14 



JOURFAl m A, S. CKYLOtf. 



[EXTRA N(* 



juris-consult Iga Alyamany* the juris-consult and schoolmaster 

 *Aly 9 the Kazi 1 Abd Allah, and others, related to me that the popu- 

 lation of the islands used to be idolaters, and that there appeared! 

 to them every month, an evil spirit from among the Jinn,, who* 

 came from the direction of the sea. He resembled a ship full of 

 lamps. The custom of the natives, as soon as they perceived 

 him, was to take a young virgin, to adorn her, and conduct 

 her to a boudkhdnah,f i. e, } an idol temple, which was built on 

 the sea shore and had a window by which she was seen. They 

 left her there during the night and returned in the morning r 

 then they found the young girl dishonored and dead. They 

 failed not every month to draw lots, and he upon whom the 

 lot fell gave up his daughter. At length arrived among them 

 a Maghrabini called Aboulbereedt,. the Berber, who knew by 

 heart the glorious Kuran. He was lodged in the house of 

 an old woman of the island Mahal. One day he visited his 

 hostess and found that she had assembled her relatives, and 

 that the women were weeping as if they were at a funeral. 

 He questioned them upon the subject of their affliction, but 

 they could not make him understand the cause. An inter- 

 preter coming m informed him that the lot had fallen upon 

 the old woman and that she had one only daughter, who had to 

 be slain by the evil Jinm. Abov?lberecdt said to the woman: 



* Ig a Alyamany : — i.e.,? Isd Falliyd Maniku, The Falliyd Manihu is 

 the Sultan's Secretary and Keeper of the Privy Seal. — B. 



f Boudkhanah : — It is very probable that this was a Buddhist temple. Chris- 

 topher gives budu as the modern Maldive for " image" (J. R.A.S., Vol. VI., o.s., 

 p. 57). But the word bodd seems to have been a general term for an image with 

 the Arab Oriental travellers, and may only indicate that the Buddhist parts of 

 India were the first visited by the Arabs.— Journ. As, 1845, p. 167. Ibn Batuta 

 elsewhere says that the Jama Masjid of Delhi was built upon the 

 sight of a former Boudkhanah he does not therefore mean to imply that the 

 word was Maldive. [ For some remarks on " Buddhism at the Maldives" see 

 Ceylon Sess. Pap., 1881, 'The Maldive Islands.'— £.] 



% Maghreb .---The name given by the Arabs to the Moorish principalities of 

 North-west Africa, nearly corresponding with what we now call Morocco. 



