Progress of the south of the island Building of the great Ruanwellé Dagoba Building of the Brazen Palace Its vicissitudes and ruins Death and character of Dutugaimunu CHAP. VI. THE INFLUENCES OP BUDDHISM ON CIVILISATION. The Mahawanse or Great Dynasty The Suluwanse or Inferior Dynasty Services rendered by the Great Dynasty Frequent usurpations and the cause Disputed successions Rising influence of the priesthood B.C. 104. Their first endowment with land Rapid increase of the temple estates Their possessions and their vow of poverty reconciled Acquire the compulsory labour of temple-tenants Impulse thus given to cultivation And to the construction of enormous tanks Tanks conferred on the temples The great tank of Minery formed, A.D. 272 Subserviency of the kings to the priesthood Large possessions of the temples at the present day Cultivation of flowers for the temples Their singular profusion Fruit trees planted by the Buddhist sovereigns Edicts of Asoca CHAP. VII. FATE OF THE ABORIGINES. Aborigines forced to labour for the new settlers Immensity of the structures erected by them Slow amalgamation of the natives with the strangers The worship of snakes and demons continued Treatment of the aborigines by the kings Their formal disqualification for high office Their rebellions They retire into the mountains and forests Their singular habits of seclusion Traces of their customs at the present day CHAP. VIII. EXTINCTION OF THE GREAT DYNASTY. B.C. 104 Walagam-bahu I His wars with the Malabars The South of Ceylon free from Malabar invasion The Buddhist doctrines first formed into books The formation of rock-temples Apostacy of Chora Naga Ceylon governed by queens Schisms in religion Buddhism tolerant of heresy but intolerant of schism Illustrations of Buddhist toleration Tolerance enjoined by Asoca The Wytulian heresy Corruption of Buddhism by the impurities of Brahnmanism A.D. 275. Recantation and repentance of King Maha Sen End of the Solar race State of Ceylon at that period Prosperity of the North Description of Anarajapoora in the fourth century Its municipal organisation Its palaces and temples Popular error as to the area of the city (note) Multitudes of the priesthood described by Fa Hian CHAP. IX KINGS OF THE LOWER DYNASTY. Sovereigns of the Lower Dynasty, a feeble race Kings who were sculptors, physicians, and poets Earliest notice of Foreign Embassies to Rome and to China Notices of Ceylon by Chinese Historians Fa Hian visits Ceylon A.D. 413 Anecdote related by Fa Hian (note) History of "the Sacred Tooth" Murder of the king Dhatu Sena, A.D. 459 Infamous conduct of his son The fortified rock Sigiri CHAP. X. DOMINATION OF THE MALABARS. Origin of the Malabar invaders of Ceylon The ancient Indian kingdom of Pandya Malabar mercenaries enlisted in Ceylon B.C. 237. Revolt of Sena and Gutika B.C. 205. Usurpation of Elala B.C. 103. Second Malabar invasion A.D. 110. Third Malabar invasion Jewish evidence of Malabar conquest (note)396 A.D. 433. Fourth Malabar invasion The influence of the Malabars firmly established Distress of the Singhalese in the 7th century, as described by Hiouen Thsang A.D. 642. Anarajapoora deserted, and Pollanarrua built The Malabars did nothing to improve the island A.D. 840. A fresh Malabar invasion The Singhalese seek to conciliate them by alliances A.D. 990. Another Malabar invasion Extreme misery of the island A.D. 1023. The Malabars seize Pollanarrua and occupy the entire north of the island CHAP. XI. THE REIGN OF PRAKRAMA BAHU. A.D. 1071. Recovery of the island from the Malabars Wijayo Bahu I. expels the Malabars Birth of the Prince Prakrama His character and renown Immense public works constructed by him Restores the order of the Buddhist priesthood Intercourse between Siam and Ceylon Temples and sacred edifices built by Prakrama The Gal-Wihara at Pollanarrua Ruins of Pollanarrua Extraordinary extent of his works for irrigation Foreign wars of Prakrama His conquests in India The death of Prakrama Bahu CHAP. XII. FATE OF THE SINGHALESE MONARCHY. ARRIVAL OF THE PORTUGUESE, A.D. 1505. Prakrama Baku, the last powerful king Anarchy follows on his decease A.D. 1197. The Queen Leela-Wattee A.D. 1211. Return of the Malabar invaders The Malabars establish themselves at Jaffna Early history of Jaffna A.D. 1235. The new capital at Dambedenia Extending ruin of Ceylon Kandy founded as a new capital Successive removals of the seat of Government to Yapahoo, Kornegalle, Gampola, Kandy, and Cotta Ascendancy of the Malabars A.D. 1410. The King of Ceylon carried captive to China Ceylon tributary to China Arrival of the Portuguese in Ceylon PART IV. SCIENCES AND SOCIAL ARTS. CHAPTER I. POPULATION, CASTE, SLAVERY, AND RAJA-KARIYA. Population encouraged by the fertility of Ceylon Evidence of its former extent in the ruins of the tanks and canals Means by which the population was preserved Causes of its dispersion--the ruin of the tanks Domestic life similar to that of the Hindus Respect shown to females Caste perpetuated in defiance of religious prohibition Particulars in which caste in Ceylon differs from caste in India Slavery, borrowed from Hindustan Compulsory labour or Raja-kariya Mode of enforcing it CHAP. II. AGRICULTURE, IRRIGATION, CATTLE, AND CROPS. Agriculture unknown before the arrival of Wijayo Rice was imported into Ceylon in the second century B.C. The practice of irrigation due to the Hindu kings Who taught the science of irrigation to the Singhalese (note) The first tank constructed B.C. 504 Gardens and fruit-trees first planted Value of artificial irrigation in the north of Ceylon In the south of the island the rains sustain cultivation Two harvests in the year in the south of the island In the north, where rains are uncertain, tanks indispensable Irrigation the occupation of kings The municipal village-system of cultivation "_Assoedamising_" of rice lands in the mountains Temple villages and their tenure Farm-stock buffaloes and cows A Singhalese garden described Coco-nut palm rarely mentioned in early writings Doubt whether it be indigenous to Ceylon The Mango and other fruits Rice and curry mentioned in the second century B.C. Animal food used by the early Singhalese Betel, antiquity of the custom of chewing it Intoxicating liquors known at an early period CHAP. III. EARLY COMMERCE, SHIPPING, AND PRODUCTIONS. Trade entirely in the hands of strangers Native shipping unconnected with commerce Same indifference to trade prevails at this day Singhalese boats all copied from foreign models All sewn together and without iron Romance of the "Loadstone Island" The legend believed by Greeks and the Chinese Vessels with two prows mentioned by Strabo Foreign trade spoken of B.C. 204 Internal traffic in the ancient city of Ceylon Merchants traversing the island Early exports from Ceylon,--gems, pearls, &c. The imports, chiefly manufactures Horses and carriages imported from India Cloth, silk, &c., brought from Persia Kashmir, intercourse with Edrisi's account of Ceylon trade in the twelfth century CHAP. IV. MANUFACTURES. Silk not produced in Ceylon Coir and cordage Dress; unshaped robes Manual and Mechanical Arts--Weaving Priest's robes spun, woven, and dyed in a day Peculiar mode of cutting out a priest's robe Bleaching and dyeing Earliest artisans, immigrants Handicrafts looked down on Pottery Glass Glass mirrors Leather Wood carving Chemical Arts--Sugar Mineral paints CHAP. V. WORKING IN METALS. Early knowledge of the use of iron Steel Copper and its uses Bells, bronze, lead Gold and silver Plate and silver ware Red coral found at Galle (note) Jewelry and mounted gems Gilding.--Coin Coins mentioned in the Mahawanso Meaning of the term "massa" (note) Coins of Lokiswaira General device of Singhalese coins Indian coinage of Prakrama Bahu Fish-hook money CHAP. VI. ENGINEERING. Engineering taught by the Brahmans Rude methods of labour Military engineering unknown Early attempts at fortification Fortified rock of Sigiri Forests, their real security Thorns planted as defences Bridges and ferries Method of tying cut stone in forming tanks Tank sluices Defective construction of these reservoirs The art of engineering lost The "Giants' Tank" a failure An aqueduct formed, A.D. 66 CHAP. VII. THE FINE ARTS. Music, its early cultivation Harsh character of Singhalese music Tom-toms, their variety and antiquity Singhalese gamut Painting.--Imagination discouraged Similarity of Singhalese to Egyptian art Rigid rules for religious design Similar trammels on art in Modern Greece (note) And in Italy in the 15th century (n.) Celebrated Singhalese painters Sculpture.--Statues of Buddha Built statues Painted statues Statues formed of gems Ivory and sandal-wood carved Architecture, its ruins exclusively religious Domestic architecture mean at all times Stone quarried by wedges Immense slabs thus prepared Columns at Anarajapoora Materials for building Mode of constructing a dagoba Enormous dimensions of these structures Monasteries and wiharas Palaces Carvings in stone Ubiquity of the honours shown to goose Delicate outline of Singhalese carvings Temples and their decorations Cave temples of Ceylon The Alu-wihara Moulding in plaster Claim of the Singhalese to the invention of oil painting Lacquer ware of the present day Honey-suckle ornament CHAP. VIII. SOCIAL LIFE. Ancient cities and their organisation Public buildings, hospitals, shops Anarajapoora, as it appeared in 7th century The description of it by Fa Hian Carriages and Horses Horses imported from Persia Furniture of the houses Form of Government.--Revenue The Army and Navy Mode of recruiting Arms.--Bows Singular mode of drawing the bow with the foot (note) Civil Justice CHAP. IX. SCIENCES. Education and schools Logic Astronomy and astrology Medicine and surgery King Buddha-dasa a physician Botany Geometry Lightning conductors Notice of a remarkable passage in the Mahawanso CHAP. X. SINGHALESE LITERATURE. The Pali language The temples the depositaries of learning Historiographers employed by the kings Ola books, how prepared A stile, and the mode of writing Books on plates of metal (note) Differences between Elu and Singhalese Pali works Grammar Hardy's list of Singhalese books (note) Pali books all written in verse The _Pittakas_ The _Jatakas_--resemble the Talmud Pali literature generally The _Milinda-prasna_ Pali historical books and their character The _Mahawanso_ Scriptural coincidences in Pali books (note) Sanskrit works: Principally on science and medicine Elu and Singhalese works: Low tone of the popular literature Chiefly ballads and metrical essays Exempt from licentiousness Sacred poems in honour of Hindu gods General literature of the people CHAP. XI. BUDDHISM AND DEMON-WORSHIP. Buddhism as it exists in Ceylon Which was the more ancient, Brahmanism or Buddhism Various authorities (note) Buddhism, its extreme antiquity Its prodigious influence Sought to be identified with the Druids (note) Buddhism an agent of civilisation Its features in Ceylon The various forms elsewhere Points that distinguish it from Brahmanism Buddhist theory of human perfection Its treatment of caste Its respect for other religions Anecdote, illustrative of (note) Its cosmogony Its doctrine of "necessity" Transmigration Illustration from Lucan (note) The priesthood and its attributes Buddhist morals Prohibition to take life Form of worship Brahmanical corruptions Failure of Buddhism as a sustaining faith Its moral influence over the people Demon-worship Trees dedicated to demons (note) Devil priests and their orgies Ascendency of these superstitions Buddhism as an obstacle to Christianity Difficulties presented by the morals of Buddhism Prohibition against taking away life (note) PART V. MEDIÆVAL HISTORY. CHAPTER I. CEYLON AS KNOWN TO THE GREEKS AND ROMANS. First heard of by the companions of Alexander the Great Various ancient names of Ceylon (note) Early doubts whether it was an island or a continent Mentioned by Aristotle Alleged mention of Ceylon in the Samaritan Pentateuch (note) Onesicritus's account Megasthenes' description Ælian's account borrowed from Megasthenes (note) Ceylon known to the Phoenicians and to the Egyptians (note) Hippalus discovers the monsoons Effect of this discovery on Indian trade Pliny's account of Ceylon Story of Jambulus by Diodoros Siculus (note) Embassy from Ceylon to Claudius Narrative of Rachias, and its explanation (note) Lake Megisba, a tank Early intercourse with China The Veddahs described by Pliny Interval between Pliny and Ptolemy Ptolemy's account of Ceylon Explanation of his errors Ptolemy discriminates bays from estuaries (note) v9 Identification of Ptolemy's names His map His sources of information Agathemerus, Marcianus of Heraclea Cosmas Indicopleustes Palladius--St. Ambrosius (note) State of Ceylon when Cosmas wrote Its commerce at that period In the hands of Arabs and Persians v4 Ceylon as described by Cosmas Story of his informant Sopater Translation of Cosmas The gems and other productions of Ceylon--"a gaou" (note) Meaning of the term "Hyacinth" (note) The great ruby of Ceylon, its history traced (note) Cosmas corroborated by the Peripius Horses imported from Persia Export of elephants Note on Sanchoniathon CHAP. II. INDIAN, ARABIAN, AND PERSIAN AUTHORITIES. Absurd errors of the Hindus regarding Ceylon Their dread of Ceylon as the abode of demons Rise of the Mahometan power Persians and Arabs trade to India Story in Beladory of the first invasion of India by the Mahometans (text and note) Character of the Arabian geographers Their superiority over the Greeks Greek Paradoxical literature