Ceylon; an Account of the Island Physical, Historical, and Topographical with Notices of Its Natural History Part 102

One inference is clear, from the story of Sindbad, that whilst the sea-coast of Ceylon was known to the Arabians, the interior had been little explored by them, and was so enveloped in mystery that any tale of its wonders, however improbable, was sure to gain credence. Hence, what Sindbad relates of the sh.o.r.e and its inhabitants is devoid of exaggeration: in his first visit the natives who received him were Malabars, one of whom had learned Arabic, and they were engaged in irrigating their rice lands from a tank. These are incidents which are characteristic of the north-western coast of Ceylon at the present day; and the commerce, for which the island was remarkable in the ninth and tenth centuries is implied by the expression of Sindbad, that on the occasion of his next voyage, when bearing presents and a letter from the Khalif to the King of Serendib, he embarked at Ba.s.sora in a s.h.i.+p, and with him "were many merchants."

Of the Arabian authors of the middle ages the one who dwells most largely on Ceylon is EDRISI, born of a family who ruled over Malaga after the fall of the Khalifs of Cordova. He was a _protege_ of the Sicilian king, Roger the Norman, at whose desire he compiled his Geography, A.D. 1154. But with regard to Ceylon, his pages contain only the oft-repeated details of the height of the holy mountain, the gems found in its ravines, the musk, the perfumes, and odoriferous woods which abound there.[1] He particularises twelve cities, but their names are scarcely identifiable with any now known.[2] The sovereign, who was celebrated for the mildness of his rule, was a.s.sisted by a council of sixteen, of whom four were of the national religion, four Christians, four Mussulmans, and four Jews; and one of the chief cares of the government was given to keeping up the historical records of the reigns of their kings, the lives of their prophets, and the sacred books of their law.

[Footnote 1: EDRISI mentions, that at that period the sugar-cane was cultivated in Ceylon.]

[Footnote 2: Marnaba, (_Manaar?_) Aghna Perescouri, (_Periatorre?_) Aide, Mahouloun, (_Putlam?_) Hamri, Telmadi, (_Talmanaar?_) Lendouma, Sedi; Hesli, Beresli and Medouna (_Matura?_). "Aghna" or "Ana," as Edrisi makes it the residence of the king, must be Anaraj.a.poora.]

s.h.i.+ps from China and other distant countries resorted to the island, and hither "came the wines of Irak, and Fars, which are purchased by the king, and sold again to his subjects; for, unlike the princes of India, who encourage debauchery but strictly forbid wine, the King of Serendib recommends wine and prohibits debauchery." The exports of the island he describes as silk, precious stones of every hue, rock-crystal, diamonds, and a profusion of perfumes.[1]

[Footnote 1: EDRISI, _Geogr._ Transl. de Jaubert, 4to. Paris, 1836, t.

i. p. 71, &c. Edrisi, in his "Notice of Ceylon," quotes largely and verbatim from the work of Abou-zeyd.]

The last of this cla.s.s of writers to whom it is necessary to allude is KAZWINI, who lived at Bagdad in the thirteenth century, and, from the diversified nature of his writings, has been called the Pliny of the East. In his geographical account of India, he includes Ceylon, but it is evident from the details into which he enters of the customs of the court and the people, the burning of the widows of the kings on the same pile with their husbands, that the information he had received had been collected amongst the Brahmanical, not the Buddhist portion of the people. This is confirmatory of the actual condition of the people of Ceylon at the period as shown by the native chronicles, the king being the Malabar Magha, who invaded the island from Caligna 1219 A.D., overthrew the Buddhist religion, desecrated its monuments and temples, and destroyed the edifices and literary records of the capital.[1]

[Footnote 1: _Mahawanso_, ch. lx.x.x. _Rajaratnacari_, p. 93; _Rajavali_, p. 256. TURNOUR'S _Epitome, &c_., p. 44.]

