636 



MEDLEVAL HISTORY. 



[Pakt V. 



landed, but he calls tlie Idng Sender-naz^ a name wliich 

 may possibly be identified with the Malay Chandra- 

 banu, who twice invaded the island during the reign 

 of Pandita Prakrama-bahu III.^ 



He repeats the former exaggerated account as to the 

 dimensions of Ceylon ; he says that it was beheved to 

 have been anciently larger still, and he shows inciden- 

 tally that as early as the thuteenth century, the Arab 

 sailors possessed charts of the island which they used 

 in navigating the Indian seas.^ Then, as now, the 

 universal costume of the Singhalese was the cotton 

 " comboy," worn only on the lower half of the body ^, 

 their grains were sesamum and rice ; their food the latter 

 with milk and flesh-meat ; and their diink coco-nut toddy, 

 which Marco calls "wine drawn fi'om the trees." He 

 dwells with rapture on the gems and costly stones, and, 

 above all, on the great ruby, a span long, for which Kubla 

 Khan offered the value of a city. With singular truth he 

 says, " the people are averse to a military hfe, abject and 

 timid, and when they have occasion to employ soldiers, 

 they procure them from other countries in the vicinity 

 of the Mahometans." From this it would seem that six 

 hundred years ago, it was the practice in Ceylon, as it 

 is at the present day, to recruit the forces of the island 

 from the Malays. 



The next Venetian whose travels qualified him to 

 speak of Ceylon was the Minorite friar Odoeic, of 

 Portenau in Friuh^, who, setting out from the Black 

 Sea in 1318, traversed the Asian continent to China, 

 and retm^ned to Italy after a journey of twelve years. 

 In Ceylon he was struck by the number of serpents, 



1 Pandita Prakraina Bahoo III. 

 was also called KalikaUa Saahitya 

 Sargwajnya. — Tuhnohr's Epitome, 

 p. 44. 



"^ I have seen with the sailors of 

 the Maldives, who resort to Ceylon 



at the present day, charts e\ddently 

 copied fi'om very ancient originals. 



^ See the drawing, page 612. 



* Itinerarmm Fratris Odoeici de 

 Foro Julii de Portii-Vahonis. 



