JOURNAL 



OF THE 



ROYAL ASIATIC SOCIETY, 

 CEYLON BRANCH. 



THE REBELLION OF CEYLON, AND THE PROGRESS 

 OF ITS CONQUEST UNDER THE GOVERNMENT 

 OF CONSTANTINO DE SA Y NORONA. 



Translated from the Spanish by Lieutenant-Colonel 

 H. H. St. George. 



[The following Introduction to Lieutenant- Colonel St. George's 

 translation of Joao Rodriguez de Sa e Menezes' " Rebelion de Ceylan " 

 was read by Mr. D. W. Ferguson at a General Meeting of the Royal 

 Asiatic Society (Ceylon Branch) on November 22, 1890. — B., Hon. Sec.'] 



■ — OAO RODRIGUEZ DE SA E MENEZES, the 

 author of this work, was born circa 1608, and 

 was therefore but a child when his father left 

 Portugal for India in 1614. His life history is 

 unknown to me ; but apparently it was not 

 until nearly fifty years after his father's death, 

 when he himself was about seventy years of 

 age, that he undertook the filial task of defending his father's 

 memory from the slanders which seem to have been levelled 

 at it by his enemies. According to Barbosa-Machado {Biblio- 

 theca Lusitana) he died in 1682, the year after this book 

 was published. 



The late Doctor Arthur Burnell, misled by Pinelo and 

 Ternaux-Compans, records in his " Tentative List of Books 

 and some Manuscripts relating to the History of the 

 Portuguese in India Proper" (1880), two editions of Sa's 



97—93 b 



