602 



MEDIAEVAL HISTORY. 



[Part V. 



wlio, impelled by religious enthusiasm, set out from liis 

 native city Tangiers, in the year 1324, and devoted 



A.D. 1444, is the first European win- 

 ter, in whose pages I have found 

 Ceylon described as yielding cinna- 

 mon, and he is followed by Varthema, 

 A.D. 1506, and Corsali, a.d. 1515. 



Long after the arrival of Europeans 

 in Ceylon, cinnamon was only found 

 in the forests of the interior, where it 

 was cut and brought away by the 

 Chalias, the caste who, from having 

 been originally weavers, devoted 

 themselves to this new employment. 

 The Chalias are themselves an im- 

 migi-ant tribe, and, according to their 

 own tradition, they came to the 

 island only a veiy short time before 

 the appearance of the Portuguese. 

 (See a Ifistori/ of the Chalias, by 

 Adkian Rajapakse, a Chief of the 

 Caste, Asiat. JReser. vol. iii. p. 440.) 

 So difficult of access were the forests, 

 that the Portuguese coidd only obtain 

 a full supply from them once in three 

 years ; and the Dutch, to remedy this 

 uncertainty, made regular jilautations 

 in the vicinity of their forts about the 

 year 1770 a.d., " so tJuit the cultivation 

 of cinnamon in Ceylon is not yet a cen- 

 tury oW — CooLEY, p. 15. It is a 

 question for scientific research rather 

 than for historical scrutiny, whether 

 the cinnamon laurel of Ceylon, as it 

 exists at the present day, is indigenous 

 to the island, or whether it is identical 

 with the cinnamon of Abyssinia, and 

 may have been carried thence by the 

 Arabs ; or whether it was brought to 

 the island from the adjacent conti- 

 nent of India ; or impoi-ted by the 

 Chinese from islands still further 

 to the east. One fact is notorious 

 at the present day, that nearly the 

 whole of the cinnamon grown in 

 Ceylon is produced in a small and 

 well-detined area occupying the 

 S.W. quarter of the island, which 

 has been at all times the resort of 

 foreign shipping. The natives, from 

 observing its appearance for the first 

 time in other and imexpected places, 

 believe it to be sown by the birds 

 who carry thither the undigested 

 seeds j and the Dutch^ for this reason, 



prohibited the shooting of crows, — 

 a precaution that would scarcely be 

 necessary for the protection of the 

 plant, had they believed it to be not 

 only indigenous, but peculiar to the 

 island. We ourselves were led, till 

 very recently, to imagine that Ceylon 

 enjoyed a " natm'al monopoly" of 

 cinnamon. 



Mr. Th:vvaites, of the Royal Botanic 

 Gardens at Kandy, is of opinion from 

 his own observation, that cinnamon is 

 indigenous to Ceylon, as it is foimd, 

 but of inferior quality, in the centi-al 

 moimtaiu range, as high as 3000 feet 

 above the level of the sea — and 

 again in the sandy soil near Batti- 

 caloa on the east coast, he saw it in 

 svich quantity as to suggest the idea 

 that it must be the remains of for- 

 mer cultivation. This statement of 

 Mr. Thwaites is quite in consistency 

 with the narrative of Valentyn (ch. 

 vii.), that the Dutch, on their first 

 arrival in Ceylon, a.d. 1601-2, took 

 on board cinnamon at Batticaloa, — 

 and that the surrounding district 

 continued to produce it in great abun- 

 dance in A.D. 1 726. {Ih. ch. xv. p. 223, 

 224.) Still it must be observed that 

 its appearance in these situations is 

 not altogether inconsistent wdth the 

 popular belief that the seeds may 

 haA'e been carried there by birds. 



Finding that the Singhalese works 

 accessible to me, the 3Iahaivanso, the 

 Rajavali, the Rajaratnacari, 8fc., al- 

 though frequently particularising the 

 aromatic shrubs and flowers planted 

 by the pious care of the native 

 sovereigns, made no mention of 

 cinnamon, I am indebted to the 

 good offices of the Maha-Moodliar de 

 Sarem, of Mr. De Alwis, the trans- 

 lator of the Sidath-Sanyara, and of 

 Mr. Spence Hardy, the learned his- 

 torian of Buddhism, for a thorough 

 examination of such native books as 

 were likely to throw light on the 

 question. Mr. Hardy writes to me 

 that he has not met with the woi-d 

 cinnamon (kurunchi) in any early 

 Singlialese books ; but there is men- 



