Ceylon; an Account of the Island Physical, Historical, and Topographical with Notices of Its Natural History Part 106

CHAP. IV.

CEYLON AS KNOWN TO THE MOORS, GENOESE, AND VENETIANS.

The rapid survey of the commerce of India during the middle ages, which it has been necessary to introduce into the preceding narrative, will also serve to throw light on a subject hitherto but imperfectly investigated.

The most remarkable of the many tribes which inhabit Ceylon are the Mahometans, or, as they are generally called on the island, the "Moor-men," energetic and industrious communities of whom are found on all parts of the coast, but whose origin, adventures, and arrival are amongst the historical mysteries of Ceylon.

The meaningless designation of "Moors," applied to them, is the generic term by which it was customary at one time, in Europe, to describe a Mahometan, from whatsoever country he came, as the word Gentoo[1] was formerly applied in England to the inhabitants of Hindustan, without distinction of race. The practice probably originated from the Spaniards having given that name to the followers of the Prophet, who, traversing Morocco, overran the peninsula in the seventh and eighth centuries.[2]

The epithet was borrowed by the Portuguese, who, after their discovery of the pa.s.sage by the Cape of Good Hope, bestowed it indiscriminately upon the Arabs and their descendants, whom, in the sixteenth century, they found established as traders in every port on the Asian and African coast, and whom they had good reason to regard as their most formidable compet.i.tors for the commerce of the East.

[Footnote 1: The practice originated with the Portuguese, who applied to any unconverted native of India the term _gentio_, "idolator" or "barbarian."]

[Footnote 2: The Spanish word "_Moro_" and the Portuguese, "_Mouro_" may be traced either to the "Mauri," the ancient people of Mauritania, now Morocco, or to the modern name of "Moghrib," by which the inhabitants, the Moghribins, designate their country.]

Particular events have been a.s.sumed as marking the probable date of their first appearance in Ceylon. Sir Alexander Johnston, on the authority of a tradition current amongst their descendants, says, that "the first Mahometans who settled there were driven from Arabia in the early part of the eighth century, and established themselves at Jaffna, Manaar, Koodramali, Putlam, Colombo, Barberyn, Point de Galle, and Trincomalie."[1] The Dutch authorities, on the other hand, hold that the Moors were Moslemin only by profession, that by birth they were descendants of a mean and detestable Malabar caste, who in remote times had been converted to Islam through intercourse with the Arabs of Ba.s.sora and the Red Sea; that they had frequented the coasts of India as seamen, and then infested them as pirates; and that their first appearance in Ceylon was not earlier than the century preceding the landing of the Portuguese.[2]

[Footnote 1: _Trans. Roy. Asiat. Society_, 1827, A.D. vol. i. 538. The Moors, who were the informants of Sir Alexander Johnston, probably spoke on the equivocal authority of the _Tohfut-ul-mujahideen_, which is generally, but erroneously, described as a narrative of the settlement of the Mahometans in Malabar. Its second chapter gives an account of "the manner in which the Mahometan religion was first propagated" there; and states that its earliest apostles were a Sheikh and his companions, who touched at Cranganore about 822 A.D., when on their journey as pilgrims to the sacred foot-print on Adam's Peak. (ROWLANDSON, _Orient.

Transl. Fund_, pp. 47. 55.) But the introduction of the new faith into this part of India was subsequent to the arrival of the Arabs themselves, who had long before formed establishments at numerous places on the coast.]

[Footnote 2: VALENTYN, ch. xv. p. 214.]

The truth, however, is, that there were Arabs in Ceylon ages before the earliest date named in these conjectures[1]; they were known there as traders centuries before Mahomet was born, and such was their pa.s.sion for enterprise, that at one and the same moment they were pursuing commerce in the Indian Ocean[2], and manning the galleys of Marc Antony in the fatal sea-fight at Actium.[3] The author of the _Periplus_ found them in Ceylon about the first Christian century, Cosmas Indico-pleustes in the sixth; and they had become so numerous in China in the eighth, as to cause a tumult at Canton.[4] From the tenth till the fifteenth century, the Arabs, as merchants, were the undisputed masters of the East; they formed commercial establishments in every country that had productions to export, and their vessels sailed between every sea-port from Sofala to Bab-el-Mandeb, and from Aden to Sumatra.[5] The "Moors,"

