Ceylon; an Account of the Island Physical, Historical, and Topographical with Notices of Its Natural History Part 96

[Footnote 2: From the Singhalese book, the "_Dharmma Padan_," or Footsteps of Religion, portions of which are translated in "_The Friend_," Colombo, 1840.]

Thus the outward concurrence of Christianity in those points on which it agrees with their own religion, has proved more embarra.s.sing to the natives than their perplexity as to others in which it essentially differs; till at last, too timid to doubt and too feeble to inquire, they cling with helpless tenacity to their own superst.i.tion, and yet subscribe to the new faith simply by adding it on to the old.

Combined with this state of irresolution a serious obstacle to the acceptance of reformed Christianity by the Singhalese Buddhists has arisen from the differences and disagreements between the various churches by whose ministers it has been successively offered to them. In the persecution of the Roman Catholics by the Dutch, the subsequent supercession of the Church of Holland by that of England, the rivalries more or less apparent between the Episcopalians and Presbyterians, and the peculiarities which separate the Baptists from the Wesleyan Methodists--all of whom have their missions and representatives in Ceylon--the Singhalese can discover little more than that they are offered something still doubtful and unsettled, in exchange for which they are pressed to surrender their own ancient superst.i.tion. Conscious of their inability to decide on what has baffled the wisest of their European teachers to reconcile, they hesitate to exchange for an apparent uncertainty that which has been unhesitatingly believed by generations of their ancestors, and which comes recommended to them by all the authority of antiquity; and even when truth has been so far successful as to shake their confidence in their national faith, the choice of sects which has been offered to them leads to utter bewilderment as to the peculiar form of Christianity with which they may most confidingly replace it.[1]

[Footnote 1: A narrative of the efforts made by the Portuguese to introduce Christianity, and by the Dutch to establish the reformed Religion, will be found in Sir J. EMERSON TENNENT'S _Christianity in Ceylon_; together with an exposition of the systems adopted by the European and American missions, and their influence on the Hindu and Buddhist races, respectively.

Those who seek to pursue the study of Buddhism, its tenets and economies, as it exhibits itself in Ceylon, will find ample details in the two profound works published by Mr. R. SPENCE HARDY: _Eastern Monachism_, Lond. 1850, and _A Manual of Buddhism, in its Modern Development_, Lond. 1853.]

PART V.

MEDIaeVAL HISTORY.

CHAPTER I.

CEYLON AS KNOWN TO THE GREEKS AND ROMANS.

Although mysterious rumours of the wealth and wonders of India had reached the Western nations in the heroic ages, and although travellers at a later period returning from Persia and the East had spread romantic reports of its vastness and magnificence, it is doubtful whether Ceylon had been heard of in Europe[1] even by name till the companions of Alexander the Great, returning from his Indian expedition, brought back accounts of what they had been told of its elephants and ivory, its tortoises and marine monsters.[2]

[Footnote 1: Nothing is more strikingly suggestive of the extended renown of Ceylon and of the different countries which maintained an intercourse with the island, than the number and dissimilarity of the names by which it has been known at various periods throughout Europe and Asia. So remarkable is this peculiarity, that La.s.sEN has made "the names of Taprobane" the subject of several learned disquisitions (_De Taprobane Insula veter. cogn. Dissert_. sec. 2, p. 5; _Indische Alterthumskunde_, vol. i. p. 200, note viii. p. 212, &c.); and BURNOUF has devoted two elaborate essays to their elucidation, _Journ. Asiat_.

1826, vol. viii. p. 129. _Ibid_., 1857, vol. x.x.xiii. p. 1.

In the literature of the Brahmans, Lanka, from having been the scene of the exploits of Rama, is as renowned as Ilion in the great epic of the Greeks. "Taprobane," the name by which the island was first known to the Macedonians, is derivable from the Pali "Tamba panni." The origin of the epithet will be found in the _Mahawanso_, ch. vii. p. 56. and it is further noticed in the present work, Vol. I. P. 1. ch. i. p. 17, and P.

