584 



MEDLEVAL HISTORY. 



[Part Y. 



tlie Mussulman tradition, wliicli associates the story of 

 Adam with Ceylon, though it was current amongst 

 the Copts in the fourth and fifth centiuies.^ On all 

 sides of the mountain, he adds, are the mines of rubies, 

 hyacinths, and other gems ; the interior produces aloes ; 

 and the sea the highly valued chank shells, which served 

 the Indians for trumpets.^ The island was subject to 

 two kings ; and on the death of the chief one his body 

 was placed on a low carriage, with the head declining 

 till the hair swept the ground, and, as it was di^awn 

 slowly along, a female, with a biuich of leaves, swept 

 dust upon the features, crying : " Men, behold your Idng, 

 whose will, but yesterday, was law ! To-day, he bids 

 farewell to the Avorld, and the Angel of Death has 

 seized his spirit. Cease, any longer, to be deluded by 

 the shadowy pleasures of hfe." At the conclusion of 

 this ceremony, which lasted for three days, the corpse 

 was consumed on a pyre of sandal, camphor, and aro- 

 matic woods, and the ashes scattered to the winds.^ 

 The widow of the Idng was sometimes burnt along with 

 his remains, but comphance wdtli the custom was not 

 held to be compulsory. 



Such is the account of Soleyman, but, in the second 

 part of the manuscript, Abou-zeyd, on the authority of 

 another informant, Ibn Waiiab, who had sailed to the 

 same countries, speaks of the pearls of Ceylon, and adds, 

 regarding its precious stones, that they were obtained in 

 part from the soil, but chiefly from those points of the 

 beach at which the rivers flowed into the sea and to 

 which the gems are carried down by the torrents from 

 the hills.* 



Abou-zeyd describes the frequent conventions of the 

 heads of the national rehgion, and the attendance of 



' See the account of Adam's Peak, 

 Tol. II. Pt. VII. ch. ii. 



^ Aboti-zeyD; Relation, ^-c, vol. i. 

 p. 5. 



^ Ih.j p. 50. The practice of burn- 

 ino: the remains of the king's and of 



persons of exalted rank, continued as 

 long as the native dynasty held the 

 throne of Kandy. — See Knox's His- 

 torical Relation of Ceylon, A.D. 1G81, 

 Part iii. c. ii. 



4 Ibiil, vol. i. p. 127. 