A.D. 851. The two Mahometans Their account of Ceylon Adam's Peak Obsequies of a king Councils on religion and history Toleration Carmathic monument at Colombo (note) Galle, the seat of ancient trade Claim of Mantotte disproved Greek fire (note) "_Kalah_" is Galle The Maharaja of Zabedj help possession of Galle Evidence of this in the Garsharsp-Namah Derivation of "Galle" (text and note) Aversion of the Singhalese to commerce Identification of the modern Veddahs with the ancient Singhalese Their singular habits, as described by Robert Knox, Ribeyro, and Valentyn By Albyrouni By Palladius By Fa Hian By the Chinese writers (note) By Pliny For this reason the coast only known to strangers Arabian authors who describe Ceylon Albateny and Massoudi Tabari (note) Sinbad the Sailor Edrisi Kazwini Cinnamon, no mention of Was cinnamon a native of Ceylon? No mention by Singhalese authors No mention of by Latin writers The _Regio Cinnamomifera_ was in Africa (note) No mention by Arabs or Persians First noticed in Ceylon by Ibn Batuta By Nicola di Conti (note) Ibn Batuta describes Ceylon His Travels CHAP. III. CEYLON AS KNOWN TO THE CHINESE. Early Chinese trade with Ceylon Early Chinese travellers in India Chinese translations of M.S. Julien List of Chinese authors relating to Ceylon (note) Their errors as to its form and site Their account of Adam's Peak and its gems Chinese names for Ceylon Curious habit of its traders They describe the two races, Tamils and Singhalese Origin of the cotton "Comboy" Costume of Ceylon Early commerce Works for irrigation noticed Island of Junk-Ceylon Galle resorted to by Chinese ships Vegetable productions Elephants, ivory, and jewels Skill of Singhalese goldsmiths and statuaries Pearls and gems sent to China No mention of cinnamon Chinese account of Buddhism in Ceylon Monasteries for priests first founded in Ceylon Cities of Ceylon in the sixth century Patriotism of Singhalese kings Domestic manners of the Singhalese Embassies from China to Ceylon Chinese travels prior to the sixth century Fa Hian's travels in sixth century First embassy from Ceylon to China, A.D. 405 Narrative of the image which it bore (note) Ceylon tributary to China in sixth century Hiouen-Thsang describes Ceylon in the seventh century (note) Events in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries King of Ceylon carried captive to China, A.D. 1405 Last embassy to China, A.D. 1459 Traces of the Chinese in Ceylon Evidences of their presence found by the Portuguese Modern Chinese account of Ceylon (note) CHAP. IV. CEYLON AS KNOWN TO THE MOORS, GENOESE, AND VENETIANS. The Moors of Ceylon Their origin The early Mahometans in India Arabians anciently settled in Ceylon Real descent of the modern "Moormen" Their occupation as traders, ancestral Their hostilities with the Portuguese They might have been rulers of Ceylon Indian trade prior to the route by the Cape The Genoese and Venetians in the East Rise of the Mongol empire Marco Polo, A.D. 1271 Visits Ceylon Friar Odoric, A.D. 1318 Jordan de Severac, A.D. 1323 (note) Giov. de Marignola, A.D. 1349 (note) Nicola di Conti, A.D. 1444 The first traveller who speaks of Cinnamon Jerome de Santo Stefano (note) Ludov. Barthema, A.D. 1506 Odoardo Barbosa, A.D. 1509 Andrea Corsali, A.D. 1515 (note) Cesar Frederic, A.D. 1563 Course of trade changed by the Cape route Irritation of the Venetians ILLUSTRATIONS IN THE FIRST VOLUME MAPS. "Gobbs" on the East Coast By ARROWSMITH "Gobbs" on the "West Coast ARROWSMITH Ceylon, according to the Sanskrit and Pali authors SIR J. EMERSON TENNENT Map of Ancient India LASSEN Position of Colombo, according to Ptolemy and Pliny SIR J. EMERSON TENNENT Ceylon, according to Ptolemy and Pliny SIR J. EMERSON TENNENT PLANS AND CHARTS. Geological System By Currents in the N.E. Monsoon Currents in the N.W. Monsoon Diagram of Rain in India and in Ceylon DR. TEMPLETON Diagram of the Anthelia DR. TEMPLETON Plan of a Fish-corral Summit of a Dagoba, with Lightning apparatus WOOD ENGRAVINGS. Marriage of the Fig-tree and the Palm By MR. A. NICHOLL Fig-tree on the Ruins of Pollanarrua MR. A. NICHOLL The "Snake-tree" MR. A. NICHOLL The _Loris_ M.H. SYLVAT The _Uropeltis grandis_ M.H. SYLVAT A _Chironectes_ M.H. SYLVAT Method of Fishing in Pools From KNOX The _Anabas_ of the dry Tanks By DR. TEMPLETON Eggs of the Leaf Insect M.H. SYLVAT _Cermatia_ DR. TEMPLETON The Calling Crab Eyes and Teeth of the Land Leech DR. TEMPLETON Land Leeches DR. TEMPLETON Upper and under Surfaces of the _Hirudo sanguisorba_ DR. TEMPLETON The Bo-tree at Anarajapoora MR. A. NICHOLL A Dagoba at Kandy From a Photograph Ruins of the Brazen Palace By MR. A. NICHOLL The Alu Wihara MR. A. NICHOLL The fortified Rock of Sigiri MR. A. NICHOLS Coin of Queen Leela-Wattee Coin showing the _Trisula_ Hook-money Ancient and Modern Tom-tom Beaters From the JOINVILLE MSS. A Column from Anarajapoora Sacred Goose from the Burmese Standard Hansa, from the old Palace at Kandy Honeysuckle Ornament From FERGUSSON'S _Handbook of Architecture_ Egyptian Yoke and Singhalese Pingo Veddah drawing the Bow with his Foot By MR. R. MACDOWALL Method of Writing with a Style MR. R. MACDOWALL The "Comboy," as worn by both Sexes MR. A. FAIRFIELD NOTICE TO THE FOURTH EDITION. The gratifying reception with which the following pages have been honoured by the public and the press, has in no degree lessened my consciousness, that in a work so extended in its scope, and comprehending such a multiplicity of facts, errors are nearly unavoidable both as to conclusions and detail. These, so far as I became aware of them, I have endeavoured to correct in the present, as well as in previous impressions. But my principal reliance for the suggestion and supply both of amendments and omissions has been on the press and the public of Ceylon; whose familiarity with the topics discussed naturally renders them the most competent judges as to the mode in which they have been treated. My hope when the book was published in October last was, that before going again to press I should be in possession of such friendly communications and criticisms from the island, as would have enabled me to render the second edition much more valuable than the previous one. In this expectation I have been agreeably disappointed, the sale having been so rapid, as to require a fourth impression before it was possible to obtain from Ceylon judicious criticisms on the first. These in due time will doubtless arrive; and meanwhile, I have endeavoured, by careful revision, to render the whole as far as possible correct. J. EMERSON TENNENT. NOTICE TO THE THIRD EDITION. The call for a third edition on the same day that the second was announced for publication, and within less than two months from the appearance of the first, has furnished a gratifying assurance of the interest which the public are disposed to take in the subject of the present work. Thus encouraged, I have felt it my duty to make several alterations in the present impression, amongst the most important of which is the insertion of a Chapter on the doctrines of Buddhism as it developes itself in Ceylon.[1] In the historical sections I had already given an account of its introduction by Mahindo, and of the establishments founded by successive sovereigns for its preservation and diffusion. To render the narrative complete, it was felt desirable to insert an abstract of the peculiar tenets of the Buddhists; and this want it has been my object to supply. The sketch, it will be borne in mind, is confined to the principal features of what has been denominated "_Southern Buddhism_" amongst the Singhalese; as distinguished from "_Northern Buddhism_" in Nepal, Thibet, and China.[2] The latter has been largely illustrated by the labours of Mr. B.H. HODGSON and the toilsome researches of M. CSOMA of Körrös in Transylvania; and the minutest details of the doctrines and ceremonies of the former have been unfolded in the elaborate and comprehensive collections of Mr. SPENCE HARDY.[3] From materials discovered by these and other earnest inquirers, Buddhism in its general aspect has been ably delineated in the dissertations of BURNOUF[4] and SAINT HILAIRE[5], and in the commentaries of REMUSAT[6], STANISLAS JULIEN[7], FOUCAUX[8], LASSEN[9], and WEBER.[10] The portion thus added to the present edition has been to a great extent taken from a former work of mine on the local superstitions of Ceylon, and the "_Introduction and Progress of Christianity_" there; and as the section relating to Buddhism had the advantage, previous to publication, of being submitted to the Rev. Mr. GOGERLY, the most accomplished Pali scholar, as well as the most erudite student of Buddhistical literature in the island, I submit it with confidence as an accurate summary of the distinctive views of the Singhalese on the leading doctrines of their national faith. [Footnote 1: See Part IV., c. xi.] [Footnote 2: MAX MÜLLER; _History of Sanskrit Literature_, p. 202.] [Footnote 3: _Eastern Monachism_, an account of the origin, laws; discipline, sacred writings, mysterious rites, religious ceremonies, and present circumstances of the Order of Mendicants, founded by Gotoma Budha. 8vo. Lond. 1850; and _A Manual of Buddhism in its Modern Development_. 8vo. Lond. 1853.] [Footnote 4: BURNOUF, _Introduction à l'Histoire du Bouddhieme Indien_. 4to. Paris. 1845; and translation of the _Lotus de la bonne Loi_.] [Footnote 5: J. BARTHELEMY SAINT-HILAIRE _Le Bouddha et sa Religion_. 8vo. Paris. 1800.] [Footnote 6: Introduction and Notes to the _Fo[)e] Kou[)e] Ki_ of FA HIAN.] [Footnote 7: Life and travels of HIOUEN THSANG.] [Footnote 8: Translation of _Lalitavistára_ by M. PH. ED. FOUCAUX.] [Footnote 9: Author of the _Indische Alterthumskunde;_ &c.] [Footnote 10: Author of the _Indische Studien_; &c.] A writer in the _Saturday Review_[1], in alluding to the passage in which I have sought to establish the identity of the ancient Tarshish with the modern Point de Galle[2], admits the force of the coincidence adduced, that the Hebrew terms for "ivory, apes, and peacocks"[3] (the articles imported in the ships of Solomon) are identical with the Tamil names, by which these objects are known in Ceylon to the present day; and, to strengthen my argument on this point, he adds that, "these terms were so entirely foreign and alien from the common Hebrew language as to have driven the Ptolemaist authors of the Septuagint version into a blunder, by which the ivory, apes, and peacocks come out as '_hewn and carven stones_.'" The circumstance adverted to had not escaped my notice; but I forebore to avail myself of it; for, although the fact is accurately stated by the reviewer, so far as regards the Vatican MS., in which the translators have slurred over the passage and converted "_ibha, kapi_, and _tukeyim_" into [Greek: "lithôn toreutôn kai pelekêtôn"] (literally, "stones hammered and carved in relief"); still, in the other great MS. of the Septuagint, the _Codex Alexandrinus_, which is of equal antiquity, the passage is correctly rendered by "[Greek: odontôn elephantinôn kai pithêkôn kai taônôn]." The editor of the Aldine edition[4] compromised the matter by inserting "the ivory and apes," and excluding the "peacocks," in order to introduce the Vatican reading of "stones."[5] I have not compared the Complutensian and other later versions. [Footnote 1: Novemb. 19, 1859, p. 612.] [Footnote 2: _See_ Vol. II. Pt. VII., c. i. p. 102.] [Footnote 3: 1 _Kings_, x. 22.] [Footnote 4: Venice, 1518.] [Footnote 5: [Greek: Kai odontôn elephantinôn kai pithêkôn kai lithôn]. [Greek: BASIA TRITÊ]. x. 22. It is to be observed, that Josephus appears to have been equally embarrassed by the unfamiliar term _tukeyim_ for peacocks. He alludes to the voyages of Solomon's merchantmen to Tarshish, and says that they brought hack from thence gold and silver, _much_ ivory, apes, _and Æthiopians_--thus substituting "slaves" for pea-fowl--"[Greek: kai polus elephas, Aithiopes te kai pithêkoi]." Josephus also renders the word Tarshish by "[Greek: en tê Tarsikê legomenê thalattê]," an expression which shows that he thought not of the Indian but the western Tarshish, situated in what Avienus calls the _Fretum Tartessium_, whence African slaves might have been expected to come.--_Antiquit. Judaicæ_, l. viii. c. vii sec. 2.] The Rev. Mr. CURETON, of the British Museum, who, at my request, collated the passage in the Chaldee and Syriac versions, assures me that in both, the terms in question bear the closest resemblance to the Tamil words found in the Hebrew; and that in each and all of them these are of foreign importation. J. EMERSON TENNENT. LONDON: November 28th, 1859. NOTICE TO THE SECOND EDITION. The rapidity with which the first impression has been absorbed by the public, has so shortened the interval between its appearance and that of the present edition, that no sufficient time has been allowed for the discovery of errors or defects; and the work is re-issued almost as a corrected reprint. In the interim, however, I have ascertained, that Ribeyro's "Historical Account of Ceylon," which it was heretofore supposed had never appeared in any other than the French version of the Abbe Le Grand, and in the English translation of the latter by Mr. Lee[1], was some years since printed for the first time in the original Portuguese, from the identical MS. presented by the author to Pedro II. in 1685. It was published in 1836 by the Academia Real das Sciencias of Lisbon, under the title of "_Fatalidade Historica da Ilka de Ceilão_;" and forms the Vth volume of the a "_Colleção de Noticias para a Historia e Geograjia das Nações Ultramarinas_" A fac-simile from a curious map of the island as it was then known to the Portuguese, has been included in the present edition.