Part 2 (1/2)

[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 _Mediaeval 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 Shanghae, 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, w.a.n.g TAO CHUNG, who was then in England; and he, on his return to Shanghae, made known my wishes to Mr. WYLIE. My antic.i.p.ations 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the courtesy of M. STANISLAS JULIEN, the eminent French Sinologue, has laid me under a similar obligation for access to unpublished pa.s.sages relative to Ceylon, in his translation of the great work of HIOUEN THSANG; in his translation of the great work of HIOUEN THSANG; descriptive of the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: _Memoires sur les Contrees 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 Ma.n.u.scripts, in the British Museum[1], has thrown an unexpected light over the fearful events of 1803, and the ma.s.sacre 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 pa.s.sages 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 ill.u.s.tration of more than one topic; and hence repet.i.tion 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 pa.s.sages. 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 unsurpa.s.sed, 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 sh.o.r.es, 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, a.s.signed 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 espece de paradis, et se sont imagine que des etres d'une nature angelique les habitaient.”--ALBYROUNI, Traite des eres, &c.; REINAUD, Geographie d'Aboulfeda, 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.