ON THE SUPPOSED ORIGIN OF 

 TAMANA NUWARA, WHERE WIJAYO LANDED 

 IN CEYLON, B.C. 543, AND HENCE 

 TAPROBANE, AS THE CLASSICAL NAME 

 FOR CEYLON. 



By Wm. Ferguson, F.L.S, 



The late accomplished Major-General Forbes, in his 

 " Eleven Years in Ceylon," 1840, l,pp. 10-11, and note, was 

 no doubt the first authority who correctly indicated that the 

 district of Tamana, or Tamana Nuwara, was properly derived 

 from the now well-known Tamana tree, bearing that name 

 both in Sinhalese and Tamil, and that Tambapanni, Tambana, 

 and ultimately Taprobane, originated from the name of the 

 place where Wijayo and his followers landed in Ceylon 2,423 

 years ago. 



Sir Emerson Tennent (I., p. 18, note), referring to this 

 derivation by Forbes, states that the tree was not then (1859) 

 known, but it had been described and figured by Dr. Thwaites 

 in Hooker's Kew Journal of Botany for 1854, p. 299, t. 10 B., 

 as Mischodon Zeylanicm, Thw., a new genus of Euphorbiaceee ; 

 and is well represented by Col. Beddome in his Flora Sylvatica, 

 tab. 29Q; and in my "List of Ceylon Timber Trees/' published 

 in Ferguson's Directory for 1863, p, 248, I allude to this tree 

 as follows : " A very handsome tree, having excellent timber, 

 and widely spread in the Island, found at Hantane near Kandy, 

 Uma-oya, Lower Badulla road, within ten miles of Colombo, 

 and abundant from Puttalam to Anuradhapura, northwards 

 and eastwards." 



