1ST0. 41—1890.] REBELION DE CEYLAN. 453 



The primitive name the Island went by, and which is still 

 preserved amongst the natives from their first king and 

 founder, is Lancab* which means to say " holy land." After- 

 wards, seeing the empire extended beyond the confines, they 

 called it Illenari, which in the Malabar language signifies 

 " kingdom of the isle." 



But none of these names lasted with the foreigners who came 

 into the Island : in the ordinary course of time and through 

 all the events that happened by the change of kingdom, it 

 remained under the name of Chinilao, which in the Chinese 

 idiom signifies "the Chinese reef," originating from a 

 memorable shipwreck which happened to that nation on its 

 shores when they came over to conquer it. Intermarriage 

 with these foreign population of the Island, whom the 

 Malabars expelled and called Galas, adding to it the Zim, 

 not only gave the name to the land, but also to the inhabitants, 

 who are commonly called Zin galas : afterwards in the course 

 of time some of the letters were left out, as it often happens, 

 and others added with some alterations, so that Chinilao} 

 changed into Ceylan. 



Of the name of Traprobana, under which the Greeks and 

 Latins made it known, although we find no trace or resem- 

 blance to it in the whole Island, being alien to the whole 

 East. Or the author of it might have been Ptolemy, as some 

 wish to denote (from some occult property of the land, as it 

 often happens), or some historian before him. 



There is no doubt that the Calvinists are also in error 

 when they make Traprobana to be the same as Samatra, 

 these islands being so far apart, the latter being in the 

 Golden Chersonese of Malaca, whilst Ceylan is many leagues 

 away from it, as learnedly testify John de Barros, Bias Virgas, 

 Gaspar Barreiros, and Diego de Couto. 



To their writings I refer the curious, adding to the conjec- 

 tures which they offer to prove that the Romans had a 



* Lanka. — B., Hon. Sec. 



f This information and what follows is taken over hy the Abbe le Grand 

 in his translation of Ribeyro's History of Ceylon. — B., Hon. See. 