[2] [Footnote 1: See Vol. II. Part vi. ch. i. p.5, note.] [Footnote 2: Ibid. p. 6.] Some difficulty having been expressed to me, in identifying the ancient names of places in India adverted to in the following pages; and mediæval charts of that country being rare, a map has been inserted in the present edition[1], to supply the want complained of. [Footnote 1: See Vol. I. p. 330.] The only other important change has been a considerable addition to the Index, which was felt to be essential for facilitating reference. J E.T. INTRODUCTION. There is no island in the world, Great Britain itself not excepted, that has attracted the attention of authors in so many distant ages and so many different countries as Ceylon. There is no nation in ancient or modern times possessed of a language and a literature, the writers of which have not at some time made it their theme. Its aspect, its religion, its antiquities, and productions, have been described as well by the classic Greeks, as by those of the Lower Empire; by the Romans; by the writers of China, Burmah, India, and Kashmir; by the geographers of Arabia and Persia; by the mediæval voyagers of Italy and France; by the annalists of Portugal and Spain; by the merchant adventurers of Holland, and by the travellers and topographers of Great Britain. But amidst this wealth of materials as to the island, and its vicissitudes in early times, there is an absolute dearth of information regarding its state and progress during more recent periods, and its actual condition at the present day. I was made sensible of this want, on the occasion of my nomination, in 1845, to an office in connection with the government of Ceylon. I found abundant details as to the capture of the maritime provinces from the Dutch in 1795, in the narrative of Captain PERCIVAL[1], an officer who had served in the expedition; and the efforts to organise the first system of administration are amply described by CORDINER[2], Chaplain to the Forces; by Lord VALENTIA[3], who was then travelling in the East; and by ANTHONY BERTOLACCI[4], who acted as auditor-general to the first governor, Mr. North, afterwards Earl of Guilford. The story of the capture of Kandy in 1815 has been related by an anonymous eye-witness under the pseudonyme of PHILALETHES[5], and by MARSHALL in his _Historical Sketch_ of the conquest.[6] An admirable description of the interior of the island, as it presented itself some forty years ago, was furnished by Dr. DAVY[7], a brother of the eminent philosopher, who was employed on the medical staff in Ceylon, from 1816 till 1820. [Footnote 1: _An Account of the Island of Ceylon_, &c., by Capt. R. PERCIVAL, 4to. London, 1805.] [Footnote 2: _A Description of Ceylon_, &c., by the Rev. JAMES CORDINER, A.M. 2 vols. 4to. London, 1807.] [Footnote 3: _Voyages and Travels to India, Ceylon, and the Red Sea_, by Lord Viscount VALENTIA. 3 vols. 4to. London, 1809.] [Footnote 4: _A View of the Agricultural, Commercial, and Financial Interests of Ceylon_, &c., by A. BERTOLACCI, Esq. London, 1817.] [Footnote 5: _A History of Ceylon from the earliest Period to the Year_ MDCCCXV, by PHILALETHES, A.M. 4to. Lond. 1817. The author is believed to have been the Rev. G. Bisset.] [Footnote 6: HENRY MARSHALL, F.R.S.E., &c. went to Ceylon as assistant surgeon of the 89th regiment, in 1806, and from 1816 till 1821 was the senior medical officer of the Kandyan provinces.] [Footnote 7: _An Account of the Interior of Ceylon_, &c., by JOHN DAVY, M.D. 4to, London, 1821.] Here the long series of writers is broken, just at the commencement of a period the most important and interesting in the history of the island. The mountain zone, which for centuries had been mysteriously hidden from the Portuguese and Dutch[1] was suddenly opened to British enterprise in 1815. The lofty region, from behind whose barrier of hills the kings of Kandy had looked down and defied the arms of three successive European nations, was at last rendered accessible by the grandest mountain road in India; and in the north of the island, the ruins of ancient cities, and the stupendous monuments of an early civilisation, were discovered in the solitudes of the great central forests. English merchants embarked in the renowned trade in cinnamon, which we had wrested from the Dutch; and British capitalists introduced the cultivation of coffee into the previously inaccessible highlands. Changes of equal magnitude contributed to alter the social position of the natives; domestic slavery was extinguished; compulsory labour, previously exacted from the free races, was abolished; and new laws under a charter of justice superseded the arbitrary rule of the native chiefs. In the course of less than half a century, the aspect of the country became changed, the condition of the people was submitted to new influences; and the time arrived to note the effects of this civil revolution. [Footnote 1: VALENTYN, In his great work on the Dutch possessions in India, _Oud_ _en Nieuw Oost-Indien_, alludes more than once with regret to the ignorance in which his countrymen were kept as to the interior of Ceylon, concerning which their only information was obtained through fugitives and spies. (Vol. v. ch. ii. p. 35; ch. xv. p. 205.)] But on searching for books such as I expected to find, recording the phenomena consequent on these domestic and political events, I was disappointed to discover that they were few in number and generally meagre in information. Major FORBES, who in 1826 and for some years afterwards held a civil appointment in the Kandyan country, published an interesting account of his observations[1]; and his work derives value from the attention which the author had paid to the ancient records of the island, whose contents were then undergoing investigation by the erudite and indefatigable TURNOUR.[2] [Footnote 1: _Eleven Years in Ceylon_, &c., by Major FORBES. 2 vols. 8vo. London. 1840.] [Footnote 2: See Vol. I. Part III. ch. iii. p. 312.] In 1843 Mr. BENNETT, a retired civil servant of the colony, who had studied some branches of its natural history, and especially its ichthyology, embodied his experiences in a volume entitled "_Ceylon and its Capabilities_," containing a mass of information, somewhat defective in arrangement. These and a number of minor publications, chiefly descriptive of sporting tours in search of elephants and deer, with incidental notices of the sublime scenery and majestic ruins of the island, were the only modern works that treated of Ceylon; but no one of them sufficed to furnish a connected view of the colony at the present day, contrasting its former state with the condition to which it has attained under the government of Great Britain. On arriving in Ceylon and entering on my official functions, this absence of local knowledge entailed frequent inconvenience. In my tours throughout the interior, I found ancient monuments, apparently defying decay, of which no one could tell the date or the founder; and temples and cities in ruins, whose destroyers were equally unknown. There were vast structures of public utility, on which the prosperity of the country had at one time been dependent; artificial lakes, with their conduits and canals for irrigation; the condition of which rendered it interesting to ascertain the period of their formation, and the causes of their abandonment; but to every inquiry of this nature, there was the same unvarying reply: that information regarding them might possibly be found in the _Mahawanso_ or in some other of the native chronicles; but that few had ever read them, and none had succeeded in reproducing them for popular instruction. A still more serious embarrassment arose from the want of authorities to throw light on questions that were sometimes the subject of administrative deliberation: there were native customs which no available materials sufficed to illustrate; and native claims, often serious in their importance, the consideration of which was obstructed by a similar dearth of authentic data. With a view to executive measures, I was frequently desirous of consulting the records of the two European governments, under which the island had been administered for 300 years before the arrival of the British; their experience might have served as a guide, and even their failures would have pointed out errors to be avoided; but here, again, I had to encounter disappointment: in answer to my inquiries, I was assured that _the records, both of the Portuguese and Dutch, had long since disappeared from the archives of the colony_. Their loss, whilst in our custody, is the more remarkable, considering the value which was attached to them by our predecessors. The Dutch, on the conquest of Ceylon in the seventeenth century, seized the official accounts and papers of the Portuguese; and a memoir is preserved by VALENTYN, in which the Governor, Van Goens, on handing over the command to his successor in 1663, enjoins on him the study of these important documents, and expresses anxiety for their careful preservation.[1] [Footnote 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] [Footnote 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.] [Footnote 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. [Footnote 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. [Footnote 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] [Footnote 1: It may seem presumptuous in me to question the accuracy of Dr. DAVY'S opinion on this point (see his _Account of the Interior of Ceylon, &c_., ch. iii. p. 78), but the grounds on which I venture to do so are stated, Vol. I. pp. 7, 27, 160, 178, 208, &c.] Thus for almost every particular and fact, whether physical or historical, I have been to a great extent thrown on my own researches; and obliged to seek for information in original sources, and in French and English versions of Oriental authorities. The results of my investigations are embodied in the following pages; and it only remains for me to express, in terms however inadequate, my obligations to the literary and scientific friends by whose aid I have been enabled to pursue my inquiries. Amongst these my first acknowledgments are due to Dr. TEMPLETON, of the Army Medical Staff, for his cordial assistance in numerous departments; but above all in relation to the physical geography and natural history of the island. Here his scientific knowledge, successfully cultivated during a residence of nearly twelve years in Ceylon, and his intimate familiarity with its zoology and productions, rendered his co-operation invaluable;--and these sections abound with evidences of the liberal extent to which his stores of information have been generously imparted. To him and to Dr. CAMERON, of the Army Medical Staff, I am indebted for many valuable facts and observations on tropical health and disease, embodied in the chapter on "_Climate_." Sir RODERICK I. MURCHISON (without committing himself as to the controversial portions of the chapter on the _Geology_ and _Mineralogy_ of Ceylon) has done me the favour to offer some valuable suggestions, and to express his opinion as to the general accuracy of the whole. Although a feature so characteristic as that of its _Vegetation_ could not possibly be omitted in a work professing to give an account of Ceylon, I had neither the space nor the qualifications necessary to produce a systematic sketch of the Botany of the island. I could only attempt to describe it as it exhibits itself to an unscientific spectator; and the notices that I have given are confined to such of the more remarkable plants as cannot fail to arrest the attention of a stranger. In illustration of these, I have had the advantage of copious communications from WILLIAM FERGUSON, Esq., a gentleman attached to the Survey Department of the Civil Service in Ceylon, whose opportunities for observation in all parts of the island have enabled him to cultivate with signal success his taste for botanical pursuits. And I have been permitted to submit the portion of my work which refers to this subject to the revision of the highest living authority on Indian botany, Dr. J.D. HOOKER, of Kew. Regarding the _fauna_ of Ceylon, little has been published in any collective form, with the exception of a volume by Dr. KELAART entitled _Prodromus Faunæ Zeilanicæ_; several valuable papers by Mr. EDGAR L. LAYARD in the _Annals and Magazine of Natural History_ for 1852 and 1853; and some very imperfect lists appended to PRIDHAM'S compiled account of the island.