254 JOURNAL, E.A.S. (CEYLON). [VOL. X. 



Sri Parakrama Bahu (1410-61) was then ruling, and to fly 

 along several villages to Dondra, carrying the prayer thtt that 

 monarch might be preserved and blessed. One of the villages 

 on the route is Beruwala, which is described to be in the 

 occupation of "cruel and lawless Bamburas " (scil. mlechchas,. 

 " barbarians"). Another poem, the Kokila Sandesa, written 

 by Irugal Kulatilaka Sami, in the same reign, alludes to Beru- 

 wala in similar language. I have not had time to get at 

 earlier references in Sinhalese literature, but I suspect none 

 such exist. We have, however, some information from 

 foreign sources. In 1350 John de Marignolli was wrecked 

 on the coast of Ceylon at " Perivilis," which is supposed to 

 be Beruwala. " Here," he says, " a certain tyrant, by name 

 Coya Jaan, an eunuch, had the mastery in opposition to the 

 lawful king. He was an accursed Saracen," i.e., Muham- 

 madan. We are also told that by means of his great treasures 

 he had gained possession of this part of the country. He 

 robbed De Marignolli of the valuable gifts he was carrying 

 home to the Pope. 1 Ibn Batuta visited the Island six years 

 earlier (in 1344), but makes no mention whatever of Beruwala,. 

 though it lay directly on his route from Galle to Colombo. 

 He refers to Galle as a small town, to Colombo as the seat of 

 a pirate in command of five hundred Abysinnians, and to 

 Battalah (Puttalam) as the capital of a Tamil king, Arya 

 Chakkaravartti, " one of the perverse and unjust," as the devout 

 traveller says, but of whose hospitality he is loud in praise. 2 

 By the light of these passages, and the circumstance that 

 the Sinhalese did not know in the early part of the fifteenth 

 century any more of the colonists who were found settled at 

 Beruwala than that they were barbarians, we may safely 

 conclude that Beruwala had not been seized upon by the 

 Muhammadans in 1344 ; that that hamlet, Galle, and 

 Puttalam, which are commonly believed to have received the 



1 Yule's Cathay, p. 357. 



2 Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, Ceylon Branch, vol. VII., p. 56,. 

 of the extra number. 