KAZWINI, as usual, dwells on the productions of the island, its spices, and its odours, its precious woods and medical drugs, its profusion of gems, its gold and silver work, and its pearls[1]: but one circ.u.mstance will not fail to strike the reader as a strange omission in these frequent enumerations of the exports of Ceylon. I have traced them from their earliest notices by the Greeks and Romans to the period when the commerce of the East had reached its climax in the hands of the Persians and Arabians; the survey extends over fifteen centuries, during which Ceylon and its productions were familiarly known to the traders of all countries, and yet in the pages of no author, European or Asiatic, from the earliest ages to the close of the thirteenth century, is there the remotest allusion to _Cinnamon_ as an indigenous production, or even as an article of commerce in Ceylon. I may add, that I have been equally unsuccessful in finding any allusion to it in any Chinese work of ancient date.[2]

[Footnote 1: KAZWINI, in Gildemeister, _Script. Arab_. p. 108.]

[Footnote 2: In the Chinese Materia Medica, "_Pun-tsao-kang-muh_,"

cinnamon or ca.s.sia is described under the name of "_kwei_" but always as a production of Southern China and of Cochin China. In the Ming History, a production of Ceylon is mentioned under the name of "_Shoo-heang_," or "tree-perfume;" but my informant, Mr. Wylie, of Shanghae, is unable to identify it with cinnamon oil.]

This unexpected result has served to cast a suspicion on the t.i.tle of Ceylon to be designated _par excellence_ the "Cinnamon Isle," and even with the knowledge that the cinnamon laurel is indigenous there, it admits of but little doubt that the spice which in the earlier ages was imported into Europe through Arabia, was obtained, first from Africa, and afterwards from India; and that it was not till after the twelfth or thirteenth century that its existence in Ceylon became known to the merchants resorting to the island. So little was its real history known in Europe, even at the latter period, that Phile, who composed his metrical treatise, [Greek: Peri Zoon Idiotetos], for the information of the Emperor Michael XI. (Palaeologus), about the year 1310, repeats the ancient fable of Herodotus, that cinnamon grew in an unknown Indian country, whence it was carried by birds, from whose nests it was abstracted by the natives of Arabia.[1]

[Footnote 1:

[Greek: Ornis ho kinnamomos onomasmenos To kinnamomon euren agnooumenon, Huph ou kalian organoi tois philtatois Mallon ie tois melasin Indois, autanax Aromatiken hedonen diaplekei.]

PHILE, xxviii.

VINCENT, in scrutinising the writings of the cla.s.sical authors, anterior to Cosmas, who treated of Taprobane, was surprised to discover that no mention of cinnamon as a production of Ceylon was to be met with in Pliny, Dioscorides, or Ptolemy, and that even the author of the mercantile _Periplus_ was silent regarding it. (Vol. ii. p. 512.) D'Herbelot has likewise called attention to the same fact. (_Bibl.

Orient._ vol. iii. p. 308.) This omission is not to be explained by ascribing it to mere inadvertence. The interest of the Greeks and Romans was naturally excited to discover the country which produced a luxury so rare as to be a suitable gift for a king; and so costly, that a crown of cinnamon tipped with gold was a becoming offering to the G.o.ds. But the Arabs succeeded in preserving the secret of its origin, and the curiosity of Europe was baffled by tales of cinnamon being found in the nest of the Phoenix, or gathered in marshes guarded by monsters and winged serpents. Pliny appears to have been the first to suspect that the most precious of spices came not from Arabia, but from aethiopia (lib. xii. c. xlii.); and COOLEY, in an argument equally remarkable for ingenuity and research, has succeeded in demonstrating the soundness of this conjecture, and establis.h.i.+ng the fact that the cinnamon brought to Europe by the Arabs, and afterwards by the Greeks, came chiefly from the eastern angle of Africa, the tract around Cape Gardafui, which is marked on the ancient maps as the _Regio Cinnamomifera._ (Journ. Roy. Georg.