[1] KNOX, in the charming narrative of his captivity, published in the reign of Charles II., has devoted a chapter to the animals of Ceylon, and Dr. DAVY has described the principal reptiles: but with these exceptions the subject is almost untouched in works relating to the colony. Yet a more than ordinary interest attaches to the inquiry, since Ceylon, instead of presenting, as is generally assumed, an identity between its _fauna_ and that of Southern India, exhibits a remarkable diversity of type, taken in connection with the limited area over which they are distributed. The island, in fact, may be regarded as the centre of a geographical circle, possessing within itself forms, whose allied species radiate far into the temperate regions of the north, as well as into Africa, Australia, and the isles of the Eastern Archipelago. [Footnote 1: _An Historical Political, and Statistical Account of Ceylon and its Dependencies_, by C. PRIDHAM, Esq. 2 vols. 8vo. London, 1849. The author was never, I believe, in Ceylon, but his book is a laborious condensation of the principal English works relating to it. Its value would have been greatly increased had Mr. Pridham accompanied his excerpts by references to the respective authorities.] In the chapters that I have devoted to its elucidation, I have endeavoured to interest others in the subject, by describing my own observations and impressions, with fidelity, and with as much accuracy as may be expected from a person possessing, as I do, no greater knowledge of zoology and the other physical sciences than is ordinarily possessed by any educated gentleman. It was my good fortune, however, in my journies to have the companionship of friends familiar with many branches of natural science: the late Dr. GARDNER, Mr. EDGAR L. LAYARD, an accomplished zoologist, Dr. TEMPLETON, and others; and I was thus enabled to collect on the spot many interesting facts relative to the structure and habits of the numerous tribes of animals. These, chastened by the corrections of my fellow-travellers, and established by the examination of collections made in the colony, and by subsequent comparison with specimens contained in museums at home, I have ventured to submit as faithful outlines of the _fauna_ of Ceylon. The sections descriptive of the several classes are accompanied by lists, prepared with the assistance of scientific friends, showing the extent to which each particular branch had been investigated by naturalists, up to the period of my departure from Ceylon at the close of 1849. These, besides their inherent interest, will, I trust, stimulate others to engage in the same pursuits, by exhibiting the chasms, which it still remains for future industry and research to fill up;--and the study of the zoology of Ceylon may thus serve as a preparative for that of Continental India, embracing, as the former does, much that is common to both, as well as possessing within itself a fauna peculiar to the island, that will amply repay more extended scrutiny. From these lists have been excluded all species regarding the authenticity of which reasonable doubts could be entertained[1], and of some of them, a very few have been printed in _italics_, in order to denote the desirability of comparing them more minutely with well determined specimens in the great national depositories before finally incorporating them with the Singhalese catalogues. [Footnote 1: An exception occurs in the list of shells, prepared by Mr. SYLVANUS HANLEY, in which some whose localities are doubtful have been admitted for reasons adduced. (See Vol. I, p. 234.)] In the labour of collecting and verifying the facts embodied in these sections, I cannot too warmly express my thanks for the aid I have received from gentlemen interested in similar pursuits in Ceylon: from Dr. KELAART and Mr. EDGAR L. LAYARD, as well as from officers of the Ceylon Civil Service; the HON. GERALD C. TALBOT, Mr. C.E. BULLER, Mr. MERCER, Mr. MORRIS, Mr. WHITING, Major SKINNER, and Mr. MITFORD. Before venturing to commit these chapters of my work to the press, I have had the advantage of having portions of them read by Professor HUXLEY, Mr. MOORE, of the East India House Museum; Mr. R. PATTERSON, F.R.S., author of the _Introduction to Zoology_, and by Mr. ADAM WHITE, of the British Museum; to each of whom I am exceedingly indebted for the care they have bestowed. In an especial degree I have to acknowledge the kindness of Dr. J.E. GRAY, F.R.S. for valuable additions and corrections in the list of the Ceylon Reptilia; and to Professor FARADAY for some notes on the nature and qualities of the "Serpent Stone,"[1] submitted to him. I have recorded in its proper place my obligations to Admiral FITZROY, for his most ingenious theory in elucidation of the phenomena of the _Tides_ around Ceylon.[2] [Footnote 1: See Vol. I. Part II. ch. iii. p. 199.] [Footnote 2: See Vol. II. Part VII. ch. i. p. 116.] The extent to which my observations on _the Elephant_ have been carried, requires some explanation. The existing notices of this noble creature are chiefly devoted to its habits and capabilities _in captivity_; and very few works, with which I am acquainted, contain illustrations of its instincts and functions when wild in its native woods. Opportunities for observing the latter, and for collecting facts in connection with them, are abundant in Ceylon, and from the moment of my arrival, I profited by every occasion afforded to me for studying the elephant in a state of nature, and obtaining from hunters and natives correct information as to its oeconomy and disposition. Anecdotes in connection with this subject, I received from some of the most experienced residents In the island; amongst others, Major SKINNER, Captain PHILIP PAYNE GALLWEY, Mr. FAIRHOLME, Mr. CRIPPS, and Mr. MORRIS. Nor can I omit to express my acknowledgments to PROFESSOR OWEN, of the British Museum, to whom this portion of my manuscript was submitted previous to its committal to the press. In the _historical sections_ of the work, I have been reluctantly compelled to devote a considerable space to a narrative deduced from the ancient Singhalese chronicles; into which I found it most difficult to infuse any popular interest. But the toil was not undertaken without a motive. The oeconomics and hierarchical institutions of Buddhism as administered through successive dynasties, exercised so paramount an influence over the habits and occupations of the Singhalese people, that their impress remains indelible to the present day. The tenure of temple lands, the compulsory services of tenants, the extension of agriculture, and the whole system of co-operative cultivation, derived from this source organisation and development; and the origin and objects of these are only to be rendered intelligible by an inquiry into the events and times in which the system took its rise. In connection with this subject, I am indebted to the representatives of the late Mr. TURNOUR, of the Ceylon Civil Service, for access to his unpublished manuscripts; and to those portions of his correspondence with Prinsep, which relate to the researches of these two distinguished scholars regarding the Pali annals of Ceylon. I have also to acknowledge my obligations to M. JULES MOHL, the literary executor of M. E. BURNOUF, for the use of papers left by that eminent orientalist in illustration of the ancient geography of the island, as exhibited in the works of Pali and Sanskrit writers. I have been signally assisted inn my search for materials illustrative of the social and intellectual condition of the Singhalese nation, during the early ages of their history, by gentlemen in Ceylon, whose familiarity with the native languages and literature impart authority to their communications; by ERNEST DE SARAM WIJEYESEKERE KAROONARATNE, the Maha-Moodliar and First Interpreter to the Governor; and to Mr. DE ALWIS, the erudite translator of the _Sidath Sangara._ From the Rev. Mr. GOGERLY of the Wesleyan Mission, I have received expositions of Buddhist policy; and the Rev. R SPENCE HARDY, author of the two most important modern works on the archæology of Buddhism[1], has done me the favour to examine the chapter on SINGHALESE _Literature,_ and to enrich it by numerous suggestions and additions. [Footnote 1: _Oriental Monachism,_ 8vo. London, 1850; and _A Manual of Buddhism,_ 8vo. London, 1853] In like manner I have had the advantage of communicating with MR. COOLEY (author of the _History of Maritime and Inland Discovery_) in relation to the _Mediæval History_ of Ceylon, and the period embraced by the narrative of the Greek, Arabian, and Italian travellers, between the fifth and fifteenth centuries. I have elsewhere recorded my obligations to Mr. WYLIE, and to his colleague, Mr. LOCKHART of Shanghæ, for the materials of one of the most curious chapters of my work, that which treats of the knowledge of Ceylon possessed by the Chinese in the Middle Ages. This is a field which, so far as I know, is untouched by any previous writer on Ceylon. In the course of my inquires, finding that Ceylon had been, from the remotest times, the point at which the merchant fleets from the Red Sea and the Persian Gulf met those from China and the Oriental Archipelago; thus effecting an exchange of merchandise from East and West; and discovering that the Arabian and Persian voyagers, on their return, had brought home copious accounts of the island, it occurred to me that the Chinese travellers during the same period had in all probability been equally observant and communicative, and that the results of their experience might be found in Chinese works of the Middle Ages. Acting on this conjecture, I addressed myself to a Chinese gentleman, WANG TAO CHUNG, who was then in England; and he, on his return to Shanghæ, made known my wishes to Mr. WYLIE. My anticipations were more than realised by Mr. WYLIE'S researches. I received in due course, extracts from upwards of twenty works by Chinese writers, between the fifth and fifteenth centuries, and the curious and interesting facts contained in them are embodied in the chapter devoted to that particular subject. In addition to these, the courtesy of M. STANISLAS JULIEN, the eminent French Sinologue, has laid me under a similar obligation for access to unpublished passages relative to Ceylon, in his translation of the great work of HIOUEN THSANG; in his translation of the great work of HIOUEN THSANG; descriptive of the Buddhist country of India in the seventh century.[1] [Footnote 1: _Mémoires sur les Contrées Occidentales_, traduites du Sanscrit en Chinois, en l'an 648, par M. STANISLAS JULIEN.] It is with pain that I advert to that portion of the section which treats of the British rule in Ceylon; in the course of which the discovery of the private correspondence of the first Governor, Mr. North, deposited along with the Wellesley Manuscripts, in the British Museum[1], has thrown an unexpected light over the fearful events of 1803, and the massacre of the English troops then in garrison at Kandy. Hitherto the honour of the British Government has been unimpeached in these dark transactions; and the slaughter of the troops has been uniformly denounced as an evidence of the treacherous and "tiger-like" spirit of the Kandyan people.[2] But it is not possible now to read the narrative of these events, as the motives and secret arrangements of the Governor with the treacherous Minister of the king are disclosed in the private letters of Mr. North to the Governor-general of India, without feeling that the sudden destruction of Major Davie's party, however revolting the remorseless butchery by which it was achieved, may have been but the consummation of a revenge provoked by the discovery of the treason concocted by the Adigar in confederacy with the representative of the British Crown. Nor is this construction weakened by the fact, that no immediate vengeance was exacted by the Governor in expiation of that fearful tragedy; and that the private letters of Mr. North to the Marquis of Wellesley contain avowals of ineffectual efforts to hush up the affair, and to obtain a clumsy compromise by inducing the Kandyan king to make an admission of regret. [Footnote 1: Additional MSS., Brit. Mus., No. 13864, &c.] [Footnote 2: DE QUINCEY, _collected Works_, vol. xii. p. 14.] I am aware that there are passages in the following pages containing statements that occur more than once in the course of the work. But I found that in dealing with so many distinct subjects the same fact became sometimes an indispensable illustration of more than one topic; and hence repetition was unavoidable even at the risk of tautology. I have also to apologise for variances in the spelling of proper names, both of places and individuals, occurring in different passages. In extenuation of this, I can only plead the difficulty of preserving uniformity in matters dependent upon mere sound, and unsettled by any recognised standard of orthography. I have endeavoured in every instance to append references to other authors, in support of statements which I have drawn from previous writers; an arrangement rendered essential by the numerous instances in which errors, that nothing short of the original authorities can suffice to expose, have been reproduced and repeated by successive writers on Ceylon. To whatever extent the preparation of this work may have fallen short of its conception, and whatever its demerits in execution and style, I am not without hope that it will still exhibit evidence that by perseverance and research I have laboured to render it worthy of the subject. JAMES EMERSON TENNENT. LONDON: _July 13th, 1859._ PART I. PHYSICAL GEOGRAPHY. CHAPTER I PHYSICAL GEOGRAPHY.--GEOLOGY.--MINERALOGY.--GEMS, CLIMATE, ETC. GENERAL ASPECT.