Ceylon; an Account of the Island Physical, Historical, and Topographical with Notices of Its Natural History Part 82

[Footnote 2: EDRISI; _Geographie_, &c., tom. i. p. 73.]

_Betel_--In connection with a diet so largely composed of vegetable food, arose the custom, which to the present day is universal in Ceylon,--of chewing the leaves of the betel vine, accompanied with lime and the sliced nut of the areca palm.[1] The betel (_piper betel_), which is now universally cultivated for this purpose, is presumed to have been introduced from some tropical island, as it has nowhere been found indigenous in continental India.[2] In Ceylon, its use is mentioned as early as the fifth century before Christ, when "betel leaves" formed the present sent by a princess to her lover.[3] In a conflict of Dutugaimunu with the Malabars, B.C. 161, the enemy seeing on his lips the red stain of the betel, mistook it for blood, and spread the false cry that the king had been slain.[4]

[Footnote 1: For an account of the medicinal influence of betel-chewing, see Part I. c. iii. -- ii. p. 112.]

[Footnote 2: ROYLE'S _Essay on the Antiquity of Hindoo Medicine, p._ 85.]

[Footnote 3: B. C. 504. _Mahawanso_, ch. ix. p. 57. Dutugaimunu, when building the Ruanwelle dagoba, provided for the labourers amongst other articles "the five condiments used in mastication." This probably refers to the chewing of betel and its accompaniments (_Mahawanso_, ch. x.x.x. p.

175). A story is told of the wife of a Singhalese minister, about A. D.

56, who to warn him of a conspiracy, sent him his "betel, &c., for mastication, omitting the chunam," hoping that coming in search of it, he might escape his "impending fate." _Mahawanso_, ch. x.x.xv. p. 219.]

[Footnote 4: _Rajavali_, p. 221.]

Intoxicating liquors are of sufficient antiquity to be denounced in the moral system of Buddhism. The use of toddy and drinks obtained from the fermentation of "bread and flour" is condemned in the laity, and strictly prohibited to the priesthood[1]; but the Arabian geographers mention that in the twelfth century, wine, in defiance of the prohibition, was imported from Persia, and drank by the Singhalese after being flavoured with cardamoms.[2]

[Footnote 1: HARDY'S _Buddhism_, e., ch. x. p. 474.]

[Footnote 2: EDRISI, _Geographle,_ &c., Trad. JAUBERT, tom. i. p. 73.]

CHAP. III

EARLY COMMERCE, s.h.i.+PPING, AND PRODUCTIONS.

TRADE.--At a very early period the ma.s.s of the people of Ceylon were essentially agricultural, and the proportion of the population addicted to other pursuits consisted of the small number of handicraftsmen required in a community amongst whom civilisation and refinement were so slightly developed, that the bulk of the inhabitants may be said to have had few wants beyond the daily provision of food.

Upon trade the natives appear to have looked at all times with indifference. Other nations, both of the east and west of Ceylon, made the island their halting-place and emporium; the Chinese brought thither the wares destined for the countries beyond the Euphrates, and the Arabians and Persians met them with their products in exchange; but the Singhalese appear to have been uninterested spectators of this busy traffic, in which they can hardly be said to have taken any share. The inhabitants of the opposite coast of India, aware of the natural wealth of Ceylon, partic.i.p.ated largely in its development, and the Tamils, who eagerly engaged in the pearl fishery, gave to the gulf of Manaar the name of Salabham, "the sea of gain."[l]

[Footnote 1: The Tamils gave the same name to Chilaw, which was the nearest town to the pearl fishery (and which Ibn Batuta calls _Salawat_); and eventually they called the whole island _Salabham_.]

_Native s.h.i.+pping._--The only mention made of native s.h.i.+ps in the sacred writings of the Singhalese, is in connection with missions, whether for the promotion of Buddhism, or for the negotiation of marriages and alliances with the princes of India.[1] The building of dhoneys is adverted to as early as the first century, but they were only intended by a devout king to be stationed along the sh.o.r.es of the island, covered by day with white cloths, and by night illuminated with lamps, in order that from them priests, as the royal almoners, might distribute gifts and donations of food.[2]

[Footnote 1: TURNOUR'S _Epitome_, App. p. 73.]

[Footnote 2: By King Maha Dailiya, A.D. 8. _Mahawanso_, ch. x.x.xiv. p.

211; _Rajavali_, p. 228; _Rajaratnacari_, p. 52.]

