Part 96 (1/2)

[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]