Society, 1849, vol. xix. p. 166.) COOLEY has suggested in his learned work on "_Ptolemy and the Nile_," that the name _Gardafui_ is a compound of the Somali word _gard_, "a port," and the Arabic _afhaoni_, a generic term for aromata and spices. It admits of no doubt that the cinnamon of Ceylon was unknown to commerce in the sixth century of our era; although there is evidence of a supply which, if not from China, was probably carried in Chinese vessels at a much earlier period, in the Persian name _dar chini_, which means "_Chinese wood_," and in the ordinary word "cinn-amon," "_Chinese amomum_," a generic name for aromatic spices generally. (NEES VON ESENBACH, _de Cinnamono Disputatio_, p. 12.) Ptolemy, equally with Pliny, placed the "Cinnamon Region" at the north-eastern extremity of Africa, now the country of the Somaulees; and the author of the _Periplus_, mindful of his object, in writing a guidebook for merchant-seamen, particularises ca.s.sia amongst the exports of the same coast; but although he enumerates the productions of Ceylon, gems, pearls, ivory, and tortoisesh.e.l.l, he is silent as to cinnamon.

Dioscorides and Galen, in common with the travellers and geographers of the ancients, ignore its Singhalese origin, and unite with them in tracing it to the country of the Troglodytae. I attach no importance to those pa.s.sages in WAGENFELD'S version of _Sanchoniathon_, in which, amongst other particulars, obviously describing Ceylon under the name of "the island of Rachius," which he states to have been visited by the Phoenicians; he says, that the western province produced, the finest cinnamon ([Greek: kinnamo pollo te kai diapheronti]), that the mountains abounded in ca.s.sia (Greek: kasia aromatikotate]), and that the minor kings paid their tribute in both, to the paramount sovereign.

(SANCHONIATHON, ed. Wagenfeld, Bremen, 1837, lib. vii. ch. xii.). The MS. from which Wagenfeld printed, is evidently a mediaeval forgery (see note (A) to vol. i. ch. v. p. 547). Again, it is equally strange that the writers of Arabia and Persia preserve a similar silence as to the cinnamon of the island, although they dwell with due admiration on its other productions, in all of which they carried on a lucrative trade.

Sir WILLIAM OUSELEY, after a fruitless search through the writings of their geographers and travellers, records his surprise at this result, and mentions especially his disappointment, that Ferdousi, who enriches his great poem with glowing descriptions of all the objects presented by surrounding nations to the sovereigns of Persia,--ivory, ambergris, and aloes, vases, bracelets, and jewels,--never once adverts to the exquisite cinnamon of Ceylon.--_Travels_, vol. i, p. 41.

The conclusion deducible from fifteen centuries of historic testimony is, that the earliest knowledge of cinnamon possessed by the western nations was derived from China, and that it first reached Judea and Phoenicia overland by way of Persia (Song of Solomon, iv. 14: Revelation xviii, 13). At a later period when the Arabs, "the merchants of Sheba,"

competed for the trade of Tyre, and earned to her "the chief of all spices" (Ezekiel xvii. 22), their supplies were drawn from their African possessions, and the ca.s.sia of the Troglodytic coast supplanted the cinnamon of the far East, and to a great extent excluded it from the market. The Greeks having at length discovered the secret of the Arabs, resorted to the same countries as their rivals in commerce, and surpa.s.sing them in practical navigation and the construction of s.h.i.+ps, the Sabaeans were for some centuries reduced to a state of mercantile dependence and inferiority. In the meantime the Roman Empire declined; the Persians under the Sa.s.sanides engrossed the intercourse with the East, the trade of India now flowed through the Persian Gulf, and the ports of the Red Sea were deserted. "Thus the downfall, and it may be the extinction, of the African spice trade probably dates from the close of the sixth century, and Malabar succeeded at once to this branch of commerce."--COOLEY, _Regio Cinnamomifera_, p. 14. Cooley supposes that the Malabars may have obtained from Ceylon the cinnamon with which they supplied the Persians; as Ibn Batuta, in the fourteenth century, saw cinnamon trees drifted upon the sh.o.r.es of the island, whither they had been carried by torrents from the forests of the interior (_Ibn Batuta_, ch. xx. p. 182). The fact of their being found so is in itself sufficient evidence, that down to that time no active trade had been carried on in the article; and the earliest travellers in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, MARCO POLO, JOHN OF HESSE, FRA JORDa.n.u.s and others, whilst they allude to cinnamon as one of the chief productions of Malabar, speak of Ceylon, notwithstanding her wealth in jewels and pearls, as if she were utterly dest.i.tute of any spice of this kind.