III. ch. ii. p. 330.--It has likewise been referred to the Sanskrit "_Tambrapani_;" which, according to La.s.sEN, means "the great pond," or "the pond covered with the red lotus," and was probably a.s.sociated with the gigantic tanks for which Ceylon is so remarkable. In later times Taprobane was exchanged for Simundu, Palai-simundu, and Salike, under which names it is described by PTOLEMY, the author of the _Periplus_, and by MARCIa.n.u.s of Heraclaea. _Palai-simundu_, La.s.sEN conjectures to be derived from the Sanskrit _Pali-simanta_, "the head of the sacred law,"

from Ceylon having become the great centre of the Buddhist faith (_De Taprob_., p. 16; _Indische Alter_. vol. i. p. 200); and _Salike_ he regards merely as a seaman's corruption of "Sinhala or Sihala," the name chosen by the Singhalese themselves, and signifying "the dwelling place of lions." BURNOUF suggests whether it may not be _Sri-Lanka_, or "Lanka the Blessed."

_Sinhala_, with the suffix of "diva," or "dwipa" (island), was subsequently converted into "Silan-dwipa" and "Seren-diva," whence the "Serendib" of the Arabian navigators and their romances; and this in later times was contracted into Zeilan by the Portuguese, Ceylan by the Dutch, and Ceylon by the English. VINCENT, in his _Commentary on the Periplus of the Erythraean Sea_, vol. ii. p. 493, has enumerated a variety of other names borne by the island; and to all these might be further added those a.s.signed to it in China, in Siam, in Hindustan, Kashmir, Persia, and other countries of the East. The learned ingenuity of BOCHART applied a Hebrew root to expound the origin of Taprobane (_Geogr. Sac._ lib. ii. ch. xxviii.); but the later researches of TURNOUR, BURNOUF, and La.s.sEN have traced it with certainty to its Pali and Sanskrit origin.]

[Footnote 2: GOSSELIN, in his _Recherches sur la Geographie des Anciens_, tom. iii. p. 291, says that Onesicritus, the pilot of Alexander's fleet, "avoit visite la Taprobane pendant un nouveau voyage qu'il eut ordre de faire." If so, he was the first European on record who had seen the island; but I have searched unsuccessfully for any authority to sustain this statement of GOSSELIN.]

So vague and uncertain was the information thus obtained, that STRABO, writing upwards of two centuries later, manifests irresolution in stating that Taprobane was an island[1]; and POMPONIUS MELA, who wrote early in the first century of the Christian era, quotes as probable the conjecture of HIPPARCHUS, that it was not in reality an island, but the commencement of a south-eastern continent[2]; an opinion which PLINY records as an error that had prevailed previous to his own time, but which he had been enabled to correct by the information received from the amba.s.sador who had been sent from Ceylon to the Emperor Claudius.[3]

[Footnote 1: STRABO, l. ii. c.i.s. 14, c.v.s. 14, [Greek: einai phasi neson]; l. xv. c.i.s. 14. OVID was more confident, and sung of--

". . . . Syene Aut ubi Taprobanen Indica cingit aqua."

_Epst. ex Ponto_, l. 80]

[Footnote 2: "Taprobanen aut grandis admodum insula aut prima pars...o...b..s alterius Hipparcho dicitur."--P. MELA, iii. 7. "Dubitare poterant juniores num revera insula esset quam illi pro veterum Taprobane habebant, si nemo eousque repertus esset qui eam circ.u.mnaviga.s.set: sic enim de nostra quoque Brittania dubitatum est essetne insula antequam illam circ.u.mnaviga.s.set Agricola."--_Dissertatio de aetate et Amtore Peripli Maris Erythraei_; HUDSON, _Geographiae Veter. Scrip. Grac. Min._., vol. i. p. 97.]

[Footnote 3: PLINY, 1. vi. c. 24.]