who at the present day inhabit the coasts of Ceylon, are the descendants of these active adventurers; they are not purely Arabs in blood, but descendants from Arabian ancestors by intermarriage with the native races who embraced the religion of the Prophet.[6] The Singhalese epithet of "_Marak-kala-minisu_" or "Mariners," describes at once their origin and occupation; but during the middle ages, when Ceylon was the Tyre of Asia, these immigrant traders became traders in all the products of the island, and the brokers through whose hands they pa.s.sed in exchange for the wares of foreign countries. At no period were they either manufacturers or producers in any department; their genius was purely commercial, and their attention was exclusively devoted to buying and selling what had been previously produced by the industry and ingenuity of others. They were dealers in jewelry, connoisseurs in gems, and collectors of pearls; and whilst the contented and apathetic Singhalese in the villages and forests of the interior pa.s.sed their lives in the cultivation of their rice-lands, and sought no other excitement than the pomp and ceremonial of their temples; the busy and ambitious Mahometans on the coast built their warehouses at the ports, crowded the harbours with their shipping, and collected the wealth and luxuries of the island, its precious stones, its dye-woods, its spices and ivory, to be forwarded to China and the Persian Gulf.

[Footnote 1: MOUNTSTUART ELPHINSTONE, on the authority of Agatharchidos (as quoted by Diodorus and Photius), says, that "from all that appears in that author, we should conclude that two centuries before the Christian era, the trade (between India and the ports of Sabaea) was entirely in the hands of the Arabs."--_Hist. India_, b. iii. c. x. p.

167.]

[Footnote 2: Pliny, b. vi. c. 22.]

[Footnote 3:

"Omnis eo terrore aegyptus et Indi Omnes Arabes vertebant terga Sabaei."

VIRGIL, _aen._ viii. 705.]

[Footnote 4: ABOU-ZEYD, vol. i. p. xlii. cix.]

[Footnote 5: VINCENT, vol. ii. p. 451. The Moors of Ceylon are identical in race with "the Mopillees of the Malabar coast."--McKENZIE, _Asiat.

Res._, vol. vi. p. 430.]

[Footnote 6: In a former work, "_Christianity in Ceylon_," I was led, by incorrect information, to describe a section of the Moors as belonging to the sect of the Shiahs, and using the Persian language in the service of their mosques (c. i. note, p. 34). There is reason to believe that at a former period there were Mahometans in Ceylon to whom this description would apply; but at the present day the Moors throughout the island are, I believe, universally Sonnees, belonging to one of the four orthodox sects called _Shafees_, and using Arabic as their ritual dialect. Their vernacular is Tamil, mixed with a number of Arabic words; and all their religious books, except the Koran, are in that dialect. Casie Chitty, the erudite District Judge of Chilaw, writes to me that "the Moors of Ceylon believe themselves to be of the posterity of Hashem; and, according to one tradition, their progenitors were driven from Arabia by Mahomet himself, as a punishment for their cowardice at the battle of Ohod. But according to another version, they fled from the tyranny of the Khalif Abu al Malek ben Merivan, in the early part of the eighth century. Their first settlement in India was formed at Kail-patam, to the east of Cape Comorin, whence that place is still regarded as the 'father-land of the Moors.'"

Another of their traditions is, that their first landing-place in Ceylon was at Barberyn, south of Caltura, in the 402nd year of the Hejira, (A.D. 1024.) These legends would seem to refer to the arrival of some important section of the Moors, but not to the first appearance of this remarkable people in Ceylon. The _Ceylon Gazetteer_, Cotta, 1834, p.

254, contains a valuable paper by Casie Chitty on "the Manners and Customs of the Moors of Ceylon."]

MARCO POLO, in the thirteenth century, found the Moors in uncontested possession of this busy and lucrative trade, and BARBOSA, in his account of the island, A.D. 1519, says, that not only were they to be found in every sea-port and city, conducting and monopolising its commerce, but Moors from the coast of Malabar were continually arriving to swell their numbers, allured by the facilities of commerce and the unrestrained freedom enjoyed under the government.[1] In process of time their prosperity invested them with political influence, and in the decline of the Singhalese monarchy they took advantage of the feebleness of the king of Cotta, to direct armed expeditions against parts of the coast, to plunder the inhabitants, and supply themselves with elephants and pearls.[2] They engaged in conspiracies against the native princes; and Wijayo Bahu VII., who was murdered in 1534, was slain by a turbulent Moorish leader called Soleyman, whom his eldest son and successor had instigated to the crime.[3]

[Footnote 1: "Molti Mori Malabari vengono a stantiare in questa isola per esser in grandissima liberta, oltra tutte le commodita e delitie del mondo," etc.--ODOARDO BARBOSA, _Sommario delle Indie Orientale_, in _Ramusio_, vol. i. p. 313.]

