24 



MODEEN HISTORY. 



[Part VI. 



A.D. 



An internecine war now raged for years in Ceylon, the 



1594. pQ^.^^^g^iege in successive forays penetrating to Kandy, and 



even to Oovah and Saffragam, burning towns, uprooting 



fruit trees, diiving away cattle, and making captives to be 



enslaved in the lowlands. 



These conflicts were, however, of uncertain success. 

 On some occasions the invaders, overpowered by the 

 energy of the Kandyans, were defeated and put to flight, 

 foUowed by the exasperated mountaineers to the gates of 

 Colombo.^ The frontier which separates the maritime 

 districts from the liiU country, was the scene of sanguinary 

 conflicts, and at length the low-country Singhalese, roused 

 to desperation by the miseries di^awn down on them in 

 never-ending hostihties, and by the atrocities peipetrated 

 by the Portuguese soldiery 2, manifested a determined 

 resistance to the common oppressors, who, alarmed in 

 turn for their own safety, mutinously resisted the orders 

 of their officers, and the Viceroy at Goa was appealed to 

 to arrest the disorganisation and utter ruin of the new 

 settlement.^ 



In the midst of these scenes of blood and disaster, 



1 Faeia t Socza, vol. iii. pt. iii. 

 cli. Aaii. ix. xii. &c. 



'^ "We had not gi-own odious to 

 the Ching-alas (Singhalese), had we 

 not provoked them by our infamous 

 proceeding's. Not only the poor sol- 

 diers went out to rob, but those Por- 

 tuguese who Avere lords of villaoes 

 added rapes and adulteries, which 

 obliged the people to seek the com- 

 pany of beasts in the mountains rather 

 than be subject to the more beastly 

 villanies of men." — Faria t Soijza, 

 vol. iii. pt. iii. eh. iii. p. 203. A thrill 

 of horror has l)een imparted to all who 

 liave read the story of tlu; atrocities 

 peqietratcd on the wife of Eheylapola, 

 the minister of the king of Kandy, 

 who, on the occasion of her husband's 

 revolt in 1815, compelled her to kill 

 her own cliildren by pounding them 

 in a rice-mortar. Put it ought to be 

 known that this inhuman practice 

 was taught to the Kandyans by the 



Portuguese; according to the truth- 

 fid Robert Knox, Simon CoiTea, 

 " when he got any victory over the 

 Chingulays, he did exercise gi'eat 

 cruelty. Pie would make the women 

 beat their o\^'n children in their mor- 

 tars wherein they iised to beat their 

 corn." — I\Js'ox, Hist. Relat., pt. iv. 

 ch. xiii. p. 177. 



It is a cmious illusti-ation of the 

 conviction left on the minds of the 

 Kandyans of the cruelty of Em-opeans, 

 that in 1664, when Eaja Singha 

 wished to inflict the utmost possible 

 punishment on one of his ministers, he 

 sent him to Colombo to be executed, 

 thinking that the Dutch, like the 

 Portuguese, were ingenious in the in- 

 vention of tortures. They, however, 

 restored him to liberty. — ^'aleniyx, 

 ch. xiv. p. 199 ; ch. xV. p. 249. 



^ I)e Couto, dec. xi. ch. xxxiii. 

 torn. vii. p. 178 ; Faeia y Souza, 

 vol. iii. pt. i. ch. ix. p. 73. 