In the treatise _De Mundo_, which is ascribed to ARISTOTLE[1], Taprobane is mentioned incidentally as of less size than Britain; and this is probably the earliest historical notice of Ceylon that has come down to us[2] as the memoirs of Alexander's Indian officers, on whose authority Aristotle (if he be the author of the treatise "_De Mundo_") must have written, survive only in fragments, preserved by the later historians and geographers.

[Footnote 1: I have elsewhere disposed of the alleged allusions of Sanchoniathon to an island which was obviously meant for Ceylon. (See Note (A) end of this chapter.) The authenticity of the treatise _De Mundo_, as a production of ARISTOTLE, is somewhat doubtful (SCHOELL, _Literat. Grecque_, liv. iv. c. xl.); and it might add to the suspicion of its being a modern composition, that Aristotle should do no more than mention the name and size of a country of which Onesicritus and Nearchus had just brought home accounts so surprising; and that he should speak of it with confidence as an island; although the question of its insularity remained somewhat uncertain at a much later period.]

[Footnote 2: Fabricius, in the supplemental volume of his _Codex Pseudepigraphi veteris Testamenti,_ Hamb., A.D. 1723, says: "Samarita, Genesis, viii. 4, tradit Noae arcam requievisse super montem [Greek: tes]

Serendib sive Zeylan."--P. 30; and it was possibly upon this authority that it has been stated in Kitto's _Cyclopoedia of Biblical Literature,_ vol. i. p. 199, as "a curious circ.u.mstance that in Genesis, viii. 4, the Samaritan Pentateuch has Sarandib, the Arabic name of Ceylon," instead of Ararat, as the resting place of the ark. Were this true, it would give a triumph to speculation, and serve by a single but irresistible proof to dissipate doubt, if there were any, as to the early intercourse between the Hebrews and that island as the country from which Solomon drew his triennial supplies of ivory, apes, and peac.o.c.ks (1 Kings, x.

22). a.s.suming the correctness of the opinion that the Samaritan Pentateuch is as old as the separation of the tribes in the reign of Rehoboam, B. C. 975-958, this would not only furnish a notice of Ceylon far anterior to any existing authority; but would a.s.sign an antiquity irreconcilable with historical evidence as to its comparatively modern name of "Serendib." The interest of the discovery would still be extraordinary, even if the Samaritan Pentateuch be referred to the later date a.s.signed to it by Frankel, who adduces evidence to show that its writer had made use of the Septuagint. The author of the article in the _Biblical Cyclopoedia_ is however in error. Every copy of the Samaritan Pentateuch, both those printed in the Paris _Polyglot_ and in that of Walton, as well as the five MSS. in the Bodleian Library at Oxford, which contain the eighth chapter of Genesis, together with several collations of the Hebrew and Samaritan text, make no mention of Sarandib, but all exhibit the word "Ararat" in its proper place in the eighth chapter of Genesis. "Ararat" is also found correctly in BLAYNET'S _Pentat, Hebroeo-Samarit.,_ Oxford, 1790.

But there is another work in which "Sarandib" does appear in the verse alluded to. PIETRO DELLA VALLE, in that most interesting letter in which he describes the manner in which he obtained at Damascus, in A.D. 1616, a ma.n.u.script of the Pentateuch on parchment in the Hebrew language, but written in Samaritan characters; relates that along with it he procured _another_ on paper, in which not only the letters, but the language, was Samaritan--"che non solo e seritto con lettere Samaritane, ma in lingua anche propria de' Samaritani, che e un misto della Ebraica e della Caldea."--_Viaggi, &c.,_ Lett. da Aleppo, 15. di Giugno A.D. 1616.

