No. 36. — 1888.] THE MOORS OF CEYLON. 



237 



convinced that the " Moors " of Ceylon were, in the main, 

 Tamil Muhammadans. 1 But before the discovery could stamp 

 itself on official documents and pass current in official lips, 

 the English had arrived and found a world of work to do in 

 supplying the material and moral wants of the country, 

 without the leisure for entering upon ethnological questions. 

 Their first Census of which we have any returns, and which 

 was ordered in 1824, was therefore necessarily erroneous in 

 classification, if not enumeration. The old term "Moors" 

 was retained, as also I may say the old term " Malabars " 2 for 

 Tamils, who knew not that word even in dreams, as they say. 

 The second Census taken in 1871, and the third and the last 

 taken in 1881, eliminated "Malabars" but retained "Moors," 

 evidently because the Commissioners and other European 

 officials have lacked the time or the opportunity for studying 

 that community. By a similar misapprehension the 

 " Kandyans " were thought to be different from the Sinhalese 

 even as late as 1866. 3 



1 See Valentyn, ch. XV., p. 214. 



2 Bishop Caldwell says : — " The Portuguese arrived first on the western 

 coast of India, and naturally called the language they found spoken on 

 that coast by the name by which the coast itself had long been called by 

 their Arab predecessors, viz., Malabar. Sailing from Malabar on voyages 

 of exploration, they made their acquaintance with various places on the 

 eastern or Coromandel coast, and also on the coast of Ceylon, and finding 

 the language spoken by the fishing and sea-faring classes on the eastern 

 coast similar to that spoken on the western, they came to the conclusion 

 that it was identical with it, and called it, in consequence, by the same 

 name, viz., Malabar, a name which has survived to our own day amongst 

 the poorer classes of Europeans and Eurasians. The better educated 

 members of those classes have long learned to call the language of the 

 Malabar coast by its proper name, Malayalam, and the language of the 

 eastern coast Tonal,"— Comparative Grammar of the Dravidian Lan- 

 guages, Introd., p. 11 (2nd edition, 1875). 



3 In his Gazetteer, p. 115, Casie Chetty (writing in 1831) said:— 

 "The vast difference which the Kandyans exhibit in their customs as well 

 as in their style of dress has led almost all European writers to treat them 

 as a distinct race of people." And the Government Agent of the North- 

 Western Province said, in 1866, that the population of his Province 

 consisted of "Kandyans, Sinhalese, Moors, Malabars, and Mukkuwas." 

 (Sessional Papers of the Legislative Council, 1866, p. 217.) He ought to 

 have said " Sinhalese and Tamils," for the last three classes are Tamil. 



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