CJIAI-. IV.] CEYLON AS KNOWN TO THE MOOES. 



G33 



joyed under the government. 1 In process of time their 

 prosperity invested them with political influence, and in 

 the decline of the Singhalese monarchy they took ad- 

 vantage of the feebleness of the King of Cotta, to direct 

 armed expeditions against parts of the coast, to plunder 

 the inhabitants, and supply themselves with elephants 

 and pearls. 2 They engaged in conspiracies against the 

 native princes ; and the assassin of Wijayo Bahu VII., 

 who was murdered in 1534, was a turbulent Moorish 

 leader called Soleyman, whom the eldest son and suc- 

 cessor of the king had instigated to the crime. 3 



The appearance of the Portuguese in Ceylon at this 

 critical period, served not only to check the career of the 

 Moors, but to extinguish the independence of the native 

 princes ; and looking to the facility with which the former 

 had previously superseded the Malabars, and were fast 

 acquiring an ascendancy over the Singhalese chiefs, it 

 is not an unreasonable conjecture that, but for this 

 timely appearance of a Christian power in the island, 

 Ceylon, instead of a possession of the British crown, 

 might at the present day have been a Mahometan king- 

 dom, under the rule of some Arabian adventurer. 



But although the position of the Arabs in relation to 

 the commerce of the East underwent no unfavourable 

 change prior to the arrival of the Portuguese in the 

 Indian seas,- numerous circumstances combined in the 

 early part of the sixteenth century to bring other 

 European nations into communication with the East. 



1 " Molti Mori Malabar! vengono a 

 stantiare in questa isola per esser in 

 grandissima liberta, oltra tntte le 

 commodita e delitie del mondo," etc. 

 ODOARDO BABBOSA, Sommario dette 

 Indie Orientate, in Ramusio, vol. i. p. 

 313. 



- liajavali, p. 274. 



3 Ib., p. 284. PORCACCIII, in his 

 Isolario, written at Venice A.D. 1576, 

 thus records the traditional reputa- 



tion of the Moors of Ceylon: "I 

 Mori ch' habitano hoggi la Taprobana 

 fanno grandissirui traffichi, nauigando 

 per tutto : et piu anchora vengono da 

 diverse parte molte mercantie, massi- 

 mamente dal paese di Cambaia, con 

 coralli, cinabrio, et argento vivo. 

 Ma son questi Mori perfidi et arn- 

 mazzono spesse volte i lor Re ; et ne 

 creano degli altri." Page 188. 



VOL. I. 



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