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



255 



earliest Muhammadan settlements, did not contain any such 

 colonies at that period ; and that, though Arabs, Egyptians, 

 Abysinnians, and other Africans may have constantly come 

 to and gone from Ceylon, as merchants, soldiers, and tourists, 

 long before the fourteenth century, comparatively few of them 

 domiciled themselves in the Island ; and that the settlement 

 at Beruwala, which the Ceylon Muhammadans generally 

 admit to be the first of all their settlements, took place not 

 earlier than the fourteenth century, say A.C. 1350. We may 

 also safely conclude that this colony was an offshoot of Kayal- 

 paddanam, and that the emigrants consisted largely of a rough 

 and ready set of bold Tamil converts, determined to make 

 themselves comfortable by the methods usual among unscru- 

 pulous adventurers. Having clean shaven heads and straggling 

 beards; wearing a costume which was not wholly Tamil, 

 nor yet Arabic or African even in part ; speaking a low Tamil 

 interlarded with Arabic expressions ; slaughtering cattle with 

 their own hands and eating them ; given to predatory habits, 

 and practising after their own fashion the rights of the 

 Muhammadan faith ; — they must indeed have struck the Sin- 

 halese at first as a strange people deserving of the 

 epithet "barbarians." It is only natural that other colonies 

 should have gone forth from Kayal-paddanam, and not only 

 added to the population of Beruwala, but settled at other 

 places, such as Batticaloa, Puttalam, &c. With the advent of 

 the Europeans, communication with " the fatherland of the 

 Chonahar" (as Kayal is known) and Ceylon grew feeble, and 

 during the time of the Dutch must have practically ceased, 

 because the Muhammadan settlers, from their obstinate refusal 

 to become Christians, became objects of persecution to the 

 Hollanders, who imposed all manner of taxes and disquali- 

 fications on them. The distinction which the " Ceylon 

 Moor" draws between himself and the "Coast Moor" 

 (Chammdnkdran) is evidently the result of the cessation of 

 intercourse thus produced and continued for several decades 

 between the mother-country and her colonies. 



Having thus shown that the history of the Moors of 



