584 



MEDIAEVAL HISTORY. 



[PART V. 



two Mahometans 1 , who travelled in India and China 

 in the beginning of the ninth century. The book pro- 

 fesses to give an account of the countries lying between 

 Bassora and Canton ; and in its unpretending style, and 

 useful notices of commerce in those seas, it resembles 

 the record, which the merchant ARRIAN has left us in 

 the Periplns, of the same trade as it existed seven 

 centuries previously, in the hands of the Greeks. 

 The early portion of the book, which was written 

 A.D. 851, was taken down from the recital of Soley- 

 man, a merchant who had frequently made the voy- 

 ages he describes, at the epoch when the commerce 

 of Bagdad, under the Khalifs, was at the height of its 

 prosperity. The second part was added sixty years 

 later, by Abou-zeyd Hassan, an amateur geographer, 

 of Bassora (contemporary with Massoudi), from the 

 reports of mariners returning from China, and is, to 

 a great extent, an amplification of the notices supplied 

 by Soleyman. 



SOLEYMAN describes the sea of Herkend, as it lay 

 between the Laccadives and Maldives 2 , on the west, 

 and swept round eastward by Cape Comorin and 

 Adam's Bridge to Ceylon, thus enclosing the precious 

 fishery for pearls. In Serendib, his earliest attention 

 was devoutly directed to the sacred footstep on Adam's 

 Peak ; in his name for which, "Al-rohoun" we trace the 

 Buddhist name for the district, Eohuna, so often occur- 

 ring in the Mahawanso. 8 This is the earliest notice of 



' It was first published by REXAIT- 

 BOT in 1718, from the unique MS. 

 now in the Bibliotheque imperiale 

 of Paris, and again by RETNATJD in 

 1846, with a valuable discourse pre- 

 fixed on the nature and extent of 

 the Indian trade prior to the tenth 

 century. Relation des Voyages faits 

 par les Arabes et les Persans dans 

 Flnde et Chine dans le ix e Siecle, #c. 



2 vols. 18mo. Paris, 1845. 



2 The " Dm" of Ammianus Mar- 

 cellinus, who along with the Singha- 

 lese t( Selendivi " sent ambassadors 

 to the Emperor Julian, 1. xxii. 

 c. 7. 



3 A portion of the district near 

 Tangalle is known to the present day 

 as " Rouna." Mahaivanso, eh. ix. 

 p. 57 j ch. xxii. p. 130, &c. 



