No. 60. — 1908.] couTO : history of ceylok. 



Ill 



sound. And we have spoken with persons who made this 

 pilgrimage in company with more than five hundred, and the 

 bell sounded for all 1 . Having reached the top, they can do 

 no more, except kiss that stone with great veneration and 

 return, and on no account may they go up on the top of the 

 slab, because it is a sin without absolution 2 . The Moors like- 

 wise go thither to make offerings, because they say that that 

 footprint was of our father Adam, and that thence he ascended 

 to the heavens, and that of the last foot there remained in the 

 stone that form 3 . 



Marco Polo Veneto 4 , third book, folio 55 5 , says, that the 

 Moors hold among themselves that under that stone was the 

 sepulchre of Adam. And he says further, that the native 

 heathen related, that a son of a king, called Sogomombarcao 6 , 

 contemning the kingdom, resorted to that mountain to live a 

 holy life, and that thence he ascended to the heavens, and that 

 the father ordered temples to be made and statues erected to 

 him, and that thence originated the idolatry of India. The 

 natives whom we have questioned laugh at this ; but that of 

 which they have their writings, and which they today sing in 

 their songs (in which they preserve all their antiquities), is 

 what I shall now relate very briefly, becauses in all their stories 

 and histories they are all very prolix 7 . 



They say 8 that there was a king who reigned over the whole 

 of the East ; that having been many years married without 

 having children, at the end of his old age God was pleased to 



1 For this sentence Valentyn substitutes " Four to five hundred 

 together go there on this pilgrimage." 



2 In Valentyn the foregoing clause undergoes the following extra- 

 ordinary transformation: — " .... and they are on no account allowed 

 to climb up by the pool or water tank, which in Gingalees is named Darroe- 

 pokoene, that is, tank of the children. When women are unfruitful, they 

 drink of that water ; but they may not go themselves to fetch it, but it is 

 brought to them by the jogis. To climb up this tank would be an unpardon- 

 able sin." All this interpolation, again, is founded on the same 

 blunder as before, lagea having been misread as lagoa. 



3 Here Valentyn interpolates: — "This proceeds from an old Eastern 

 tradition that Adam, being driven out of Paradise, was sent to a moun- 

 tain in India, named Serandive (that is, the island of Ceylon)." 



4 Valentyn has the curious form " Marc. P. Venetus." 



5 Valentyn substitutes "L. 16, 3 pag." For Marco Polo's account of 

 Adam's Peak and the Buddha see Yu e's Marco Polo ii. 316 ff. 



6 Sagamoni Borcanin Yule's Marco Polo. The name, according to 

 Marsden, represents Sakyamuni + Burkham (divinity), the latter 

 word being used by the Mongols as a synonym for Buddha. 



7 In this paragraph Valentyn takes liberties with the original. 



8 Couto repeats what follows, almost verbatim, in VII. in. x. (p. 178). 