--Ceylon, from whatever direction it is approached, unfolds a scene of loveliness and grandeur unsurpassed, if it be rivalled, by any land in the universe. The traveller from Bengal, leaving behind the melancholy delta of the Ganges and the torrid coast of Coromandel; or the adventurer from Europe, recently inured to the sands of Egypt and the scorched headlands of Arabia, is alike entranced by the vision of beauty which expands before him as the island rises from the sea, its lofty mountains covered by luxuriant forests, and its shores, till they meet the ripple of the waves, bright with the foliage of perpetual spring. The Brahmans designated it by the epithet of "the resplendent," and in their dreamy rhapsodies extolled it as the region of mystery and sublimity[1]; the Buddhist poets gracefully apostrophised it as "a pearl upon the brow of India;" the Chinese knew it as the "island of jewels;" the Greeks as the "land of the hyacinth and the ruby;" the Mahometans, in the intensity of their delight, assigned it to the exiled parents of mankind as a new elysium to console them for the loss of Paradise; and the early navigators of Europe, as they returned dazzled with its gems, and laden with its costly spices, propagated the fable that far to seaward the very breeze that blew from it was redolent of perfume.[2] In later and less imaginative times, Ceylon has still maintained the renown of its attractions, and exhibits in all its varied charms "the highest conceivable development of Indian nature."[3] [Footnote 1: "Ils en ont fait une espèce de paradis, et se sont imaginé que des êtres d'une nature angélique les habitaient."--ALBYROUNI, Traité des Ères, &c.; REINAUD, Géographie d'Aboulféda, Introd. sec. iii. p. ccxxiv. The renown of Ceylon as it reached Europe in the seventeenth century is thus summed up by PURCHAS in _His Pilgrimage_, b.v.c. 18, p. 550:--"The heauens with their dewes, the ayre with a pleasant holesomenesse and fragrant freshnesse, the waters in their many riuers and fountaines, the earth diuersified in aspiring hills, lowly vales, equall and indifferent plaines, filled in her inward chambers with mettalls and jewells, in her outward court and vpper face stored with whole woods of the best cinnamons that the sunne seeth; besides fruits, oranges, lemons, &c. surmounting those of Spaine; fowles and beasts, both tame and wilde (among which is their elephant honoured by a naturall acknowledgement of excellence of all other elephants in the world). These all have conspired and joined in common league to present unto Zeilan the chiefe of worldly treasures and pleasures, with a long and healthfull life in the inhabitants to enjoye them. No marvell, then, if sense and sensualitie have heere stumbled on a paradise."] [Footnote 2: The fable of the "spicy breezes" said to blow from Arabia and India, is as old as Ctesias; and is eagerly repeated by Pliny? lib. xii. c. 42. The Greeks borrowed the tale from the Hindus, who believe that the _Chandana_ or sandal-wood imparts its odours to the winds; and their poete speak of the Malayan as the westerns did of the Sabæan breezes. But the allusion to such perfumed winds was a trope common to all the discoverers of unknown lands: the companions of Columbus ascribed them to the region of the Antilles; and Verrazani and Sir Walter Raleigh scented them off the coast of Carolina. Milton borrowed from Diodorus Siculus, lib. iii. c. 46, the statement that: "Far off at sea north-east winds blow Sabæan odours from the spicy shore Of Araby the Blest." (_P.L._ iv. 163.) Ariosto employs the same imaginative embellishment to describe the charms of Cyprus: "Serpillo e persa e rose e gigli e croco Spargon dall'odorifero terreno Tanta suavita, ch'in mar sentire La fa ogni vento che da terra spire." (_Oil. Fur._ xviii. 138.) That some aromatic smell is perceptible far to seaward, in the vicinity of certain tropical countries, is unquestionable; and in the instance of Cuba, an odour like that of violets, which is discernible two or three miles from land, when the wind is off the shore, has been traced by Poeppig to a species of _Tetracera_, a climbing plant which diffuses its odour during the night. But in the case of Ceylon? if the existence of such a perfume be not altogether imaginary, the fact has been falsified by identifying the alleged fragrance with cinnamon; the truth being that the cinnamon laurel, unless it be crushed, exhales no aroma whatever; and the peculiar odour of the spice is only perceptible after the bark has been separated and dried.] [Footnote 3: LASSEN, _Indische Alterthumskunde_ vol. i. p. 198.] _Picturesque Outline_.--The nucleus of its mountain masses consists of gneissic, granitic, and other crystalline rocks, which in their resistless upheaval have rent the superincumbent strata, raising them into lofty pyramids and crags, or hurling them in gigantic fragments to the plains below. Time and decay are slow in their assaults on these towering precipices and splintered pinnacles; and from the absence of more perishable materials, there are few graceful sweeps along the higher chains or rolling downs in the lower ranges of the hills. Every bold elevation is crowned by battlemented cliffs, and flanked by chasms in which the shattered strata are seen as sharp and as rugged as if they had but recently undergone the grand convulsion that displaced them. _Foliage and Verdure_.--The soil in these regions is consequently light and unremunerative, but the plentiful moisture arising from the interception of every passing vapour from the Indian Ocean and the Bay of Bengal, added to the intense warmth of the atmosphere, combine to force a vegetation so rich and luxuriant, that imagination can picture nothing more wondrous and charming; every level spot is enamelled with verdure, forests of never-fading bloom cover mountain and valley; flowers of the brightest hues grow in profusion over the plains, and delicate climbing plants, rooted in the shelving rocks, hang in huge festoons down the edge of every precipice. Unlike the forests of Europe, in which the excess of some peculiar trees imparts a character of monotony and graveness to the outline and colouring, the forests of Ceylon are singularly attractive from the endless variety of their foliage, and the vivid contrast of its hues. The mountains, especially those looking towards the east and south, rise abruptly to prodigious and almost precipitous heights above the level plains; the rivers wind through woods below like threads of silver through green embroidery, till they are lost in a dim haze which conceals the far horizon; and through this a line of tremulous light marks where the sunbeams are glittering among the waves upon the distant shore. From age to age a scene so lovely has imparted a colouring of romance to the adventures of the seamen who, in the eagerness of commerce, swept round the shores of India, to bring back the pearls and precious stones, the cinnamon and odours, of Ceylon. The tales of the Arabians are fraught with the wonders of "Serendib;" and the mariners of the Persian Gulf have left a record of their delight in reaching the calm havens of the island, and reposing for months together in valleys where the waters of the sea were overshadowed by woods, and the gardens were blooming in perennial summer.[1] [Footnote 1: REINAUD, _Relation des Voyages Arabes, &c., dans le neuvième siècle_. Paris, 1845, tom. ii. p. 129.] _Geographical Position_.--Notwithstanding the fact that the Hindus, in their system of the universe, had given prominent importance to Ceylon, their first meridian, "the meridian of Lanka," being supposed to pass over the island, they propounded the most extravagant ideas, both as to its position and extent; expanding it to the proportions of a continent, and at the same time placing it a considerable distance south-east of India.[1] [Footnote 1: For a condensed account of the dimensions and position attributed to Lanka, in the Mythic Astronomy of the Hindus, see REINAUD's _Introduction to Aboulféda_, sec. iii. p. ccxvii., and his _Mémoire sur l'Inde_, p. 342; WILFORD's _Essay on the Sacred Isles of the West_, Asiat. Researches, vol. x, p. 140.] The native Buddhist historians, unable to confirm the exaggerations of the Brahmans, and yet reluctant to detract from the epic renown of their country by disclaiming its stupendous dimensions, attempted to reconcile its actual extent with the fables of the eastern astronomers by imputing to the agency of earthquakes the submersion of vast regions by the sea.[1] But evidence is wanting to corroborate the assertion of such an occurrence, at least within the historic period; no record of it exists in the earliest writings of the Hindus, the Arabians, or Persians; who, had the tradition survived, would eagerly have chronicled a catastrophe so appalling.[2] Geologic analogy, so far as an inference is derivable from the formation of the adjoining coasts, both of India and Ceylon, is opposed to its probability; and not only plants, but animals, mammalia, birds, reptiles, and insects, exist in Ceylon, which are not to be found in the flora or fauna of the Indian continent.[3] [Footnote 1: SIR WILLIAM JONES adopted the legendary opinion that Ceylon "formerly perhaps, extended much farther to the west and south, so as to include Lanka or the equinoctial point of the Indian astronomers."--_Discourse on the Institution of a Society for inquiring into the History, &c., of the Borderers, Mountaineers, and Islanders of Asia_.--Works, vol. i. p. 120. The Portuguese, on their arrival in Ceylon in the sixteenth century, found the natives fully impressed by the traditions of its former extent and partial submersion; and their belief in connection with it, will be found in the narratives and histories of De Barros and Diogo de Couto, from which they have been transferred, almost without abridgment, to the pages of Valentyn. The substance of the native legends will be found in the _Mahawanso_, c. xxii. p. 131; and _Rajavali_, p. 180, 190.] [Footnote 2: The first disturbance of the coast by which Ceylon is alleged to have been severed from the main land is said by the Buddhists to have taken place B.C. 2387; a second commotion is ascribed to the age of Panduwaasa, B.C. 504; and the subsidence of the shore adjacent to Colombo is said to have taken place 200 years later, in the reign of Devenipiatissa, B.C. 306. The event is thus recorded in the _Rajavali_, one of the sacred books of Ceylon:--"In these days the sea was seven leagues from Kalany; but on account of what had been done to the teeroonansee (a priest who had been tortured by the king of Kalany), the gods who were charged with the conservation of Ceylon, became enraged and caused the sea to deluge the land; and as during the epoch called _duwapawrayaga_ on account of the wickedness of Rawana, 25 palaces and 400,000 streets were all over-run by the sea, so now in this time of Tissa Raja, 100,000 large towns, 910 fishers' villages, and 400 villages inhabited by pearl fishers, making together eleven-twelfths of the territory of Kalany, were swallowed up by the sea."--_Rajavali_, vol. ii. p. 180, 190. FORBES observes the coincidence that the legend of the rising of the sea in the age of Panduwaasa, 2378 B.C., very nearly concurs with the date assigned to the Deluge of Noah, 2348,--_Eleven Years in Ceylon_, vol. ii. p. 258. A tradition is also extant, that a submersion took place at a remote period on the east coast of Ceylon, whereby the island of Giri-dipo, which is mentioned in the first chapter of the _Mahawanso_, was engulfed, and the dangerous rocks called the Great and Little Basses are believed to be remnants of it.--_Mahawanso_, c. i. A _résumé_ of the disquisitions which have appeared at various times as to the submersion of a part of Ceylon, will be found in a Memoir _sur la Géographie ancienne de Ceylon_, in the Journal Asiatique for January, 1857, 5th ser., vol. ix. p. 12; see also TURNOUR'S _Introd. to the Mahawanso_, p. xxxiv.] [Footnote 3: Some of the mammalia peculiar to the island are enumerated at p. 160; birds found in Ceylon but not existing in India are alluded to at p. 178, and Dr. A. GÜNTHER, in a paper on the _Geographical Distribution of Reptiles_, in the _Mag. of Nat. Hist._ for March, 1859, says, "amongst these larger islands which are connected with the middle palæotropical region, none offers forms so different from the continent and other islands as Ceylon. It might be considered the Madagascar of the Indian region. We not only find there peculiar genera and species, not again to be recognised in other parts; but even many of the common species exhibit such remarkable varieties, as to afford ample means for creating new nominal species," p. 280. The difference exhibited between the insects of Ceylon and those of Hindustan and the Dekkan are noticed by Mr. Walker in the present work, p. ii. ch. vii, vol. i. p. 270. See on this subject RITTER'S _Erdkunde_, vol. iv. p. 17.] Still in the infancy of geographical knowledge, and before Ceylon had been circumnavigated by Europeans, the mythical delusions of the Hindus were transmitted to the West, and the dimensions of the island were expanded till its southern extremity fell below the equator, and its breadth was prolonged till it touched alike on Africa and China.[1] [Footnote 1: GIBBON, ch. xxiv.] The Greeks who, after the Indian conquests of Alexander, brought back the earliest accounts of the East, repeated them without material correction, and reported the island to be nearly twenty times its actual extent. Onesicritus, a pilot of the expedition, assigned to it a magnitude of 5000 stadia, equal to 500 geographical miles.[1] Eratosthenes attempted to fix its position, but went so widely astray that his first (that is his most southern) parallel passed through it and the "Cinnamon Land," the _Regio Cinnamomifera_, on the east coast of Africa.[2] He placed Ceylon at the distance of seven days' sail from the south of India, and he too assigned to its western coast an extent of 5000 stadia.[3] Both those authorities are quoted by Strabo, who says that the size of Taprobane was not less than that of Britain.