The genius of the people seems to have never inclined them to a sea-faring life, and the earliest notice which occurs of s.h.i.+ps for the defence of the coast, is in connection with the Malabars who were taken into the royal service from their skill in naval affairs.[1] A national marine was afterwards established for this purpose, A.D. 495, by the King Mogallana.[2] In the _Suy-shoo_, a Chinese history of the Suy dynasty, it is stated that in A.D. 607, the king of Ceylon "sent the Brahman Kew-mo-lo with thirty vessels, to meet the approaching s.h.i.+ps which conveyed an emba.s.sy from China."[3] And in the twelfth century, when Prakrama I. was about to enter on his foreign expeditions, "several hundreds of vessels were equipped for that service within five months."[4]

[Footnote 1: B.C. 247. _Mahawanso_, ch. xxi. p. 127.]

[Footnote 2: _Mahawanso_, ch. xl. TURNOUR'S MS. Transl.]

[Footnote 3: _Suy-shoo_, b. lx.x.xi. p. 3.]

[Footnote 4: TURNOUR'S _Epitome_, &c., App. p. 73.]

It is remarkable that the same apathy to navigation, if not antipathy to it, still prevails amongst the inhabitants of an island, the long sea-borde of which affords facilities for cultivating a maritime taste, did any such exist. But whilst the natives of Hindustan fit out sea-going vessels, and take service as sailors for distant voyages, the Singhalese, though most expert as fishers and boatmen, never embark in foreign vessels, and no instance exists of a native s.h.i.+p, owned, built, or manned by Singhalese.

The boats which are in use at the present day, and which differ materially in build at different parts of the island, appear to have been all copied from models supplied by other countries. In the south the curious canoes, which attract the eye of the stranger arriving at Point de Galle by their balance-log and outrigger, were borrowed from the islanders of the Eastern Archipelago; the more substantial canoe called a _ballam_, which is found in the estuaries and shallow lakes around the northern sh.o.r.e, is imitated from one of similar form on the Malabar coast; and the catamaran is common to Ceylon and Coromandel. The awkward dhoneys, built at Jaffna, and manned by Tamils, are imitated from those at Madras; while the Singhalese dhoney, south of Colombo, is but an enlargement of the Galle canoe with its outrigger, so clumsily constructed that the gunwale is frequently topped by a line of wicker-work smeared with clay, to protect the deck front the wash of the sea.[1]

[Footnote 1: The gunwale of the boat of Ulysses was raised by hurdles of osiers to keep off the waves.

[Greek: Phraxe de min rhipessi diamperes oisuinesi k.u.matos eilar emen pollen d' epecheuato hulen.] _Od._ v. 256.]

One peculiarity in the mode of constructing the native s.h.i.+pping of Ceylon existed in the remotest times, and is retained to the present day. The practice is closely connected with one of the most imaginative incidents in the medieval romances of the East Their boats and canoes, like those of the Arabs and other early navigators who crept along the sh.o.r.es of India, are put together without the use of iron nails[1], the planks being secured by wooden bolts, and st.i.tched together with cords spun from the fibre of the coconut.[2]

PALLADIUS, a Greek of the lower empire, to whom is ascribed an account of the nations of India, written in the fifth century[3], adverts to this peculiarity of construction, and connects it with the phenomenon which forms so striking an incident in one of the tales in the _Arabian Nights' Entertainments_. In the story of the "Three Royal Mendicants,"

the "Third Calender," as he is called in the old translation, relates to the ladies of Bagdad, in whose house he is entertained, how he and his companions lost their course, when sailing in the Indian Ocean, and found themselves in the vicinity of "the mountain of loadstone towards which the current carried them with violence, and when the s.h.i.+ps approached it they fell asunder, and the nails and everything that was of iron flew from them towards the loadstone."

[Footnote 1: DELAURIER, etudes sur la "_Relation des voyages faits par les Arabes et les Persans dans l'Inde." Journ. Asiat._ tom. xlix. p.

137. See also MALTE BRUN, _Hist. de Geogr._ tom. i. p. 409, with the references to the Periplus Mar. Erythr., Strabo, Procopius, &c. GIBBON, _Decl. and Fall_, vol. v. ch. xl.]

[Footnote 2: Boats thus sewn together existed at an early period on the coast of Arabia as well as of Ceylon. Odoric of Friuli saw them at Ormus in the fourteenth century (_Hakluyt_, vol. ii. p. 35); and the construction of s.h.i.+ps without iron was not peculiar to the Indian seas, as Homer mentions that the boat built by Ulysses was put together with woolen pegs, [Greek: _gomphoisin_], instead of bolts. _Odys_. v. 249.]

[Footnote 3: The tract alluded to is usually known as tne treatise _de Moribus Brachmanorum_, and ascribed to St. Ambrose. For an account of it see Vol. I. Pt. v. ch. i. p. 538.]

The learned commentator, LANE, says that several Arab writers describe this mountain of loadstone, and amongst others he instances El Caswini, who lived in the latter half of the thirteenth century.[1] EDRISI, the Arab geographer, likewise alludes to it; but the invention belongs to an earlier age, and Palladius, in describing Ceylon, says that the magnetic rock is in the adjacent islands called Maniolae (Maldives?), and that s.h.i.+ps coming within the sphere of its influence are irresistibly drawn towards it, and lose all power of progress except in its direction.

