578 



MEDIAEVAL HISTORY. 



[PART V. 



CHAP. II. 



INDIAN, ARABIAN, AND PERSIAN AUTHORITIES. 



ON closing the volume of Cosmas, we part with the last 

 of the Greek writers whose pages guide us through the 

 mist that obscures the early history of Ceylon. The reli- 

 gion of the Hindus is based on a system of physical error, 

 so incompatible with the extension of scientific truth, that 

 in then: language the term "geography" is unknown. 1 

 But still it is remarkable as an illustration of the uninquir- 

 ing character of the people, that the allusions of Indian 

 authors to Ceylon, an island of such magnitude, and so 

 close to their own country, are pre-eminent for ab- 

 surdity and ignorance. Their " Lanka " and its inha- 

 bitants are but the distortion of a reality into a myth. 

 So late as the eleventh century, ALBYROUNI, the Arabian 

 geographer, says that the Hindus at that day thought 

 the island haunted ; their ships sailing past it, kept at a 

 distance from its shores ; and even at the present day, 

 it is the popular belief on the continent of India that the 

 interior of Ceylon is peopled by demons and monkeys. 2 

 This degree of popular ignorance regarding a country so 

 contiguous to their own, appears to have prevailed amongst 

 the Hindus in ah 1 ages. The story embodied in their great 



1 The Arabians began the study so 

 late, that they, too, had to borrow a 

 word from the Greeks, whence their 

 term " djagrafiya." 



2 MOOR'S Hindu Pantheon, p. 318. 

 Moon speaks of an educated Indian 

 gentleman who was attached as 

 Munshi to the staff of Mr. North, 



Governor of Ceylon, in 1804, and 

 who, on his return to the continent, 

 wrote a history of the island, in 

 which he repeats the belief current 

 among his countrymen, that " the 

 interior was not inhabited by human 

 beings of the ordinary shapes." 

 P. 329. 



