542t Sir A. Johnston's Letter relating to the preceding Inscription. 



great seal of England, by his Majesty's charter of ISIO, I received from 

 them the most useful suggestions, both as to the manner of rendering the 

 jury system popular amongst their sect, and that of attaining the real 

 ends of justice, without militating against any of the feelings, or even the 

 prejudices of the people. In 1815, when on my proposal tlicy adopted the 

 same resolution which all the other castes on Ceylon had adopted, of de- 

 claring free all children born of their slaves after tiie l'2th of August 1816, 

 I had every reason to applaud the humanity and liberality of the sentiments 

 and views, which they not only expressed but acted upon, in the progress 

 of that important measure. 



In 1806, while collecting, as I have already mentioned, the various usages 

 and customs of the Mohammedan inhabitants of Ceylon, I directed my 

 inquiries particularly to those customs and usages which could throw 

 any light on the history of their early settlements and former commercial 

 prosperity on tiiat island, and their intimate connexion and constant 

 communication with the Caliphs of Bagdad, during the eleventh and twelfth 

 centuries ; and I was referred by all the Mohammedan priests, merchants, 

 and mariners, by whom I was assisted in my inquiries, to the Cufic inscrip- 

 tion of which the accompanying is the fac-simile, as the oldest record on the 

 island which alluded to the intercourse that had subsisted in former days 

 between the Caliphs of Bagdad and the Mohammedans of Ceylon. 



The following is the tradition which prevails on Ceylon as to this 

 inscription. Tiiat it is supposed to be the most ancient Mohammedan 

 inscription on the island. That the Caliph of Bagdad, in the beginning 

 of the tenth century, hearing that the Mohammedans then established 

 as traders at Colombo were ignorant of and inattentive to the real tenets 

 of their religion, sent a learned and pious priest from Bagdad to Co- 

 lombo, with instructions to reform the Mohammedans of that place, 

 by explaining to them the nature of their religion, and by making such 

 estabhshments, and erecting such a mosque at Colombo, as were likely to 

 ensure for the future their strict observance of the real spirit of Moham- 

 medan worship. That this learned and pious man, after having erected a 

 very extensive mosque at Colombo and accompUshed the object of his 

 mission, died, and was buried at Colombo, close to the mosque he had 

 erected. That after his death, some learned persons were sent from Bagdad 

 to Colombo by the Caliph, for the express purpose of engraving this inscrip- 

 tion on his tomb-stone, and that this stone had remained on his grave undis- 