Hence it is essential, he adds, that vessels sailing for Ceylon _should be fastened with wooden instead of iron bolts_.[2]

[Footnote 1: LANE'S _Arabian Nights_, vol. i. ch. iii, p. 72, p. 242.]

[Footnote 2: [Greek: "Esti de idikos ta diaperonta ploia eis ekeinen ten megalen neson aneu siderou epiouriois xylinois kataskeuasmena"]--PALLADIUS, in _Pseudo-Callisthenes_, lib. iii. c. vii.

But the fable of the loadstone mountain is older than either the Arabian sailors or the Greeks of the lower empire. Aristotle speaks of a magnetic mountain on the coast of India, and Pliny repeats the story, adding that "si sint clavi in calciamentis, vestigia avelli in altero non posse in altero sisti."--Lib. ii. c. 98, lib. x.x.xvi. c. 25. Ptolemy recounts a similar fable in his geography. Klaproth, in his _Lettre sur la Boussole_, says that this romantic belief was first communicated to the West from China. "Les anciens auteurs Chinois parlent aussi de montagnes magnetiques de la mer meridionale sur les cotes de Tonquin et de la Cochin Chine; et disent que si les vaisseaux etrangers qui sont garnis de plaques de fer s'en approchent ils y sont arretes et aucun d'eux ne peut pa.s.ser par ces endroits."--KLAPROTH, _Lett._ v. p. 117, quoted by SANTAREM, _Essai sur l'Histo. de Cosmogr._, vol. i. p. 182.]

Another peculiarity of the native craft on the west coast of Ceylon is their construction with a prow at each extremity, a characteristic which belongs also to the Ma.s.soula boats of Madras, as well as to others on the south of India. It is a curious ill.u.s.tration of the abiding nature of local usages when originating in necessities and utility, that STRABO, in describing the boats in which the traffic was carried on between Taprobane and the continent, says they were "built with prows at each end, but without holds or keels."[1]

[Footnote 1: [Greek: "Kateskeuasmenas de amphoterothen enkoilion metron choris."]--Lib xv. c. i. s. 14. Pliny, who makes the same statement, says the Singhalese adopted this model to avoid the necessity of tacking in the narrow and shallow channels, between Ceylon and the mainland of India (lib. vi. c. 24).]

In connection with foreign trade the _Mahawanso_ contains repeated allusions to s.h.i.+ps wrecked upon the coast of Ceylon[1], and amongst the remarkable events which signalised the season, already rendered memorable by the birth of Dutugaimunu, B.C. 204, was the "arrival on the same day of seven s.h.i.+ps laden with golden utensils and other goods;"[2]

and as these were brought by order of the king to Mahagam, then the capital of Rohuna, the incident is probably referable to the foreign trade which was then carried on in the south of the island[3] by the Chinese and Arabians, and in which, as I have stated, the native Singhalese took no part.

[Footnote 1: B.C. 543. _Mahawanso_, ch. vii. p. 49: B.C. 306. Ibid. ch.

xi. p. 68, &c.]

[Footnote 2: _Mahawanso_, ch. xxii. p. 135.]

[Footnote 3: The first direct intimation of trading carried on by native Singhalese, along the coast of Ceylon, occurs in the _Rajavali_, but not till the year A.D. 1410,--the king, who had made Cotta his capital, being represented as "loading a vessel with goods and sending it to Jaffna, to carry on commerce with his son."--_Rajavali_, p. 289.]

Still, notwithstanding their repugnance to intercourse with strangers, the Singhalese were not dest.i.tute of traffic amongst themselves, and their historical annals contain allusions to the mode in which it was conducted. Their cities exhibited rows of shops and bazaars[1], and the country was traversed by caravans much in the same manner as the drivers of _tavalams_ carry goods at the present day between the coast and the interior.[2]

[Footnote 1: B.C. 204, a visitor to Anaraj.a.poora is described as "purchasing aromatic drugs from the bazaars, and departing by the Northern Gate" (_Mahawanso_, ch. xxiii. p. 139); and A.D. 8, the King Maha Dathika "ranged shops on each side of the streets of the capital."--_Mahawanso_, ch. x.x.xiv. p. 213.]

[Footnote 2: B.C. 170. _Mahawanso_ ch. xxii. p. 138.]

Whatever merchandise was obtained in barter from foreign s.h.i.+ps, was by this means conveyed to the cities and the capital[1], and the reference to carts which were accustomed to go from Anaraj.a.poora to the division of Malaya, lying round Adam's Peak, "to procure saffron and ginger,"