578 



MEDIAEVAL HISTOEY. 



[Part V. 



CHAP. II. 

 INDIAN, ARABIAN, AND PERSIAN AUTHORITIES. 



On closing tlie volume of Cosmas, we part with tlie last 

 of tlie Greek writers whose pages guide us through the 

 mist that obscures the early history of Ceylon. The reh- 

 gion of the Hindus is based on a system of physical error, 

 so incompatible with the extension of scientific truth, that 

 in their language the term "geography" is unknown.^ 

 But still it is remarkable as an illustration of the uninquir- 

 ing character of the people, that the allusions of Indian 

 authors to Ceylon, an island of such magnitude, and so 

 close to their own country, are pre-eminent for ab- 

 surdity and ignorance. Their " Lanka " and its inha- 

 bitants are but the distortion of a reahty into a myth. 

 Albyrouni, the Arabian geographer, writing in the ele- 

 venth century, says that the Hindus at that day thought 

 the island haunted ; their ships saihng past it, kept at a 

 distance from its shores ; and even within the present 

 century, it was the popular behef on the continent of India 

 that the interior of Ceylon was peopled by demons and 

 monkeys.^ 



But the century in which Cosmas wrote witnessed 

 the rise of a power whose ascendant energy diffused 



' Tlie Arabians began the study so 

 late, that tbey, too, bad to borrow a 

 word from the Greeks, wbence their 

 term " (IJaf/raJiyay 



• MooPv's Hindu Panthemi, p. 018. 

 Mode speaks of an educated Indian 

 gentleman who was attached as 

 Munshi to the stafl' of Mr. North, 



Governor of Ceylon, in 1804, and 

 who, on his retm-n to the continent, 

 wi'ote a history of the island, in 

 which he repeats the belief current 

 among his countrymen, that " the 

 interior was not inhabited by human 

 beings of the ordinary shapes." — 

 P. 329. 



