( 537t ) 



XXXII*. A Letter to the Secretary relating to the preceding Inscription. 

 By Sir Alexander Johnston, Knt., V.P.R.A.S. 



Sir: 



I some time ago had the honour to send you the fac-simile of an ancient 

 inscription found at Trincomalee, on the east side of the island of Ceylon ; 

 I now have the honour to send you the fac-simile of one found at Colombo, 

 on the west side of that island. The first is of importance, as connected 

 with the plan which I proposed to Government, in 1806, for restoring the 

 northern, eastern, and western provinces of Ceylon to their ancient state of 

 agricultural improvement, by affording to the Hindu capitalists of Jaffna, 

 and the opposite peninsula of India, such privileges and immunities as 

 might induce them to employ their capital and their cultivators in the re-cul- 

 tivation of those extensive and once highly cultivated provinces. The 

 second is of importance, as connected with the plan which I submitted to 

 Government also in 1806, for restoring the same provinces to their ancient 

 state of commercial prosperity, by establishing free ports in the most conve- 

 nient parts of the island, by repealing many taxes which, without being 

 productive to Government, were peculiarly obnoxious to the Mohammedan 

 traders of Ceylon, and by inducing the Mohammedan capitalists of the 

 coasts of Malabar, Coromandel, and Malacca, to make Ceylon, in modern 

 times, what it was in ancient times, the great emporium of their trade in 

 India. 



The former plan was the result of a very laborious inquiry which, with 

 the assistance of the most learned and enlightened of the Brahmans and 

 Hindus of Ceylon and Ramissarum, I instituted into the history of the 

 ancient agricultural estabHshments of all the different tribes of Hindus on 

 the southern peninsula of India and the island of Ceylon. The latter was 

 the result of an equally laborious inquiry which, with the assistance of the 

 most learned and enUghtened of the Mohammedan priests and merchants, 

 as well of Ceylon as of the coasts of Malabar, Coromandel, Malacca, and 

 the Eastern Islands, I instituted into the history of the ancient commercial 

 establishments of the Mohammedans on the coasts of India and Ceylon. 

 As the latter inquiry, from the character and the nations of the different 



Vol. I. 4 B* 



