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



243 



nearly all the Muhammadans of Malabar are Mdpillas, nearly 

 all the Muhammadans in Tinnevelli, Madura, and Tanjore are 

 Lubbays. The figures, in round numbers, are these : — Of the 

 1,935,000 Muhammadans, 515,000 are Lubbays (speaking the 

 Tamil language); 496,000 are Mapillas (speaking the Malai- 

 yalam language); and the rest are Shaiks, Sayyids, Pathans, 

 and Mughals (speaking mostly the Hindustani language). 1 



Hindustani, as is well known, is a language of modern 

 creation, being the camp language of the motley crowd of 

 Mughals, Pathans, Persians, and Turks, and Punjabis, Hindis, 

 Urdus, and other native inhabitants of India, who formed the 

 soldiers and camp followers of the Muhammadan conquerors. 

 The Hindustani-speaking Muhammadans of the present day 

 in India are partly the descendants of this heterogenous 

 body through Indian mothers. The wave of Islam, it is well 

 to bear in mind, entered through the Punjab, gathered 

 strength all along the North-Western Provinces, Oude, and 

 Bengal, and only feebly touched the Madras Presidency. As 

 to the date of the conversion and the manner in which it took 

 place in the Punjab, the following remarks of Mr. Ibbetson are 

 valuable, as they throw some light into the course of conver- 

 sion among the Tamil and Malaiyalam-speaking Muhamma- 

 dans. Speaking of the Western Punjab, Mr. Ibbetson 2 says : — 

 "Farishta puts the conversion of the Afghan mountaineers 

 of our frontier and of the Gakkhars of the Rawalpindi division 

 at the beginning of the thirteenth century, and it is certain that 

 the latter were still Hindus when they assassinated Mohammed 

 Ghori in A.D. 1206." Of the Eastern Punjab he remarks :— " The 

 people of these districts very generally refer their change of 

 faith to the reign of Aurangzeb (1658-1707), and it is probable 



Coinibatur ... 38,000 Vizagapatam ... 21,000 



Trichnopoly ... 34,000 G-anjam ... 6,000 



Chengalput ... 25,000 Nilgiris 3,500 



City of Madras, 50,000 



1 See Hunter's Imperial Gazetteer of India, s. v. " Madras Presidency " 

 and " Malabar." 



2 See Report of the Census of British India, vol. III., p. xix. 