NICOLA DE CONTI, A.D. 1444, is the first European writer, in whose pages I have found Ceylon described as yielding cinnamon, and he is followed by Varthema, A.D. 1506, and Corsali, A.D. 1515.

Long after the arrival of Europeans in Ceylon, cinnamon was only found in the forests of the interior, where it was cut and brought away by the Chalias, the caste who, from having been originally weavers, devoted themselves to this new employment. The Chalias are themselves an immigrant tribe, and, according to their own tradition, they came to the island only a very short time before the appearance of the Portuguese.

(See a _History of the Chalias_, by ADRIAN RAj.a.pAKSE, _a Chief of the Caste, Asiat. Reser._ vol. iii. p. 440.) So difficult of access were the forests, that the Portuguese could only obtain a full supply from them once in three years; and the Dutch, to remedy this uncertainty, made regular plantations in the vicinity of their forts about the year 1770 A.D., "_so that the cultivation of cinnamon in Ceylon is not yet a century old_"--COOLEY, p. 15. It is a question for scientific research rather than for historical scrutiny, whether the cinnamon laurel of Ceylon, as it exists at the present day, is indigenous to the island, or whether it is identical with the cinnamon of Abyssinia, and may have been carried thence by the Arabs; or whether it was brought to the island from the adjacent continent of India; or imported by the Chinese from islands still further to the east. One fact is notorious at the present day, that nearly the whole of the cinnamon grown in Ceylon is produced in a small and well-defined area occupying the S.W. quarter of the island, which has been at all times the resort of foreign s.h.i.+pping.

The natives, from observing its appearance for the first time in other and unexpected places, believe it to be sown by the birds who carry thither the undigested seeds; and the Dutch, for this reason, prohibited the shooting of crows,--a precaution that would scarcely be necessary for the protection of the plant, had they believed it to be not only indigenous, but peculiar to the island. We ourselves were led, till very recently, to imagine that Ceylon enjoyed a "natural monopoly" of cinnamon.

Mr. THWAITES, of the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kandy, is of opinion from his own observation, that cinnamon is indigenous to Ceylon, as it is found, but of inferior quality, in the central mountain range, as high as 3000 feet above the level of the sea--and again in the sandy soil near Batticaloa on the east coast, he saw it in such quant.i.ty as to suggest the idea that it must be the remains of former cultivation. This statement of Mr. Thwaites is quite in consistency with the narrative of VALENTYN (ch. vii.), that the Dutch, on their first arrival in Ceylon, A.D. 1601-2, took on board cinnamon at Batticaloa,--and that the surrounding district continued to produce it in great abundance in A.D.

1726. (Ib. ch. xv. p. 223, 224.) Still it must be observed that its appearance in these situations is not altogether inconsistent with the popular belief that the seeds may have been carried there by birds.

Finding that the Singhalese works accessible to me, the _Mahawanso_, the _Rajavali_, the _Rajaratnacari_, &c., although frequently particularising the aromatic shrubs and flowers planted by the pious care of the native sovereigns, made no mention of cinnamon, I am indebted to the good offices of the Maha-Moodliar de Sarem, of Mr. De Alwis, the translator of the _Sidath-Sangara_, and of Mr. Spence Hardy, the learned historian of Buddhism, for a thorough, examination of such native books as were likely to throw light on the question. Mr. Hardy writes to me that he has not met with the word cinnamon (_kurundu_) in any early Singhalese books; but there is mention of a substance called "_paspalawata_" of which cinnamon forms one of the ingredients. Mr. de Alwis has been equally unsuccessful, although in the _Saraswate Nigardu_, an ancient Sanskrit Catalogue of Plants, the true cinnamon is spoken of as _Sinhalam_, a word which signifies "belonging to Ceylon" to distinguish it from ca.s.sia, which is found in Hindustan. The Maha-Moodliar, as the result of an investigation made by him in communication with some of the most erudite of the Buddhist priesthood familiar with Pali and Singhalese literature, informs me that whilst cinnamon is alluded to in several Sanskrit works on Medicine, such as that of Susrata, and thence copied into Pali translations, its name has been found only in Singhalese works of comparatively modern date, although it occurs in the treatise on Medicine and Surgery popularly attributed to King Bujas Raja, A.D. 339. LankaG.o.dde, a learned priest of Galle, says that the word _law.a.n.ga_ in an ancient Pali vocabulary means cinnamon, but I rather think this is a mistake, for _law.a.n.ga_ or _lavanga_ is the Pali name for "cloves," that for cinnamon being _lamago_.

