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JOUKNAL, K.A.S. (CEYLON). [VOL. X. 



along the north-east, north, and western coasts of that Island, 

 viz., one at Trincomalee, one at Jaffna, one at Mantota 

 and Mannar, one at Coodramale, one at Puttalam, one at 

 Colombo, one at Barbaryn, and one at Point-de-Galle." 1 



It is difficult to conceive an array of oagalas sailing together 

 in those early ages for over two thousand miles on the fitful 

 Indian Ocean, and making for the different ports above- 

 mentioned in different parts of the Island, as if there were 

 agents in those places appointed to receive the unfortunate 

 men. But a grander difficulty exists. The Arab exiles were, 

 or were not, accompanied by their wives and daughters. If 

 they were so accompanied and settled with them in purely 

 Sinhalese districts like Kalutara and Galle, why did they 

 abandon both the Arabic and Sinhalese and take to the 

 Tamil ? Or, if they came to Ceylon without their women and 

 took Sinhalese wives, why has the same survival of the Tamil 

 language occurred ? It is impossible to accept this version 

 of wholesale Arab colonisation. It is too elaborate and inex- 

 plicable. But the crowning absurdity of the tradition 

 remains yet to be mentioned. Hashim, the son of Abdul 

 Manif , was the father of Abdul Muttalib, who was the father 

 of Abdullah, and grandfather of Muhammad the Prophet. 

 In so great veneration is the memory of Hashim held by the 

 Arabs, that among them the family of Muhammad are called 

 Hashimites, as Mr. Keene says in his Oriental Biographical 

 Dictionary : consequently, the Ceylon Moors would all be 

 Sayyids ! — which they are not, and do not profess to be, 

 being only Sunnis of the Shafa'i sect. Sir Emerson Tennent 

 discredits the story for other reasons. He observes : — " The 

 Moors, who were the informants of Sir Alexander Johnston, 

 probably spoke on the equivocal authority of the Tohfut-ul 

 mujahideen, which is generally, but erroneously, described 

 as a narrative of the settlement of the Muhammadans in 

 Malabar. Its second chapter gives an account of the manner 

 in which the Muhammadan religion was first propagated 



1 Vol. I., p. 538. 