[4] [Footnote 1: STRABO, lib. v. Artemidorus (100 B.C.), quoted by Stephanus of Byzantium, gives to Ceylon a length of 7000 stadia and a breadth of 500.] [Footnote 2: STRABO, lib. ii. c. i. s. 14.] [Footnote 3: The text of Strabo showing this measure makes it in some places 8000 (Strabo, lib. v.); and Pliny, quoting Eratosthenes, makes it 7000.] [Footnote 4: STRABO, lib. ii. c. v. s. 32. Aristotle appears to have had more correct information, and says Ceylon was not so large as Britain.--_De Mundo_ ch. iii.] The round numbers employed by those authors, and by the Greek geographers generally, who borrow from them, serve to show that their knowledge was merely collected from rumours; and that in all probability they were indebted for their information to the stories of Arabian or Hindu sailors returning from the Eastern seas. Pliny learned from the Singhalese Ambassador who visited Rome in the reign of Claudius, that the breadth of Ceylon was 10,000 stadia from west to east; and Ptolemy fully developed the idea of his predecessors, that it lay opposite to the "Cinnamon Land," and assigned to it a length from north to south of nearly _fifteen degrees_, with a breadth of _eleven_, an exaggeration of the truth nearly twenty-fold.[1] Agathemerus copies Ptolemy; and the plain and sensible author of the "Periplus" (attributed to Arrian), still labouring with the delusion of the magnitude of Ceylon, makes it stretch almost to the opposite coast of Africa.[2] [Footnote 1: PTOLEMY, lib. vii. c. 4.] [Footnote 2: ARRIAN, _Periplus_, p. 35. Marcianus Heracleota (whose Periplus has been reprinted by HUDSON, in the same collection from which I have made the reference to that of Arrian) gives to Ceylon a length of 9500 stadia with a breadth of 7500.--MAR. HER. p. 26.] These extravagant ideas of the magnitude of Ceylon were not entirely removed till many centuries later. The Arabian geographers, Massoudi, Edrisi, and Aboulfeda, had no accurate data by which to correct the errors of their Greek predecessors. The maps of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries repeated their distortions[1]; and Marco Polo, in the fourteenth century, who gives the island the usual exaggerated dimensions, yet informs us that it is now but one half the size it had been at a former period, the rest having been engulfed by the sea.[2] [Footnote 1: For an account of Ceylon as it is figured in the _Mappe-mondes_ of the Middle Ages, see the _Essai_ of the VICOMTE DE SANTAREM, _Sur la Cosmographie et Cartographie_, tom. iii. p. 335, &c.] [Footnote 2: MARCO POLO, p. 2, c. 148. A later authority than Marco Polo, PORCACCHI, in his _Isolario_, or "Description of the most celebrated Islands in the World," which was published at Venice in A.D. 1576, laments his inability even at that time to obtain any authentic information as to the boundaries and dimensions of Ceylon; and, relying on the representations of the Moors, who then carried on an active trade around its coasts, he describes it as lying under the equinoctial line, and possessing a circuit of 2100 miles. "Ella gira di circuito, secondo il calcole fatto da Mori, che modernamente l'hanno nauigato d'ogn'intorno due mila et cento miglia et corre mæstro e sirocco; et per il mezo d'essa passa la linea equinottiale et è el principio del primo clima al terzo paralello."--_L'Isole piu Famose del Monde, descritte da_ THOMASO PORCACCHI, lib. iii. p. 30.] Such was the uncertainty thrown over the geography of the island by erroneous and conflicting accounts, that grave doubts came to be entertained of its identity, and from the fourteenth century, when the attention of Europe was re-directed to the nascent science of geography, down to the close of the seventeenth, it remained a question whether Ceylon or Sumatra was the Taprobane of the Greeks.[1] [Footnote 1: GIBBON states, that "Salmasius and most of the ancients confound the islands of Ceylon and Sumatra."--_Decl. and Fall_ ch. xl. This is a mistake. Saumaise was one of those who maintained a correct opinion; and, as regards the "ancients," they had very little knowledge of _Further India_ to which Sumatra belongs; but so long as Greek and Roman literature maintained their influence, no question was raised as to the identity of Ceylon and Taprobane. Even in the sixth century Cosmas Indicopleustes declares unhesitatingly that the Sielediva of the Indians was the Taprobane of the Greeks. It was only on emerging from the general ignorance of the Middle Ages that the doubt was first promulgated. In the Catalan Map of A.D. 1375, entitled _Image du Monde_, Ceylon is omitted, and Taprobane is represented by Sumatra (MALTE BRUN, _Hist. de Geogr._ vol. i, p. 318); in that of _Fra Mauro_, the Venetian monk, A.D. 1458, Seylan is given, but _Taprobane_ is added over _Sumatra_. A similar error appears in the _Mappe-monde,_ by RUYCH, in the Ptolemy of A.D. 1508, and in the writings of the geographers of the sixteenth century, GEMMA FRISIUS, SEBASTIAN MUNSTER, RAMUSIO, JUL. SCALIGER, ORTELIUS, and MERCATOR. The same view was adopted by the Venetian NICOLA DI CONTI, in the first half of the fifteenth century, by the Florentine ANDREA CORSALI, MAXIMILIANUS TRANSYLVANUS, VARTHEMA, and PIGAFETTA. The chief cause of this perplexity was, no doubt, the difficulty of reconciling the actual position and size of Ceylon with the dimensions and position assigned to it by Strabo and Ptolemy, the latter of whom, by an error which is elsewhere explained, extended the boundary of the island far to the east of its actual site. But there was a large body of men who rejected the claim of Sumatra, and DE BARROS, SALMASIUS, BOCHART CLUVERIUS, CELLARIUS, ISAAC VOSSIUS and others, maintained the title of Ceylon. A _Mappe-monde_ of A.D. 1417, preserved in the Pitti Palace at Florence compromises the dispute by designating Sumatra _Taprobane Major_. The controversy came to an end at the beginning of the eighteenth century, when the overpowering authority of DELISLE resolved the doubt, and confirmed the modern Ceylon as the Taprobane of antiquity. WILFORD, in the _Asiatic Researches_ (vol. x. p. 140), still clung to the opposite opinion, and KANT undertook to prove that Taprobane was Madagascar.] _Latitude and Longitude_.--There has hitherto been considerable uncertainty as to the position assigned to Ceylon in the various maps and geographical notices of the island: these have been corrected by more recent observations, and its true place has been ascertained to be between 5° 55' and 9° 51' north latitude, and 79° 41' 40" and 81° 54' 50" east longitude. Its extreme length from north to south, from Point Palmyra to Dondera Head, is 271-1/2 miles; its greatest width 137-1/2 miles, from Colombo on the west coast to Sangemankande on the east; and its area, including its dependent islands, 25,742 miles, or about one-sixth smaller than Ireland.[1] [Footnote 1: Down to a very recent period no British colony was more imperfectly surveyed and mapped than Ceylon; but since the recent publication by Arrowsmith of the great map by General Fraser, the reproach has been withdrawn, and no dependency of the Crown is more richly provided in this particular. In the map of Schneider, the Government engineer in 1813, two-thirds of the Kandyan Kingdom are a blank; and in that of the Society for the Diffusion of Knowledge, re-published so late as 1852, the rich districts of Neuera-kalawa and the Wanny, in which there are innumerable villages (and scarcely a hill), are marked as "_unknown mountainous region_." General Fraser, after the devotion of a lifetime to the labour, has produced a survey which, in extent and minuteness of detail, stands unrivalled. In this great work he had the co-operation of Major Skinner and of Captain Gallwey, and to these two gentlemen the public are indebted for the greater portion of the field-work and the trigonometrical operations. To judge of the difficulties which beset such an undertaking, it must be borne in mind that till very recently travelling in the interior of Ceylon was all but impracticable, in a country unopened even by bridle roads, across unbridged rivers, over mountains never trod by the foot of a European, and amidst precipices inaccessible to all but the most courageous and prudent. Add to this that the country is densely covered with forest and jungle, with trees a hundred feet high, from which here and there the branches had to be cleared to obtain a sight of the signal stations. The triangulation was carried on amidst privations, discomfort, and pestilence, which frequently prostrated the whole party, and forced their attendants to desert them rather than encounter such hardships and peril. The materials collected by the colleagues of General Fraser under these discouragements have been worked up by him with consummate skill and perseverance. The base line, five and a quarter miles in length, was measured in 1845 in the cinnamon plantation at Kaderani, to the north of Colombo, and its extremities are still marked by two towers, which it was necessary to raise to the height of one hundred feet, to enable them to be discerned above the surrounding forests. These it is to be hoped will be carefully kept from decay, as they may again be called into requisition. As regards the sea line of Ceylon, an admirable chart of the West coast, from Adam's Bridge to Dondera Head, has been published by the East India Company from a survey in 1845. But information is sadly wanted as to the East and North, of which no accurate charts exist, except of a few unconnected points, such as the harbour of Trincomalie.] _General Form_.--In its general outline the island resembles a pear--and suggests to its admiring inhabitants the figure of those pearls which from their elongated form are suspended from the tapering end. When originally upheaved above the ocean its shape was in all probability nearly circular, with a prolongation in the direction of north-east. The mountain zone in the south, covering an area of about 4212 miles[1], may then have formed the largest proportion of its entire area--and the belt of low lands, known as the Maritime Provinces, consists to a great extent of soil from the disintegration of the gneiss, detritus from the hills, alluvium carried down the rivers, and marine deposits gradually collected on the shore. But in addition to these, the land has for ages been slowly rising from the sea, and terraces abounding in marine shells imbedded in agglutinated sand occur in situations far above high-water mark. Immediately inland from Point de Galle, the surface soil rests on a stratum of decomposing coral; and sea shells are found at a considerable distance from the shore. Further north at Madampe, between Chilaw and Negombo, the shells of pearl oysters and other bivalves are turned up by the plough more than ten miles from the sea. [Illustration] [Footnote 1: This includes not only the lofty mountains suitable for the cultivation of coffee, but the lower ranges and spurs which connect them with the maritime plains.] These recent formations present themselves in a still more striking form in the north of the island, the greater portion of which may be regarded as the conjoint production of the coral polypi, and the currents, which for the greater portion of the year set impetuously towards the south. Coming laden with alluvial matter collected along the coast of Coromandel, and meeting with obstacles south of Point Calimere, they have deposited their burthens on the coral reefs round Point Pedro; and these gradually raised above the sea-level, and covered deeply by sand drifts, have formed the peninsula of Jaffna and the plains that trend westward till they unite with the narrow causeway of Adam's Bridge--itself raised by the same agencies, and annually added to by the influences of the tides and monsoons.