The question therefore remains in considerable obscurity. It is difficult to understand how an article so precious could exist in the highest perfection in Ceylon, at the period when the island was the very focus and centre of Eastern commerce, and yet not become an object of interest and an item of export. And although it is sparingly used in the Singhalese cuisine, still looking at its many religious uses for decoration and incense, the silence of the ecclesiastical writers as to its existence is not easily accounted for.

The explanation may possibly be, that cinnamon, like coffee, was originally a native of the east angle of Africa; and that the same Arabian adventurers who carried coffee to Yemen, where it flourishes to the present day, may have been equally instrumental in introducing cinnamon into India and Ceylon. In India its cultivation, probably from natural causes, proved unsuccessful; but in Ceylon the plant enjoyed that rare combination of soil, temperature, and climate, which ultimately gave to its qualities the highest possible development.]

The first authentic notice which we have of Singhalese cinnamon occurs in the voyages of Ibn Batuta the Moor, who, impelled by religious enthusiasm, set out from his native city Tangiers, in the year 1324, and devoted twenty-eight years to a pilgrimage, the record of which has ent.i.tled him to rank amongst the most remarkable travellers of any age or country.

On his way to India, he visited, in s.h.i.+raz, the tomb of the Imaum Abu Abd Allah, "who made known the way from India to the mountain of Serendib." As this saint died in the year of the _Hejira_ 331, his story serves to fix the origin of the Mahometan pilgrimages to Adam's Peak, in the early part of the tenth century. When steering for the coast of India, from the Maldives, Ibn Batuta was carried by the south-west monsoon towards the northern portion of Ceylon, which was then (A.D.

1347) in the hands of the Malabars, the Singhalese sovereign having removed his capital southward to Gampola. The Hindu chief of Jaffna was at this time in possession of a fleet in "which he occasionally transported his troops against the Mahometans on other parts of the coast;" where the Singhalese chroniclers relate that the Tamils at this time had erected forts at Colombo, Negombo, and Chilaw.

Ibn Batuta was permitted to land at Battala (Putlam) and found the sh.o.r.e covered with "cinnamon wood," which "the merchants of Malabar transport without any other price than a few articles of clothing which are given as presents to the king. This may be attributed to the circ.u.mstance that it is brought down by the mountain torrents, and left in great heaps upon the sh.o.r.e."

This pa.s.sage is interesting, though not devoid of obscurity, for cinnamon is not known to grow farther north than Chilaw, nor is there any river in the district of Putlam which could bear the designation of a "mountain torrent." Along the coast further south the cinnamon district commences, and the current of the sea may have possibly carried with it the uprooted laurels described in the narrative. The whole pa.s.sage, however, demonstrates that at that time, at least, Ceylon had no organised trade in the spice.

The Tamil chieftain exhibited to Ibn Batuta his wealth in "pearls," and under his protection he made the pilgrimage to the summit of Adam's Peak accompanied by four jyogees who visited the foot-mark every year, "four Brahmans, and ten of the king's companions, with fifteen attendants carrying provisions." The first day he crossed a river, (the estuary of Calpentyn?) on a boat made of reeds, and entered the city of Manar Mandali; probably the site of the present Minneri Mundal. This was the "extremity of the territory of the infidel king," whence Ibn Batuta proceeded to the port of Salawat (Chilaw), and thence (turning inland) he reached the city of the Singhalese sovereign at Gampola, then called Ganga-sri-pura, which he contracts into Kankar or Ganga.[1]

[Footnote 1: As he afterwards writes, Galle "Kale."]

He describes accurately the situation of the ancient capital, in a valley between two hills, upon a bend of the river called, "the estuary of rubies." The emperor he names "Kina," a term I am unable to explain, as the prince who then reigned was probably Bhuwaneka-bahu IV., the first Singhalese monarch who held his court at Gampola.