[Footnote 2: _Rajavali_, p. 274.]

[Footnote 3: Ib., p. 284. PORCACCHI, in his _Isolario_, written at Venice A.D. 1576, thus records the traditional reputation of the Moors of Ceylon:--"I Mori ch' habitano hoggi la Taprobana fanno grandissimi traffichi, nauigando per tutto: et piu anchora vengono da diverse parte molte mercantie, ma.s.simamente dal paese di Cambaia, con coralli, cinabrio, et argento vivo. Ma son questi Mori perfidi et ammazzono spesse, volte i lor Re; et ne creano degli altri."--Page 188.]

The appearance of the Portuguese in Ceylon at this critical period, served not only to check the career of the Moors, but to extinguish the independence of the native princes; and looking to the facility with which the former had previously superseded the Malabars, and were fast acquiring an ascendency over the Singhalese chiefs, it is not an unreasonable conjecture that, but for this timely appearance of a Christian power in the Island, Ceylon, instead of a possession of the British crown, might at the present day have been a Mahometan kingdom, under the rule of some Arabian adventurer.

But although the position of the Arabs in relation to the commerce of the East underwent no unfavourable change prior to the arrival of the Portuguese in the Indian seas, numerous circ.u.mstances combined in the early part of the sixteenth century to bring other European nations into communication with the East.

The productions of India, whether they pa.s.sed by the Oxus to the Caspian, or were transported in caravans from the Tigris to the sh.o.r.es of the Black Sea, were poured into the magazines of Constantinople, the merchants of which, previous to the fall of the Lower Empire, were the most opulent in the world. During the same period, Egypt commanded the trade of the Red Sea; and received, through Aden, the luxuries of the far East, with which she supplied the Moorish princes of Spain, and the countries bordering on the Mediterranean.[1]

[Footnote 1: ODOARDO BARBOSA, In Ramusio, vol. i. p. 292. BALDELLI BONI, _Relazione dell' Europa e dell' Asia,_ lib. ix. ch. xlvii FARIA Y SOUSA; _Portug. Asia,_ part i. ch. viii.]

Even when the dominion of the Khalifs was threatened by the rising power of the Turks, and long after the subsidence of the commotions and vicissitudes which marked the period of the Crusades, part of this lucrative commerce was still carried to Alexandria, by the Nile and its ca.n.a.ls. The Genoese and Venetians, each eager to engross the supply of Europe, sought permission from the Emperors to form establishments on the sh.o.r.es of the Black Sea and the Mediterranean. The former advanced their fortified factories as far eastward as Tabriz, to meet the caravans returning from the Persian Gulf[1], and the latter, in addition to the formation of settlements at Tyre, Beyrout, and Acre[2], acquired after the fourth crusade, succeeded (in defiance of the interdict of the Popes against trading with the infidel) in negotiating a treaty with the Mamelukes for a share in the trade of Alexandria.[3] It was through Venice that England and the western nations obtained the delicacies of India and China, down to the period when the overland route and the Red Sea were deserted for the grander pa.s.sage by the Cape of Good Hope.[4]

[Footnote 1: GIBBON, _Decl. and Fall,_ ch. lxiii.]

[Footnote 2: DARU, _Hist. de Venise_ lib. xix. vol. iv. p. 74.

MACPHERSON'S _Annals of Commerce,_ vol. i. p. 370.]

[Footnote 3: So impatient were the Venetians to grasp the trade of Alexandria that Marino Sanuto, about the year 1321 A.D., endeavoured to excite a new crusade in order to wrest it from the Sultan of Egypt by force of arms, _Secreta Fidelium Crucis,_ in BONGARS, _Gesta Dei per Francos,_ Hanau, 1611. ADAM SMITH, _Wealth of Nations,_ b. iv. ch, vii DARU, _Hist. de Venise,_ lib. xix, vol. iv, p. 88.]

[Footnote 4: GIBBON, _Decl. and Fall_, ch. lx. The last of the Venetion "argosies" which reached the sh.o.r.es of England was cast away on the Isle of Wight, A.D. 1587.]

Another great event which stimulated the commercial activity of the Italians in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, was the extraordinary progress of the Mongols, who in an incredibly short s.p.a.ce of time absorbed Central Asia into one powerful empire, overthrew the ancient monarchy of China, penetrated to the heart of Russia, and directed their arms with equal success both against Poland and j.a.pan.

