APPENDIX. Vv 
local knowledge in the peninsula of India; the late Mr. Wueartry, who held an 
office under the collector of Madura, and all the young East-Indians who were 
employed by the late Colonel M‘Kenzie in surveying the country, and in inquiring 
into the history and the antiquities of the people, afford decisive evidence of the 
importance to science and literature of employing gentlemen of this class in making 
the researches to which the Royal Asiatic Society has directed its attention. Mr- 
Ricketts, who is now in England for the purpose of submitting to Parliament such 
information as it may require relative to the present situation of his countrymen, has, 
with great credit to himself, promised to use his influence with them in securing their 
co-operation for the Society. The ability and manly character which this gentleman 
has evinced since his arrival in England, and the zeal with which he has entered into 
the views of the Society, lead the Committee to anticipate with confidence that the 
Society will derive the greatest benefit from his co-operation, and that of his countrymen 
in every part of the continent of India. The Committee likewise expect to receive 
much assistance from the descendants of Europeans on the Island of Ceylon, who, as 
well under the Dutch as under the English government, have been employed in the most 
respectable and confidential situations, and who have always shewn, in the discharge 
of their respective duties, not only great talents, but a high sense of honour, and an 
earnest desire to aid in every research which is connected with the history of that island.* 
The Committee trust that the report which has just been made of their proceedings 
during the year, will shew that this Society is so constructed as to be enabled to obtain 
through its different members, for the British government and the British public, such 
local information upon many points now under public consideration, as can only be 
acquired by a long residence in India, and by an attentive observation of the country 
and of its inhabitants. 
NOTE. 
* Sir ALEXANDER JOHNsTON when president of His Majesty’s Council in Ceylon, conceiving that his Majesty’s 
Ministers could not efficiently adapt the system of the British government to the situation of the natives of the 
country without a thorough knowledge of their history, their religion, their manners, their customs, and even their 
prejudices, collected, with the assistance of many of these gentlemen, and that of the late Rasan Paxa, who was 
the native chief of the Cinnamon department, and the best Sanscrit, Pali, and Cingalese scholar in Ceylon, and 
caused to be translated into English, for the information of the British Government, the three most ancient 
histories of the Island of Ceylon, called the Mahdvansi the Réajavali, and the Réjaratnicari. The local 
histories of the Provinces of Trincomalee, the Wannie, Jaffna, Mantotte, and Coudramallee, the Hipporos of 
the Greeks, on Ceylon; the history of the island and of the pagoda of Rémiseram; the histories of the four 
provinces of Ramnad, Madura, Trichinopoly, and Tanjore, which formed a part of the Regio Pandionis of 
Pro.emy, on the southern peninsula of India, and various other works connected with the local histories of the 
principal Hindé and Budd’ hist temples on Ceylon. 