The king on feast days rode on a white elephant, his head adorned with very large rubies, which are found in his country, imbedded in "a white stone abounding in fissures, from which they cut it out and give it to the polishers." Ibn Batuta enumerates three varieties, "the red, the yellow, and the cornelian;" but the last must mean the sapphire, the second the topaz; and the first refers, I apprehend, to the amethyst; for in the following pa.s.sage, in describing the decorations of the head of the white elephant, he speaks of "seven rubies, each of which was larger than a hen's egg," and a saucer made of a ruby as broad as the palm of the hand.

In the ascent from Gampola to Adam's Peak, he speaks of the monkeys with beards like a man (_Presbytes ursinus_, or _P. cephalopterus_), and of the "fierce leech," which lurks in the trees and damp gra.s.s, and springs on the pa.s.sers by. He describes the trees with leaves that never fall, and the "red roses" of the rhododendrons which still characterise that lofty region. At the foot of the last pinnacle which crowns the summit of the peak, he found a minaret named after Alexander the Great[1]; steps hewn out of the rock, and "iron pins to which chains are appended"

to a.s.sist the pilgrims in their ascent; a well filled with fish, and last of all, on the loftiest point of the mountain, the sacred foot-print of the First Man, into the hollow of which the pilgrims drop their offerings of gems and gold.

[Footnote 1: In oriental tradition, Alexander is believed to have visited Ceylon in company with the "philosopher Bolinus," by whom De Sacy believes that the Arabs meant Apollonius of Tyana. There is a Persian poem by ASHREP, the _Zaffer Namah Skendari_, which describes the conqueror's voyage to Serendib, and his devotions at the foot-mark of Adam, for reaching which, he and Bolinus caused steps to be hewn in the rock, and the ascent secured by rivets and chains.--See OUSELEY'S _Travels_, vol. i. p. 58. ]

In descending the mountain, Ibn Batuta pa.s.sed through the village of Kalanga, near which was a tomb, said to be that of Abu Abd Allah Ibn Khalif[1]; he visited the temple of Dinaur (Devi-Neuera, or Dondera Head), and returned to Putlam by way of Kale (Galle), and Kolambu (Colombo), "the finest and largest city in Serendib."

[Footnote 1: Abu Abd Allah was the first who led the Mahometan pilgrims to Ceylon. The tomb alluded to was probably a _cenotaph_ in his honour; as Ibn Batuta had previously visited his tomb at s.h.i.+raz.]

CHAP. III.

CEYLON AS KNOWN TO THE CHINESE.

Although the intimate knowledge of Ceylon acquired by the Chinese at an early period, is distinctly ascribable to the sympathy and intercourse promoted by community of religion, there is traditional, if not historical evidence that its origin, in a remote age, may be traced to the love of gain and their eagerness for the extension of commerce. The Singhalese amba.s.sadors who arrived at Rome in the reign of the Emperor Clandius, stated that their ancestors had reached China by traversing India and the Himalayan mountains long before s.h.i.+ps had attempted the voyage by sea[1], and as late as the fifth century of the Christian era, the King of Ceylon[2], in an address delivered by his envoy to the Emperor of China, shows that both routes were then in use.[3]

[Footnote 1: PLINY, b. vi. ch. xxiv.]

[Footnote 2: Maha Naama, A.D. 428; _Sung-shoo_, a "History of the Northern Sung Dynasty," b. xcvii, p. 5.]

[Footnote 3: It was probably the knowledge of the overland route that led the Chinese to establish their military colonies in Kashgar, Yarkhand and the countries lying between their own frontier and the north-east boundary of India.--_Journ. Asiat._ 1. vi. p. 343. An emba.s.sy from China to Ceylon, A.D. 607, was entrusted to _Chang-Tsuen_, "Director of the Military Lands."--_Suy-shoo_; b. lx.x.xi. p. 3.]

It is not, however, till after the third century of the Christian era that we find authentic records of such journeys in the literature of China. The Buddhist pilgrims, who at that time resorted to India, published on their return itineraries and descriptions of the distant countries they had visited, and officers, both military and civil, brought back memoirs and statistical statements for the information of the government and the guidance of commerce.[1]