IS 



CEYLON BRANCH 



Persians arid Arabians; and M. D'Anville* supposes that the 

 royal city mentioned by Pliny, under the name of Palcesimun- 

 dum and the King of which sent an Embassy to Claudius, f 

 represented J affnapatam. 



About the commencement of the fourteenth century, the 

 throne of Jaffna was filled by Ariya Chakrawarti, who, as his 

 name imports, was in all probability a descendant of Singha 

 Ariya. The Singhalese writers represent him to have been 

 a vassal of Kulasekhara Pandyan, King of Madura, but he 

 was only his ally, and it was in that character that he com- 

 manded the army which the latter sent over to Ceylon, and 

 which fought against the Singhalese monarch Bhuwaneka-. 

 Bahu 1st, took his capital Yapahoo, and carried off the Dalada-^ 

 relic. :f His successor's name has not transpired; but we find 



wonderful and magnificent pattern, besides three copper coins and a 

 gold one, which latter proved to be of the Emperor Claudius. Sir 

 Alexander J ohnston states that in the ruins of the same place " a 

 great number of Roman coins of different Emperors, particularly of 

 the Antoniiit-s ; specimens of the finest pottery, and some Roman gold 

 and silver chains have been found." Transactions of the Royal Asiatic 

 Society, vol. i. p. 546. Mr. Roberts, in his Oriental Illustrations of the 

 Sacred Scriptures, p. 541, notices the discovery by a Toddy drawer of 

 several Grecian coins in Jaffna, on one of which he found in ancient 

 Greek characters, Ranobobryza. 



* Compendium of Ancient Geography, vol. ii. p. 552. 



\ Pliny's Nat. Hist. Lib. vi. cap. xxii. Major Forbes, in his 

 Eleven Years in Ceylon, vol. i. p. 262, 2d Edition, is likewise of 

 opinion that the Embassy in question proceeded from some of the 

 Malabar Settlers or tributaries, and not from the Singhalese sovereign. 

 He thinks that the Rackia, who headed it was a Risha or mendicant, 

 while Fre Paulino supposes he was a Raja; my opinion, however, is 

 that he was only an Aratchy, an officer of the Police in the Tamil 

 Regime, and we have an instance at a later period of a similar func- 

 tionary having been dispatched by the King Bhuwaneka-Bahu 7th, as 

 Ambassador to the Court of Lisbon. See Ceylon Almanac for 1833, 

 p. 26!. 



% Ceylon Almanac for 1833, p. 259,, 



