NOTES. 547t 



Mantotte. It appears by tlie report made to me in 1806, while I was on the spot collecting 

 information for the purpose of having it repaired, that if put into repair it would irrigate 

 lands sufficient for the production of one million of parrahs of paddy, each parrah containing 

 forty-four English pounds weight of rice. 



(R). I have a copy in my possession of a very curious and very ancient grant in copper, 

 made by one of the Cingalese kings of Ceylon, about six or seven hundred years ago, to a great 

 Mohammedan merchant who was then residing at Barbareen, and to his descendants for ever, 

 of certain privileges and immunities in consequence of his having introduced from the opposite 

 coast of India the first weavers of cloth who were ever established on Ceylon. By virtue of 

 this grant, the lineal descendants of that merchant now enjoy under the British Government a 

 portion of the privileges which were granted to their ancestors by the ancient Cingalese govern- 

 ment of the country, and which were successively confirmed to them by the Portuguese, Dutch, 

 and English Governments on Ceylon. Tlie chief of this family was appointed by me, in 1806, 

 native superintendant of the medical department, under the control of the Supreme Court. He 

 was considered by the natives of the country as one of the best informed of the native physicians 

 on the island, and possessed one of the best collections of native medical books, most of which 

 had been in his family between seven and eight hundred years, during the whole of which period 

 it had been customary for one member of his family at least to follow the medical profession. 

 This same person made me a very detailed report of all the plants on Ceylon which have been 

 used from time immemorial for medical purposes by Mohammedan native physicians on that 

 island. The cultivation and improvement of these plants, as well as of all other plants and 

 vegetables on the island which might be used either for food or commercial purposes, was one of 

 the great objects for which his Majesty's Government, at my suggestion, in 1810, established a 

 royal botanical garden in Ceylon. 



(S). While investigating questions relative to the laws of marriage and inheritance between 

 the Mohammedans of Ceylon, I have frequently been referred by them for my guidance to 

 notes which they possessed, of decisions given hi similar cases by the cadies of Bagdad and 

 Cordova, which decisions had been observed as law amongst the Mohammedans of Ceylon for 

 seven or eight hundred years. 



(T). One of the principal Arabic works on medicine which they introduced into Ceylon 

 was the work of Avicenna ; they also introduced Arabic translations of Aristotle, Plato, Euclid, 

 Galen, and Ptolemy, extracts of which were frequently brought to me while I was on Ceylon 

 by the Mohanuiiedan priests and merchants, who stated that the works themselves had originally 

 been procured from Bagdad by their ancestors, and had remained for some hundred years in 

 their respective families in Ceylon, but had subsequently been sold by them, when in distress, 

 for considerable sums of money, to some merchants who traded between Ceylon and the eastern 

 islands. Three very large volumes of extracts from the works to which I have alluded 

 were presented to me by a Mohammedan priest of great celebrity in Asia, who died about twenty 

 years ago on the Island of Ceylon. These three volumes, together with between five and six hun- 

 dred books in the Cingalese, Pali, Tanuil, and Sanscrit languages, relating to the history, religion, 

 manners, and literature of the Cingalese, Hindu, and Mohammedan inhabitants of Ceylon, which 