[1] [Footnote 1: The barrier known as Adam's Bridge, which obstructs the navigation of the channel between Ceylon and Ramnad, consists of several parallel ledges of conglomerate and sandstone, hard at the surface, and growing coarse and soft as it descends till it rests on a bank of sand, apparently accumulated by the influence of the currents at the change of the monsoons. See an _Essay_ by Captain STEWART _on the Paumbem Passage_. Colombo, 1837. See Vol. II. p. 554.] On the north-west side of the island, where the currents are checked by the obstruction of Adam's Bridge, and still water prevails in the Gulf of Manaar, these deposits have been profusely heaped, and the low sandy plains have been proportionally extended; whilst on the south and east, where the current sweeps unimpeded along the coast, the line of the shore is bold and occasionally rocky. This explanation of the accretion and rising of the land is somewhat opposed to the popular belief that Ceylon was torn from the main land of India[1] by a convulsion, during which the Gulf of Manaar and the narrow channel at Paumbam were formed by the submersion of the adjacent land. The two theories might be reconciled by supposing the sinking to have occurred at an early period, and to have been followed by the uprising still in progress. But on a closer examination of the structure and direction of the mountain system of Ceylon, it exhibits no traces of submersion. It seems erroneous to regard it as a prolongation of the Indian chains; it lies far to the east of the line formed by the Ghauts on either side of the peninsula, and any affinity which it exhibits is rather with the equatorial direction of the intersecting ranges of the Nilgherries and the Vindhya. In their geological elements there is, doubtless, a similarity between the southern extremity of India and the elevated portions of Ceylon; but there are also many important particulars in which their specific differences are irreconcilable with the conjecture of previous continuity. In the north of Ceylon there is a marked preponderance of aqueous strata, which are comparatively rare in the vicinity of Cape Comorin; and whilst the rocks of the former are entirely destitute of organic remains[2]; fossils, both terrestrial and pelagic, have been found in the Eastern Ghauts, and sandstone, in some instances, overlays the primary rocks which compose them. The rich and black soil to the south of the Nilgherries presents a strong contrast to the red and sandy earth of the opposite coast; and both in the flora and fauna of the island there are exceptional peculiarities which suggest a distinction between it and the Indian continent. [Footnote 1: LASSEN, _Indische Alterthumskunde_, vol. i. p. 193.] [Footnote 2: At Cutchavelly, north of Trincomalie, there exists a bed of calcareous clay, in which shells and crustaceans are found in a semi-fossilised state; but they are all of recent species, principally _Macrophthalmus_ and _Scylla_. The breccia at Jaffna contains recent shells, as does also the arenaceous strata on the western coast of Manaar and in the neighbourhood of Galle. The existence of the fossilised crustaceans in the north of Ceylon was known to the early Arabian navigators. Abou-zeyd describes them as, "Un animal de mer qui resemble à l'écrevisse; quand cet animal sort de la mer, _il se convertit en pierre_." See REINAUD, _Voyages faits par les Arabes_, vol. i. p. 21. The Arabs then; and the Chinese at the present day, use these petrifactions when powdered as a specific for diseases of the eye.] _Mountain System_.--At whatever period the mountains of Ceylon may have been raised, the centre of maximum energy must have been in the vicinity of Adam's Peak, the group immediately surrounding which has thus acquired an elevation of from six to eight thousand feet above the sea.[1] The uplifting force seems to have been exerted from south-west to north-east; and although there is much confusion in many of the intersecting ridges, the lower ranges, especially those to the south and west of Adam's Peak, from Saffragam to Ambogammoa, manifest a remarkable tendency to run in parallel ridges in a direction from south-east to north-west. [Footnote 1: The following are the heights of a few of the most remarkable places:-- Pedrotallagalla 8280 English feet. Kirrigalpotta 7810 English feet. Totapella 7720 English feet. Adam's Peak 7420 English feet. Nammoone-Koolle 6740 English feet. Plain of Neuera-ellia 6210 English feet.] Towards the north, on the contrary, the offsets of the mountain system, with the exception of those which stretch towards Trincomalie, radiate to short distances in various directions, and speedily sink down to the level of the plain. Detached hills of great altitude are rare, the most celebrated being that of Mihintala, which overlooks the sacred city of Anarajapoora: and Sigiri is the only example in Ceylon of those solitary acclivities, which form so remarkable a feature in the table-land of the Dekkan, starting abruptly from the plain with scarped and perpendicular sides, and converted by the Indians into strongholds, accessible only by precipitous pathways, or steps hewn in the solid rock. The crest of the Ceylon mountains is of stratified crystalline rock, especially gneiss, with extensive veins of quartz, and through this the granite has been everywhere intruded, distorting the riven strata, and tilting them at all angles to the horizon. Hence at the abrupt terminations of some of the chains in the district of Saffragam, plutonic rocks are seen mingled with the dislocated gneiss. Basalt makes its appearance both at Galle and Trincomalie. In one place to the east of Pettigalle-Kanda, the rocks have been broken up in such confusion as to resemble the effect of volcanic action--huge masses overhang each other like suddenly-cooled lava; and Dr. Gygax, a Swiss mineralogist, who was employed by the Government in 1847 to examine and report on the mineral resources of the district, stated, on his return, that having seen the volcanoes of the Azores, he found a "strange similarity at this spot to one of the semi-craters round the trachytic ridge of Seticidadas, in the island of St. Michael."[1] [Footnote 1: Beyond the very slightest symptoms of disturbance, earthquakes are unknown in Ceylon: and although its geology exhibits little evidence of volcanic action (with the exception of the basalt, which occasionally presents an appearance approaching to that of lava), there are some other incidents that seem to suggest the vicinity of fire; more particularly the occurrence of springs of high temperature, one at Badulla, one at Kitool, near Bintenne, another near Yavi Ooto, in the Veddah country, and a fourth at Cannea, near Trincomalie. I have heard of another near the Patipal Aar south of Batticaloa. The water in each is so pure and free from salts that the natives make use of it for all domestic purposes. Dr. Davy adverts to another indication of volcanic agency in the sudden and profound depth of the noble harbour at Trincomalie, which even close by the beach is said to have been hitherto unfathomed. The Spaniards believed Ceylon to be volcanic; and ARGENSOLA, in his _Conquista de las Malucas_, Madrid, 1609, says it produced liquid bitumen and sulphur:--"Fuentes de betùn liquido y bolcanes de perpetuas llamas que arrojan entre las asperezas de la montaña losas de açufre."--Lib. v. p. 184. It is needless to say that this is altogether imaginary.] _Gneiss_.--The great geological feature of the island is, however, the profusion of gneiss, and the various new forms arising from its disintegration. In the mountains, with the exception of occasional beds of dolomite, no more recent formations overlie it; from the period of its first upheaval, the gneiss has undergone no second submersion, and the soil which covers it in these lofty altitudes is formed almost entirely by its decay. In the lower ranges of the hills, gigantic portions of gneiss rise conspicuously, so detached from the original chain and so rounded by the action of the atmosphere, aided by their concentric lamellation, that but for their prodigious dimensions, they might be regarded as boulders. Close under one of these cylindrical masses, 600 feet in height, and upwards of three miles in length, the town of Kornegalle, one of the ancient capitals of the island, has been built; and the great temple of Dambool, the most remarkable Buddhist edifice in Ceylon, is constructed under the hollow edge of another, its gilded roof being formed by the inverted arch of the natural stone. The tendency of the gneiss to assume these concentric and almost circular forms has been taken advantage of for this purpose by the Singhalese priests, and some of their most venerated temples are to be found under the shadow of the overarching strata, to the imperishable nature of which the priests point as symbolical of the eternal duration of their faith.[1] [Footnote 1: The concentric lamellar strata of the gneiss sometimes extend with a radius so prolonged that slabs may be cut from them and used in substitution for beams of timber, and as such they are frequently employed in the construction of Buddhist temples. At Piagalla, on the road between Galle and Colombo, within about four miles of Caltura, there is a gneiss hill of this description on which a temple has been so erected. In this particular rock the garnets usually found in gneiss are replaced by rubies, and nothing can exceed the beauty of the hand-specimens procurable from a quarry close to the high road on the landward side; in which, however, the gems are in every case reduced to splinters.] _Laterite or "Cabook_."--A peculiarity, which is one of the first to strike a stranger who lands at Galle or Colombo, is the bright red colour of the streets and roads, contrasting vividly with the verdure of the trees, and the ubiquity of the fine red dust which penetrates every crevice and imparts its own tint to every neglected article. Natives resident in these localities are easily recognisable elsewhere, by the general hue of their dress. This is occasioned by the prevalence along the western coast of _laterite_, or, as the Singhalese call it, _cabook_, a product of disintegrated gneiss, which being subjected to detrition communicates its hue to the soil.[1] [Footnote 1: According to the _Mahawanso_ "Tamba-panni," one of those names by which Ceylon was anciently called, originated in an incident connected with the invasion of Wijayo, B.C. 543, whose followers, "exhausted by sea-sickness and faint from weakness, sat down at the spot where they had landed out of the vessels, supporting themselves on the palms of their hands pressed to the ground, whence the name of Tamba-pannyo, '_copper-palmed_,' from the colour of the soil. From this circumstance that wilderness obtained the name of Tamba-panni; and from the same cause also this renowned land became celebrated under that name."--TURNOUR'S _Mahawanso_, ch. vi. p. 50. From Tamba-panni came the Greek name for Ceylon, _Taprobane_. Mr. de Alwis has corrected an error in this passage of Mr. Turnour's translation; the word in the original, which he took for _Tamba-panniyo_, or "copper-palmed," being in reality _tamba-vanna_, or "copper-coloured." Colonel Forbes questions the accuracy of this derivation, and attributes the name to the _tamana_ trees; from the abundance of which he says many villages in Ceylon, as well as a district in southern India, have been similarly called. (_Eleven Years in Ceylon_, vol. i. p. 10.) I have not succeeded in discovering what tree is designated by this name, nor does it occur in MOON'S _List of Ceylon Plants_. On the southern coast of India a river, which flows from the ghats to the sea, passing Tinnevelly, is called Tambapanni. Tambapanni, as the designation of Ceylon, occurs in the inscription on the rock of Girnar in Guzerat, deciphered by Prinsep, containing an edict by Asoka relative to the medical administration of India for the relief both of man and beast, (_Asiat. Soc. Journ. Beng._ vol. vii. p. 158.)] The transformation of gneiss into laterite in these localities has been attributed to the circumstance, that those sections of the rock which undergo transition exhibit grains of magnetic iron ore partially disseminated through them; and the phenomenon of the conversion has been explained not by recurrence to the ordinary conception of mere weathering, which is inadequate, but to the theory of catalytic action, regard being had to the peculiarity of magnetic iron when viewed in its chemical formula.[1] The oxide of iron thus produced communicates its colouring to the laterite, and in proportion as felspar and hornblende abound in the gneiss, the cabook assumes respectively a white or yellow hue. So ostensible is the series of mutations, that in ordinary excavations there is no difficulty in tracing a continuous connection without definite lines of demarcation between the soil and the laterite on the one hand, and the laterite and gneiss rock on the other.[2] [Footnote 1: From a paper read to the Royal Physical Society of Edinburgh by the Rev. J.G. Macvicar, D.D.] [Footnote 2: From a paper on the Geology of Ceylon, by Dr. Gardner, in the Appendix to Lee's translation of RIBEYRO'S _History of Ceylon_, p, 206. The earliest and one of the ablest essays on the geological system and mineralogy of Ceylon will be found in DAVY'S _Account of the Interior of Ceylon_, London, 1821. It has, however, been corrected and enlarged by recent investigators.] The tertiary rocks which form such remarkable features in the geology of other countries are almost unknown in Ceylon; and the "clay-slate, Silurian, old red sandstone, carboniferous, new red sandstone, oolitic, and cretaceous systems" have not as yet been recognised in any part of the island.[1] Crystalline limestone in some places overlies the gneiss, and is worked for oeconomical purposes in the mountain districts where it occurs.[2] [Footnote 1: Dr. Gardner.] [Footnote 2: In the maritime provinces lime for building is obtained by burning the coral and madrepore, which for this purpose is industriously collected by the fishermen during the intervals when the wind is off shore.] Along the western coast, from Point-de-Galle to Chilaw, breccia is found near the shores, from the agglutination of corallines and shells mixed with sand, and the disintegrated particles of gneiss. These beds present an appearance very closely resembling a similar rock, in which human remains have been found imbedded, at the north-east of Guadaloupe, now in the British Museum.[1] Incorporated with them there are minute fragments of sapphires, rubies, and tourmaline, showing that the sand of which the breccia is composed has been washed down by the rivers from the mountain zone. [Footnote 1: Dr. Gardner.] NORTHERN PROVINCES.--_Coral Formation_.