The first of these two ma.n.u.scripts is the Samaritan Pentateuch, the second is the "_Samaritan version_" of it. The author and age of the second are alike unknown; but it cannot, in the opinion of Frankel, date earlier than the second century, or a still later period. (DAVISON'S _Biblical Criticism,_ vol. i, ch. xv. p. 242.) Like all ancient targums, it bears in some particulars the character of a paraphrase; and amongst other departures from the literal text of the original Hebrew, the translator, following the example of Onkelos and others, has subst.i.tuted modern geographical names for some of the more ancient, such as _Gerizim_ for Mount Ebal (Deut. xxvii. 4), _Paneas_ for Dan, and _Ascalon_ for Gerar; and in the 4th verse of the viiith chapter of Genesis he has made the ark to rest "_upon the mountains of Sarandib._"

Onkelos in the same pa.s.sage has _Kardu_ in place of Ararat. See WALTON'S _Polyglot_, vol. i. p. 31; BASTOW, _Bibl. Dict._ 1847, vol. i. p. 71.

According to the _Mahawanso_, the epithet of Sihale-dwipa, the _island of lions_, was conferred upon Ceylon by the followers of Wijayo, B.C.

543 (_Mahawanso_, ch. vii. p. 51), and from this was formed, by the Arabian seamen, the names Silan-dip and Seran-dib. The occurrence of the latter word, therefore, in the "Samaritan Pentateuch," if its antiquity be referable to the reign of Rehoboam, would be inexplicable; whereas no anachronism is involved by its appearance in the "Samaritan _version_,"

which was not written till many centuries after the Wijayan conquest.

There is another ma.n.u.script, written on bombycine, in the Bodleian Library, No. 345, described as an Arabic version of the Pentateuch, written between the years 884 and 885 of the Hejira, A.D. 1479 and 1480, and ascribed to Aba Said, son of Abul Ha.s.san, "in eo continetur versio Arabica Pentateuchi quae ex textu Hebraeico-Samaritano _non ex versione ilia quae dialecto quadam peculieri Samaritanis quondam vernacula Scripta est_."--_Cat. Orient. MSS._ vol. I. p. 2. In this ma.n.u.script, also, the word _Sarendip_ instead of Ararat, occurs in the pa.s.sage in Genesis descriptive of the resting of the ark.]

From their compilations, however, it appears that the information concerning Ceylon collected by the Macedonian explorers of India, was both meagre and erroneous. ONESICRITUS, as he is quoted by Strabo and Pliny, propagated exaggerated statements as to the dimensions of the island[1] and the number of herbivorous cetacea[2] found in its seas; the elephants he described as far surpa.s.sing those of continental India both in courage and in size.[3]

[Footnote 1: These early errors as to the and position of Ceylon will be found explained elsewhere. See Vol. I. P. 1. ch. i. p. 81.]

[Footnote 2: STRABO, xv. p. 691. The animal referred to by the informants of Onesicritus was the dugong, whose form and att.i.tudes gave rise to the fabled mermaid. See aelian, lib. xvi. ch. xviii., who says it has the face of a woman and spines that resemble hair.]

[Footnote 3: PLINY, lib. vi. ch. 24.]

MEGASTHENES, twenty years after the death of Alexander the Great, was accredited as an amba.s.sador from Seleucus Nicator to the court of Sandracottus, or Chandra-Gupta, the King of the Prasii, from whose country Ceylon had been colonised two centuries before by the expedition under Wijayo.[1] It was, perhaps, from the latter circ.u.mstance and the communication subsequently maintained between the insular colony and the mother country, that Megasthenes, who never visited any part of India south of the Ganges, and who was, probably, the first European who ever beheld that renowned river[1], was nevertheless enabled to collect many particulars relative to the interior of Ceylon. He described it as being divided by a river (the Mahawelli-ganga?) into two sections, one infested by wild beasts and elephants, the other producing gold and gems, and inhabited by a people whom he called Palaeogoni[2], a h.e.l.lenized form of _Pali-Putra,_ "the sons of the Pali," the first Prasian colonists.

[Footnote 1: See Vol. I. P. III. ch. iii. p. 336.]

[Footnote 2: ROBEBTSON'S _Ancient India,_ sec. ii.]

