378 



JOURNAL, B.A.S, (CEYLON). 



[Vol. IX. 



Ruhuna in the south and Maya-rata in the mountainous 

 centre of the Island ; but the north of the country, the 

 province of Pihiti or Raja-rata, the old land of the kings, 

 remained, even as far as the Mahaweli-ganga, in the hands 

 of the Tamils, and was by degrees wholly and permanently 

 Dravidised. Only a part of this population, the Mukwas,* 

 who dwell on the north-west coast, northward from Chilaw, 

 have accepted the Christian religion.! 



In the same way, although in a more peaceable manner, 

 came into the country numerous Muhammadan Arabs, who 

 since the time of the Portuguese have been called " Moors " or 

 " Moormen." J Sir A. Johnston places their arrival in the early 

 part of the eighth century, and traces their descent from the 

 house of Hashim, whose members were driven from Arabia by 

 the Calif Abdul Melek ben Merwan, and settled in Southern 

 India, Ceylon, and Malacca. But the careful investigations 

 of Sir E. Tennent§ have furnished evidence that the settle- 

 ments of the Arabs in the Island were of much earlier date. 

 Even when we set aside a very dark passage in Pliny, still there 

 seems to be no doubt that at least since the first, or surely since 

 the sixth century A.D., very extensive mercantile relations 

 existed between Persia and Arabia and Ceylon, and that since 

 that time many of these " Mauren " (as the Portuguese called 

 them later) remained in the land. Sir E. Tennent considers 

 the present Moors descended from the immigrants who 

 intermarried with the natives. Mr. Pridham|| divides the 

 Moors genealogically into two groups : one he traces back 

 to the old Arabian immigrants, who took to themselves 



* A similar word (Mokna) is used in Madagascar to designate immigrant 

 Africans. (Verhandl. der Berlin. Anthropological Societat, 1880, s. 190. 

 Zuitf. Enthnolo. Bd. 12.) Here a Negro tribe is alluded to on the 

 eastern coast* of Africa that bears this name. (Monatsbere der 

 Academie, 1880, s. 1017.) Possibly the coincidence in the name is a mere 

 accident. 



f A. 0. Brodie, Journal of the Ceylon Branch of the Royal Asiatic 

 Society, 1853, p. 50. J Id., p. 40. 



§ Tennent, I. c. I., pp. 546, 555, 607. || Pridham, I. c, I., p. 470. 



