No. 60. — -1908.] couto : history of ceylon. 



243 



which went as captain Fernao Rodrigues de Carvalho 1 , who 

 carried two hundred candis of wheat, four hundred of rice, 

 and many munitions ; for in this manner the viceroys were 

 wont at that time to provide the fortresses of India, 



* * * * * * * 



Dec. VIII., Chap. xii. 



The king of Pegu sends to ask of the king of Ceylao a 

 daughter in marriage. 



Though I should spend a long time in describing the super- 

 stitions of these barbarous heathen Pegus and Bramas 2 , 



heathen king to whom the kingdom belonged, called Madoni, having 

 two sons, the prince named Barbinas [see infra, p. 273, note x ], 

 and the second named Ragiu, was by the astuteness of the younger 

 son deprived of the kingdom, because the latter, having made the 

 whole soldiery favourable to himself, in despite of his father and of the 

 prince his brother, usurped to himself the kingdom, and is a great 

 warrior. At first this island had three kings : — Ragiu with his father 

 and his brother Barbinas ; the king of Cotta with his conquests ; the 

 king of Candia in a part of the island that is called the kingdom 

 of Candia, who had considerable power and was a great friend of the 

 Portuguese, and it was said that he lived secretly as a Christian ; there 

 was [also] the king of Gdanifanpatan. For the last thirteen years 

 Ragiu has impatronized himself of the whole island, and has made 



himself a great tyrant I was desirous of seeing how the cinnamon 



is peeled from the tree that produces it, and all the more because when 

 I was in the island it was the season, as it was peeled in the month of 

 April : wherefore, although the Portuguese were at war with the king 

 of the island, and therefore I ran great danger in going out of the city, 

 yet nevertheless I wished to satisfy this wish of mine, and having 

 gone out with a guide, I went into a wood three miles distant from the 



city, in which were a good many trees of cinnamon, " As we 



do not know when the writer was in Ceylon, we cannot tell exactly 

 what are the " thirteen years " of Raja Sinha's dominancy of which he 

 speaks. (See supra, p. 208, note 3 , regarding May adunn6's abdication 

 in favour of his son Raja Sinha, circa 1558-9.) 



1 In Arch. Port.-Or. v. is a royal letter of 19 February 1561, 

 granting to this man the posts of captain and factor of the ships going 

 from India to Ceylon for cinnamon for three successive voyages. 



2 The word " these " here is puzzling, as Couto has not spoken of the 

 Peguans or Burmese since he told us (p. 212) of the mission from the 

 king of Pegu in 1560-1 to D. Constantino de Braganca with the object 

 of ransoming the tooth-relic captured at Jaffna. The " superstitions " 

 of the Peguans he had treated of in V. v. ix. and V. vi. i. (see extract 

 from the latter, supra, p. 108). 



R 2 