[Footnote 3: SCHWANBECK'S _Megasthenes, Fragm._ xviii.; SOLINUS POLYHISTOR, lii. 3; PLINY, lvi. ch. 24. aeLIAN, in compiling his _Natura Animalium,_ has introduced the story told by MEGASTHENES, and quoted by STRABO, of cetaceous animals in the seas of Ceylon with heads resembling oxen and lions; and this justifies the conjecture that other portions of the same work referring to the island may have been simultaneously borrowed from the same source. SCHWANBECK, apparently on this ground, has included among the _Fragmenta incerta_ those pa.s.sages from aeLIAN, lib, xvi. ch. 17, 18, in which he says, and truly, that in Taprobane there were no cities, but from five to seven hundred villages built of wood, thatched with reeds, and occasionally covered with the sh.e.l.ls of large tortoises. The sea coast then as now was densely covered with palm-trees (evidently coco-nut and Palmyra), and the forests contained elephants so superior to those of India that they were s.h.i.+pped in large vessels and sold to the King of Calinga (Northern Circars). The island, he says, is so large that "those in the maritime districts never hunted in the interior, and those in the interior had never seen the sea."]

Such was the scanty knowledge regarding India communicated to Europe by those who had followed the footsteps of conquest into that remote region; and although eighteen centuries elapsed from the death of Alexander the Great before another European power sought to establish its dominion in the East, a new pa.s.sion had been early implanted, the cultivation of which was in the highest degree favourable to the acquisition and diffusion of geographical knowledge. In an age before the birth of history[1], the adventurous Phoenicians, issuing from the Red Sea, in their s.h.i.+ps, had reached the sh.o.r.es of India, and centuries afterwards their experienced seamen piloted the fleets of Solomon in search of the luxuries of the East.[2]

[Footnote 1: A compendious account of the early trade between India and the countries bordering on the Mediterranean will be found in PARDESSUS's _Collection des Lois Maritimes anterieures au XVIII^e siecle_, tom. i. p. 9.]

[Footnote 2: It has been conjectured, and not without reason, that it may possibly have been from Ceylon and certainly from Southern India that the fleets of Solomon were returning when "once in every three years came the s.h.i.+ps of Tars.h.i.+sh, bringing gold and silver, ivory, apes, and peac.o.c.ks."--_I Kings_, x. 22, _II Chron._, xx. 21. An exposition of the reasons for believing that the site of Tars.h.i.+sh may be recognised in the modern Point de Galle will be found in a subsequent chapter descriptive of that ancient emporium. See also Note A at the end of this chapter.]

Egypt, under the Ptolemies, became the seat of that opulent trade which it had been the aim of Alexander the Great to divert to it from Syria.

Berenice was built on the Red Sea, as an emporium for the s.h.i.+ps engaged in Indian voyages, and Alexandria excelled Tyre in the magnitude and success of her mercantile operations.

The conquest of Egypt by Augustus, so far from checking, served to communicate a fresh impulse to the intercourse with India, whence all that was costly and rare was collected in wanton profusion, to minister to the luxury of Rome. A bold discovery of the same period imparted an entirely new character to the navigation of the Indian Ocean. The previous impediment to trade had been the necessity of carrying it on in small vessels, that crept cautiously along the windings of the sh.o.r.e, the crews being too ignorant and too timid to face the dangers of the open sea. But the courage of an individual at length solved the difficulty, and dissipated the alarm. Hippalus, a seaman in the reign of Claudius, observing the steady prevalence of the monsoons[1], which blew over the Indian Ocean alternately from east to west, dared to trust himself to their influence, and departing from the coast of Arabia, he stretched fearlessly across the unknown deep, and was carried by the winds to Muziris, a port on the coast of Malabar, the modern Mangalore.

[Footnote 1: Arabic "_maussam_." I believe the root belongs to a dialect of India, and signifies "seasons." VINCENT fixes the discovery of the monsoons by Hippalus about the year A.D. 47, although it admits of no doubt that the periodical prevalence of the winds must have been known long before, if not partially taken advantage of by the seamen of Arabia and India. _Periplus, &c._, vol. ii, pp. 24--57.]