Chap. Y.] 



MANUFACTURES. 



463 



corrected ; the letters where they occiu: have been 

 shown to be not Shighalese or Sanskrit, but Persian, 

 and the tokens themselves have been proved to be- 

 long to Laristan on the Persian Gulf, 

 from the chief emporium of which, Gam- 

 broon, they were brought to Ceylon in 

 the course of Indian commerce ; chiefly 

 by the Portuguese, who are stated by 

 Van Caedaen to have introduced them 

 in great quantities into Cochin and the 

 ports of Malabar.^ There they were 

 circulated so freely that an edict of Pra- 

 krama enumerates the ridi amongst the coins in wliich 

 the taxes were assessed on land.^ 



In India they are called larins, and money in imita- 

 tion of them, struck by the princes of Bijapur and by 

 Sivaji, the founder of the Mahrattas, was in ckculation 

 in the Dekkan as late as the seventeenth century.^ 



HOOK ldONE7. 



* " Les larins sont tout-a-fait com- 

 modes et necessaires dans les ludes, 

 surtout pour aclieter du poi\Te a 

 Cochin, oil Ton en fait grand etat." — 

 Voyage mix Incles Ormitales. Am- 

 sterdam, A.D. 1710, vol. \\. p. 626. 



^ Kock-iuscription at Dambool, 



A.D. 1200. The Rajavali mentions 

 the ridis as in circulation in Ceylon 

 at the period of tlie arrival of the 

 Portugaiese, a.d. 1505. — P. 278. 



^ Prof. Wilson's i?<'//K//-A-s on Fish- 

 hook 3Ioneij, Numism. Chronic, 1854, 

 p. 181. 



