152 COLOMBO. [Part VII. 



to the banks of tlie Kalany-ganga. Hence from its 

 contiguity to the river, the city obtained the early name 

 of Kalan-totta, the " Kalany Ferry," by which it is men- 

 tioned in the Rajavali. To the Singhalese, always 

 uninterested in sliipping, the roadstead, and the head- 

 land which protects it, were matters of indifference ; 

 but in the twelfth and tliii-teenth centuries, the Moors 

 appear to have taken possession of the beach and 

 harbom\ and converted the name to Kalambu, under 

 w^hich it is described by Ibn Battta about the year 

 A.D. 1340, "as the finest and largest city in Serendib."^ 

 They built the tomb of one of their Santons on the 

 rocks at the Galle-baak^, and its desecration by the 

 Portuguese when they erected then- fortified factory 

 near the spot in 1517^, served to exasperate the 

 akeady jealous Mahometans. The designation of the 

 city had then been further changed to Kolamba or 

 Cohwihu, and the Portuguese, probably pleased to dis- 

 cover that the name of their new settlement so nearly 

 approached that of Columbus^, rendered the resem- 

 blance still more close by writing it Colombo, whence is 

 derived the name borne by the fortress at the present 

 day.^ 



The houses in the Pettah were formerly clustered 

 close under the fortifications ; but on the outbreak of 

 hostihties vv^th the Enoiisli in 1795, the last Dutch 



' " Urbs quain Ibn Batuta maximam 

 insiil.ie invenit Kalambu iiomen liuc- 

 iisque sel•^•avit." — GiLDEitEiSTEE, 

 Script. Arab. p. 54. 



^ Galle-baak or Galle-6rtrtA-p« 

 (Dutch), the "beacon"' on the "rocks" 

 close by the present lig'ht-hoiise. 



Query. Did the stone with the 



^ This explanation is more simple 

 than that of Valentj-n and the Dutch 

 waiters, who imagined that Colombo 

 was dem"ed from Col-amba, the leaf 

 of the mango-tree, " (lennamd Col 

 Amhu oft Mangaas-blad afnamen." 

 — Oud en Xieuw Oost-Iiidien, ch. xv. 

 p. 275. But this fanciful derivation 



Cufic inscri})±ion of the tenth centuiy, ; is imsoimd, as the place bears no re- 

 whicli in ls27 fonned a door-step in semblance to a leaf, and tlie mango 

 the Pettah at Colombo, form any por- I tree wa.s then unknown in the locality, 

 tion of the Moorisli buildings at the Perhaps a better derivation tlian 

 Galle-baak ? See IVtoiii. Roy. A.nat. i either is that in the tSichith Saiu/ara, 

 Sac., vol. i. p. 545. (tILDEMETSTEK, where one of the meanings of the 

 Script. Arab., p. 50. word Kolamba is said to be a " liar- 



■* Knox, part i. p. P>. I bonr." — De Alwis, p. 4. 



