INTRODUCTION. XXvil 



found in the Mahawanso, or in some other of the native 

 chronicles ; but that few had ever read them, and 

 none had succeeded in reproducing them for popular 

 instruction. 



A still more serious embarrassment arose from the 

 absence of authorities to throw light on questions that 

 were sometimes the subject of administrative delibera- 

 tion: there were native customs which no available 

 materials sufficed to illustrate ; and native claims, often 

 serious in their importance, the consideration of which 

 was obstructed by the want of authentic data. With 

 a view to executive measures, I was frequently de- 

 sirous of consulting the records of the two European 

 governments, under which the island had been ad- 

 ministered for 300 years before the arrival of the 

 British ; their experience might have served as a guide, 

 and even their failures would have pointed out errors 

 to be avoided ; but here, again, I had to encounter dis- 

 appointment : in answer to my inquiries, I was assured 

 that the records, both of the Portuguese and Dutch, had 

 long since disappeared from the archives of the Colonial 

 Secretariat. 



Their loss, whilst in our custody, is the more re- 

 markable, considering the value which was attached to 

 them by our predecessors. The Dutch, on the conquest 

 of Ceylon in the seventeenth century, seized the official 

 accounts and papers of the Portuguese ; and a memoir 

 is preserved by VALENTYN, in which the Governor, Van 

 Goens, on handing over the command to his successor 

 in 1663, enjoins on him the study of these important 

 documents, and expresses anxiety for their careful pre- 

 servation. 1 



, Oud en Nieuw Oost-Indien, frc., cb. xiii. p. 174. 



