CHAP. IV.] CEYLON AS KNOWN TO THE MOOES. 631 



conjectures 1 ; they were known there as traders centuries 

 before Mahomet was born, and such was their passion 

 for enterprise, that at one and the same moment they 

 were pursuing commerce in the Indian Ocean 2 , and 

 manning the galleys of Marc Antony in the fatal -sea- 

 fight at Actium. 3 The author of the Periplus found 

 them in Ceylon about the first Christian century, Cos- 

 mas Indico-pleustes in the sixth ; and they had become 

 so numerous in China in the eighth, as to cause a tumult 

 at Canton. 4 From the tenth till the fifteenth century, 

 the Arabs, as merchants, were the undisputed masters 

 of the East; they formed commercial establishments in 

 every country that had productions to export, and then- 

 vessels sailed between every sea-port from Sofala to 

 Bab-el-Mandeb, and from Aden to Sumatra. 5 The 

 " Moors," who at the present day inhabit the coasts of 

 Ceylon, are the descendants of these active adventurers ; 

 they are not purely Arabs in blood, but descendants 

 from Arabian ancestors by intermarriage with the 

 native races who embraced the religion of the Prophet. 6 



1 MOTTNTSTTJART ELPHiNSTpNE, on language in the service of their 

 the authority of Agatharchidos (as mosques (c. i. note, p. 34). There is 

 quoted by Diodorus and Photius), reason to believe that at a former 

 says, that " from all that appears in period there were Mahometans in 

 that author, we should conclude that Ceylon to whom this description would 

 two centuries before the Christian apply; but at the present day the 

 era, the trade (between India and the Moors throughout the island are, I 

 ports of Sabtea) was entirely in the believe, universally Sonnees, belong- 

 hands of the Arabs." Hist. India, b. ing to one of the four orthodox sects 

 iii. c. x. p. 167. | called Shafces, and using Arabic as 



2 Pliny, b. vi. c. 22. i their ritual dialect. Their vernacular 



3 omnis eo tprrore ,Epyptiis et indi is Tamil, mixed with a number of 



O.nnes Arab es ve~ -S^V.. ^ ^ ^ ^ g 



books, except the Koran, are in that 



4 ABOTJ-ZETD, vol. i. p. xlii. cix. i dialect. Casie Chitty, the erudite 



5 VINCEXT, vol. ii. p. 451. The District Judge of Chilaw, writes to 

 Moors of Ceylon are identical in race me that " the Moors of Ceylon be- 

 with "the Mopillees of the Malabar lieve themselves to be of the posterity 

 coast." M'KEXZIE, Asiat. Res., vol. of Hashem ; and, according to one 

 vi. p. 430. tradition, their progenitors were dri- 



6 In a former work, " Christianity ven from Arabia by Mahomet himself, 

 in Ceylon" I was led, by incorrect as a punishment for their cowardice 

 information, to describe a section of at the battle of Ohod. But according 

 the Moors as belonging to the sect of to another version, they fled from the 

 the Shiahs, and using the Persian | tyranny of the Khalif Abu al Melek 



