Chap. IV.] CEYLON AS KNOWN TO THE MOOES. 633 



joyed under tlie government.^ In process of time their 

 prosperity invested tliem with pohtical influence, and in 

 the dechne of the Singhalese monarchy they took ad- 

 vantage of the feebleness of the king of Cotta, to direct 

 armed expeditions against parts of the coast, to plunder 

 the inhabitants, and supply themselves with elephants 

 and pearls.^ They engaged in conspiracies against the 

 native princes ; and Wijayo Bahu VII., who was mur- 

 dered in 1534, was slain by a turbulent Moorish leader 

 called Soleyman, whom his eldest son and successor had 

 mstis:ated to the crime.^ 



The appearance of the Portuguese in Ceylon at this 

 critical period, served not only to check the career of the 

 Moors, but to extinguish the independence of the native 

 princes ; and looldng to the facihty with which the former 

 had previously superseded the Malabars, and were fast 

 acquu'ing an ascendency over the Singhalese chiefs, it 

 is not an unreasonable conjecture that, but for this 

 timely appearance of a Christian power in the island, 

 Ceylon, instead of a possession of the British crown, 

 might at the present day have been a Mahometan king- 

 dom, under the rule of some Arabian adventm^er. 



But although the position of the Arabs in relation to 

 the commerce of the East underwent no unfavourable 

 change prior to the arrival of the Portuguese in the 

 Indian seas, numerous circumstances combined in the 

 early part of the sixteenth century to bring other 

 European nations into communication with the East. 



' '^ Molti Mori Malabari vengono a 

 stantiare in questa isola per esser in 

 gTandissima liberta, oltra tutte le 

 commodita c delitie del mondo," etc. 

 — Odoardo Bakbosa, Sommario clelle 

 Indie Orientale, in Eamusio, vol. i. p. 

 313. 



2 Rajavali, p. 274. 



3 lb., p. 284. PoECACCHT, in his 

 Isolario, wi-itten at Venice a.d. 157G, 

 thus records the traditional i-eputa- 



VOL. I. T 



tion of the Moors of Ceylon : — " I 

 Mori ch' habitano hogoi la Taprobana 

 fanno gi-andissimi traihchi, nauigando 

 per tutto : et piu anchora vengono da 

 diverse parte molte mercantie, massi- 

 mamente dal paese di Cambaia, con 

 coralli, cinabi-io, et argento vivo. 

 Ma son questi Mori perfidi et ani- 

 niazzono spesse, volte i lor Re ; et ne 

 creano degli altri." — Page 188. 