The popes and the sovereigns of Europe, alike alarmed for their dominions and their faith, despatched amba.s.sadors to the Great Khan; the mission resulted in allaying apprehension for the further advance of their formidable neighbours towards the west, and the vigilant merchants of Venice addressed themselves to effect an opening for trade in the new domains of the Tartar princes.

It is to this commercial enterprise that we are indebted for the first authentic information regarding China and India, that reached Europe after the silence of the middle ages; and the voyages of the Venetians, in some of which the realities of travel appear as extra-ordinary as the incidents of romance, contain accounts of Ceylon equally interesting and reliable.

MARCO POLO, who left Venice as a youth, in the year 1271, and resided seventeen years at the court of Kubla Khan, was the first European who penetrated to China Proper; whence he embarked in A.D. 1291, at Fo-Kien, and pa.s.sing through the Straits of Malacca, rested at Ceylon, on his homeward route by Ormuz.

He does not name the port in Ceylon at which he landed, but he calls the king _Sender-naz,_ a name which may possibly be identified with the Malay Chandra-banu, who twice invaded the island during the reign of Pandita Prakrama-bahu III.[1]

[Footnote 1: Pandita Prakrama Bahoo III. was also called Kalikalla Saahitya Sargwajnya,--TURNOUR'S _Epitome_, p. 44.]

He repeats the former exaggerated account as to the dimensions of Ceylon; he says that it was believed to have been anciently larger still, and he shows incidentally that as early as the thirteenth century, the Arab sailors possessed charts of the island which they used in navigating the Indian seas.[1] Then, as now, the universal costume of the Singhalese was the cotton "comboy," worn only on the lower half of the body[2], their grains were sesamum and rice; their food the latter with milk and flesh-meat; and their drink coco-nut toddy, which Marco calls "wine drawn from the trees." He dwells with rapture on the gems and costly stones, and, above all, on the great ruby, a span long, for which Kubla Khan offered the value of a city. With singular truth he says, "the people are averse to a military life, abject and timid, and when they have occasion to employ soldiers, they procure them from other countries in the vicinity of the Mahometans." From this it would seem that six hundred years ago, it was the practice in Ceylon, as it is at the present day, to recruit the forces of the island from the Malays.

[Footnote 1: I have seen with the sailors of the Maldives, who resort to Ceylon at the present day, charts evidently copied from very ancient originals.]

[Footnote 2: See the drawing, page 612.]

The next Venetian whose travels qualified him to speak of Ceylon was the Minorite friar ODORIC, of Portenau in Friuli[1], who, setting out from the Black Sea in 1318, traversed the Asian continent to China, and returned to Italy after a journey of twelve years. In Ceylon he was struck by the number of serpents, and the mult.i.tude of wild animals, lions (leopards?), bears, and elephants. "In it he saw the mountain on which Adam for the s.p.a.ce of 500 years mourned the death of Abel, and on which his tears and those of Eve formed, as men believed, a fountain;"

but this Odoric discovered to be a delusion, as he saw the spring gushing from the earth, and its waters "flowing over jewels, but abounding with leeches and blood-suckers." The natives were permitted by the king to collect the gems; and in doing so they smear their bodies with the juice of lemons to protect them from the leeches. The wild creatures, they said, however dangerous to the inhabitants of the island, were harmless to strangers. In that island Odoric saw "birds with two heads," which possibly implies that he saw the hornbill[2], whose huge and double casque may explain the expression.

[Footnote 1: _Itinerarium_ Fratris ODORICI de Foro Julii de Portu-Vahonis.]

[Footnote 2: _Buceros Pica_. See _ante_, Part II. ch. ii. p. 167.]

In the succeeding century[1] the most authentic account of Ceylon is given by NICOLO DI CONTI, another Venetian, who, though of n.o.ble family, had settled as a merchant at Damascus, whence he had travelled over Persia, India, the Eastern Archipelago, and China. Returning by way of Arabia and the Red Sea, in 1444, he fell into danger amongst some fanatical Mahometans, and was compelled to renounce the faith of a Christian, less from regard for his own safety than apprehension for that of his children and wife. For this apostacy he besought the pardon of Pope Eugenius IV., who absolved him from guilt on condition that he should recount his adventures to the apostolic secretary, Poggio Bracciolini, by whom they have been preserved in his dissertation on "_The Vicissitudes of Fortune_."[2]