166 
JOURNAL, R.A.S. (CBYLON). [VOL. XVIII. 
CORRESPONDENCE 
BETWEEN RAJA SINHA II. AND THE DUTCH. 
By Donald Ferguson. 
When the Honorary Secretary of this Society, Mr. 
H. C. P. Bell, C.C.S., some dozen years ago was going through 
the Dutch records in the Ceylon Record Office, he came upon 
a number of letters in Portuguese, written by Raja Sinha II, 
to the Dutch commandeurs in Galle and other Dutch officials 
between 1645 and 1660. These documents, which had 
suffered somewhat from neglect, Mr. Bell had repaired, and * 
then arranged them in chronological order and numbered 
them. They number in all twenty-six, covering as I have 
said a period of fifteen years, and are apparently all that 
survive of themany epistles written by Raja Sinha during his 
long reign of fifty-five years. When the others disappeared 
— in Dutch or in British times — it is impossible to say ; but 
their loss is deplorable, and is due to either scandalous 
carelessness or to dishonesty. When we find an ex-Colonial 
Secretary of Ceylon coolly stating in his well-known book* 
that he has in his possession one of Raja Sinha's original 
letters, one which had evidently been at some time in the 
Colonial archives, it is difficult to find words to express our 
feelings of amazement and indignation. It is to be hoped 
that stricter supervision of these old and invaluable Dutch 
* Tennent's Ceylon, 5th ed., Vol. II., p. 48 n (see infra), 
K. 