--But the principal scene of the most recent formations is the extreme north of the island, with the adjoining peninsula of Jaffna. Here the coral rocks abound far above high-water mark, and extend across the island where the land has been gradually upraised, from the eastern to the western shore. The fortifications of Jaffna were built by the Dutch, from blocks of breccia quarried far from the sea, and still exhibit, in their worn surface, the outline of the shells and corallines of which they mainly consist. The roads, in the absence of more solid substances, are metalled with the same material; as the only other rock which occurs is a loose description of conglomerate, similar to that at Adam's Bridge and Manaar. The phenomenon of the gradual upheaval of these strata is sufficiently attested by the position in which they appear, and their altitude above high-water mark; but, in close contiguity with them, an equally striking evidence presents itself in the fact that, at various points of the western coast, between the island of Manaar and Karativoe, the natives, in addition to fishing for chank shells[1] in the sea, dig them up in large quantities from beneath the soil on the adjacent shores, in which they are deeply imbedded[2], the land having since been upraised. [Footnote 1: _Turbinella rapa_, formerly known as _Voluta gravis_ used by the people of India to be sawn into bangles and anklets.] [Footnote 2: In 1845 an antique iron anchor was found under the soil at the northwestern point of Jaffna, of such size and weight as to show that it must have belonged to a ship of much greater tonnage than any which the depth of water would permit to navigate the channel at the present day.] The sand, which covers a vast extent of the peninsula of Jaffna, and in which the coco-nut and Palmyra-palm grow freely, has been carried by the currents from the coast of India, and either flung upon the northern beach in the winter months, or driven into the lake during the south-west monsoon, and thence washed on shore by the ripple, and distributed by the wind. The arable soil of Jaffna is generally of a deep red colour, from the admixture of iron, and, being largely composed of lime from the comminuted coral, it is susceptible of the highest cultivation, and produces crops of great luxuriance. This tillage is carried on exclusively by irrigation from innumerable wells, into which the water rises fresh through the madrepore and sand; there being no streams in the district, unless those percolations can be so called which make their way underground, and rise through the sands on the margin of the sea at low water. _Wells in the Coral Rock_.--These phenomena occur at Jaffna, in consequence of the rocks being magnesian limestone and coral, overlying a bed of sand, and in some places, where the soil is light, the surface of the ground is a hollow arch, so that it resounds as if a horse's weight were sufficient to crush it inwards. This is strikingly perceptible in the vicinity of the remarkable well at Potoor[1], on the west side of the road leading from Jaffna to Point Pedro, where the surface of the surrounding country is only about fifteen feet above the sea-level. The well, however, is upwards of 140 feet in depth; the water fresh at the surface, brackish lower down, and intensely salt below. According to the universal belief of the inhabitants, it is an underground pool, which communicates with the sea by a subterranean channel bubbling out on the shore near Kangesentorre, about seven miles to the north-west. [Footnote 1: For the particulars of this singular well, see Vol. II. Pt. IX. ch. vi. p. 536.] A similar subterranean stream is said to conduct to the sea from another singular well near Tillipalli, in sinking which the workmen, at the depth of fourteen feet, came to the ubiquitous coral, the crust of which gave way, and showed a cavern below containing the water they were in search of, with a depth of more than thirty-three feet. It is remarkable that the well at Tillipalli preserves its depth at all seasons alike, uninfluenced by rains or drought; and a steam-engine erected at Potoor, with the intention of irrigating the surrounding lands, failed to lower it in any perceptible degree. Other wells, especially some near the coast, maintain their level with such uniformity as to be inexhaustible at any season, even after a succession of years of drought--a fact from which it may fairly be inferred that their supply is chiefly derived by percolation from the sea.[1] [Footnote 1: DARWIN, in his admirable account of the coral formations of the Pacific and Indian oceans, has propounded a theory as to the abundance of fresh water in the atolls and islands on coral reefs, furnished by wells which ebb and flow with the tides. Assuming it to be impossible to separate salt from sea water by filtration, he suggests that the porous coral rock being permeated by salt water, the rain which falls on the surface must sink to the level of the surrounding sea, "and must accumulate there, displacing an equal bulk of sea water--and as the portion of the latter in the lower part of the great sponge-like mass rises and falls with the tides, so will the fresh water near the surface."--_Naturalist's Journal_, ch. xx. But subsequent experiments have demonstrated that the idea of separating the salt by filtration is not altogether imaginary; as Darwin seems to have then supposed; and Mr. WITT, in a remarkable paper _On a peculiar power possessed by Porous Media of removing matters from solution in water_, has since succeeded in showing that "water containing considerable quantities of saline matter in solution may, by merely percolating through great masses of porous strata during long periods, be gradually deprived of its salts _to such an extent as probably to render even sea-water fresh_."--_Philos. Mag_., 1856. Divesting the subject therefore of this difficulty, other doubts would appear to suggest themselves as to the applicability of Darwin's theory to coral formations in general. For instance, it might be supposed that rain falling on a substance already saturated with moisture, would flow off instead of sinking into it; and that being of less specific gravity than salt water, it would fail to "displace an equal bulk" of the latter. There are some extraordinary but well attested statements of a thin layer of fresh water being found on the surface of the sea, after heavy rains in the Bay of Bengal. (_Journ. Asiat. Soc. Beng_. vol. v. p. 239.) Besides, I fancy that in the majority of atolls and coral islands the quantity of rain which so small an area is calculated to intercept would be insufficient of itself to account for the extraordinary abundance of fresh water daily drawn from the wells. For instance, the superficial extent of each of the Laccadives is but two or three square miles, the surface soil resting on a crust of coral, beneath which is a stratum of sand; and yet on reaching the latter, fresh water flows in such profusion, that wells and large tanks for soaking coco-nut fibre are formed in any place by merely "breaking through the crust and taking out the sand."--_Madras Journal_, vol. xiv. It is curious that the abundant supply of water in these wells should have attracted the attention of the early navigators, and Cosmas Indicoplenstes, writing in the sixth century, speaks of the numerous small islands off the coast of Taprobane, with abundance of fresh water and coco-nut palms, although these islands rest on a bed of sand. (_Cosmas Ind_. ed. Thevenot, vol. i. p. 3, 20). It is remarkable that in the little island of Ramisseram, one of the chain which connects Adam's Bridge with the Indian continent, fresh water is found freely on sinking for it in the sand. But this is not the case in the adjacent island of Manaar, which participates in the geologic character of the interior of Ceylon. The fresh water in the Laccadive wells always fluctuates with the rise and fall of the tides. In some rare instances, as on the little island of Bitra, which is the smallest inhabited spot in the group, the water, though abundant, is brackish, but this is susceptible of an explanation quite consistent with the experiments of Mr. Witt, which require that the process of percolation shall be continued "during _long_ periods and through _great masses of porous strata_;" Darwin equally concedes that to keep the rain fresh when banked in, as he assumes, by the sea, the mass of madrepore must be "sufficiently thick to prevent mechanical admixture; and where the land consists of loose blocks of coral with open interstices, the water, if a well be dug, is brackish." Conditions analogous to all these particularised, present themselves at Jaffna, and seem to indicate that the extent to which fresh water is found there, is directly connected with percolation from the sea. The quantity of rain which annually falls is less than in England, being but thirty inches; whilst the average heat is highest in Ceylon, and the evaporation great in proportion. Throughout the peninsula, I am informed by Mr. Byrne, the Government surveyor of the district, that as a general rule "_all the wells are below the sea level_." It would be useless to sink them in the higher ground, where they could only catch surface water. The November rains fill them at once to the brim, but the water quickly subsides as the season becomes dry, and "_sinks to the uniform level, at which it remains fixed for the next nine or ten months_, unless when slightly affected by showers." "_No well below the sea level becomes dry of itself_," even in seasons of extreme and continued drought. But the contents do not vary with the tides, the rise of which is so trifling that the distance from the ocean, and the slowness of filtration, renders its fluctuations imperceptible. On the other hand, the well of Potoor, the phenomena of which indicate its direct connection with the sea, by means of a fissure or a channel beneath the arch of magnesian limestone, rises and falls a few inches in the course of every twelve hours. Another well at Navokeiry, a short distance from it, does the same, whilst the well at Tillipalli is entirely unaffected as to its level by any rains, and exhibits no alteration of its depths on either monsoon. ADMIRAL FITZROY, in his _Narrative of the Surveying Voyages of the Adventure and Beagle_, the expedition to which Mr. Darwin was attached, adverts to the phenomenon in connection with the fresh water found in the Coral Islands, and the rise and fall of the wells, and the flow and ebb of the tide. He advances the theory propounded by Darwin of the retention of the river-water, which he says, "does not mix with the salt water which surrounds it except at the edges of the land. The flowing tide pushes on every side, the mixed soil being very porous, and causes the water to rise: when the tide falls, the fresh water sinks also. _A sponge full of fresh water placed gently in a basin of salt water, will not part with its contents for a length of time if left untouched_, and the water in the middle of the sponge will be found untainted by salt for many days: perhaps much longer if tried."--Vol. i. p. 365. In a perfectly motionless medium the experiment of the sponge may no doubt be successful to the extent mentioned by Admiral Fitzroy; and so the rain-water imbibed by a coral rock might for a length of time remain fresh where it came into no contact with the salt. But the disturbance caused by the tides, and the partial intermixture admitted by Admiral Fitzroy, must by reiterated occurrence tend in time to taint the fresh water which is affected by the movement: and this is demonstrable even by the test of the sponge; for I find that on charging one with coloured fluid, and immersing it in a vessel containing water perfectly pure, no intermixture takes place so long as the pure water is undisturbed; but on causing an artificial tide, by gradually withdrawing and as gradually replacing a portion of the surrounding contents of the basin, the tinted water in the sponge becomes displaced and disturbed, and in the course of a few ebbs and flows its escape is made manifest by the quantity of colour which it imparts to the surrounding fluid.] An idea of the general aspect of Ceylon will be formed from what has here been described. Nearly four parts of the island are undulating plains, slightly diversified by offsets from the mountain system which entirely covers the remaining fifth. Every district, from the depths of the valleys to the summits of the highest hills, is clothed with perennial foliage; and even the sand-drifts, to the ripple on the sea line, are carpeted with verdure, and sheltered from the sunbeams by the cool shadows of the palm groves. SOIL.--But the soil, notwithstanding this wonderful display of spontaneous vegetation, is not responsive to systematic cultivation, and is but imperfectly adapted for maturing a constant succession of seeds and cereal productions.[1] Hence arose the disappointment which beset the earliest adventurers who opened plantations of coffee in the hills, on discovering that after the first rapid development of the plants, delicacy and languor ensued, which were only to be corrected by returning to the earth, in the form of manures, those elements with which it had originally been but sparingly supplied, and which were soon exhausted by the first experiments in cultivation. [Footnote 1: See a paper in the Journal of Agriculture, for March, 1857, Edin.: on _Tropical Cultivation and its Limits_, by Dr. MACVICAR.] _Patenas_.--The only spots hitherto found suitable for planting coffee, are those covered by the ancient forests of the mountain zone; and one of the most remarkable phenomena in the oeconomic history of the island, is the fact that the grass lands on the same hills, closely adjoining the forests and separated from them by no visible line save the growth of the trees, although they seem to be identical in the nature of the soil, have hitherto proved to be utterly insusceptible of recla