No. 36.— 1888.] CAPTAIN JOAO RIBEIRO. 



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the subjects of the King of Portugal, somewhat alarmed by the 

 irruption which the King of Candy had made ; a garrison of 

 five hundred Portuguese was placed at Maula, in order to 

 arrest the incursions of the Cingalese, and to abate the pride 

 of their King." Now I have no doubt that many readers of 

 LeG. or of Lee's translation have wondered where "Mania" 

 was situated, and have searched the maps in vain to find it. 

 The fact is, however, that " Maula" is what Professor Skeat 

 would call a " ghost word," and is an invention of the worthy 

 Abbe, founded on a misreading of B. What Ribeiro wrote 

 was that " The General quieted all the territories, and seeing 

 that the war had broken out from the King's side, and that he 

 was very proud and vain, and in order to tame his pride, put 

 himself on the march with five hundred Portuguese soldiers, 

 and the black people of our territories, all well armed," &c. 

 1 give on the opposite page a facsimile of the passage in B., 

 from which it will be seen that the word " marcha " is so written 

 as to be easily mistaken for " Maula" by one unacquainted 

 with the copyist's mode of forming his letters ; but this 

 excuse can hardly be pleaded in the case of the Abbe ; in fact, 

 the same word occurs a few lines above, where the letters 

 are more clearly formed. It was this curious error that con- 

 firmed my suspicion that B. was the identical MS. used 

 by LeG. for his translation. Ribeiro gives as the reason 

 for the King of Kandy's Atapattu Mudaliyar's marching on 

 Jaffna, the fact that the garrison of that fort was small, and 

 that Felippe de Oliveira, who had brought that kingdom 

 under submission to the Portuguese rule, was dead. This is 

 not recorded in LeG., the copyist of B. having omitted a 

 couple of lines. The name of the captain of the relieving 

 expedition sent to Jaffna is given by LeG. as " Jean 

 de Pina," but L.A. and B. both read "Foao," not "Joao." 

 Ribeiro tells us that the Portuguese general went from 

 Manicavare to Malvana, "where that King [of Kandy] 

 solicited peace, with all the earnestness and the conditions 

 that we required. The general was not very unwilling to 

 accede, both on account of those conditions and because, the 



