obligations undertaken by the priesthood is directed to its preservation even in the instances of insects and animalculæ, casuistry succeeded so far as to fix the crime on the slayer, and to exonerate the individual who merely partook of the flesh. Even the inmates of the wiharas and monasteries discovered devices for the saving of conscience, and curried rice was not rejected in consequence of the animal ingredients incorporated with it. The mass of the population were nevertheless vege tarians, and so little value did they place on animal food, that according to the accounts furnished to EDRISI by the Arabian seamen returning from Ceylon, "a sheep sufficient to regale an assembly was to be bought there for half a drachm." 2

Betel. In connection with a diet so largely composed of vegetable food, arose the custom, which to the present day is universal in Ceylon, of chewing the leaves of the betel vine, accompanied with lime and the sliced nut of the areca palm. The betel (piper betel), which is now universally cultivated for this purpose, is presumed to have been introduced from some tropical island, as it has nowhere been found indigenous in continental India. In Ceylon, its use is mentioned as early as the fifth century before Christ, when "betel leaves" formed the present sent by a princess to her lover.5 In a conflict of Dutugaimunu with the Malabars, B.C. 161, the enemy seeing on his lips the red stain of the betel,

the labourers amongst other articles "the five condiments used in mastication." This probably refers to the chewing of betel and its accompaniments (Mahawanso, ch. xxx. p. 175). A story is told of the wife of a Singhalese minister, about A. D. 56, who to warn him of a conspiracy, sent him his "betel, &c., for mastication, omitting the chunam," hoping that coming in search of it, he might escape his "impending fate." Mahawanso, ch. xxxv. p. 219.

mistook it for blood, and spread the false cry that the king had been slain.1

Intoxicating liquors are of sufficient antiquity to be denounced in the moral system of Buddhism.

The use

of toddy and drinks obtained from the fermentation of "bread and flour" is condemned in the laity, and strictly prohibited to the priesthood2; but the Arabian geographers mention that in the twelfth century, wine, in defiance of the prohibition, was imported from Persia, and drunk by the Singhalese after being flavoured with cardamoms.3

1 Rajavali, p. 221.

3

EDRISI, Géographie, &c., Trad.

2 HARDY'S Buddhism, &c., ch. x. JAUBERT, tom. i. p. 73.

p. 474.

CHAP. III

EARLY COMMERCE, SHIPPING, AND PRODUCTIONS.

TRADE. At a very early period the mass of the people of Ceylon were essentially agricultural, and the proportion of the population addicted to other pursuits consisted of the small number of handicraftsmen required in a community amongst whom civilisation and refinement were so slightly developed, that the bulk of the inhabitants may be said to have had few wants beyond the daily provision of food.

Upon trade the natives appear to have looked at all times with indifference. Other nations, both of the east and west of Ceylon, made the island their halting-place and emporium; the Chinese brought thither the wares destined for the countries beyond the Euphrates, and the Arabians and Persians met them with their products in exchange; but the Singhalese appear to have been uninterested spectators of this busy traffic, in which they can hardly be said to have taken any share. The inhabitants of the opposite coast of India, aware of the natural wealth of Ceylon, participated largely in its development, and the Tamils, who eagerly engaged in the pearl fishery, gave to the gulf of Manaar the name of Salabham, "the sea of gain." 1

Native Shipping.

The only mention made of native ships in the sacred writings of the Singhalese,

1 The Tamils gave the same name to Chilaw, which was the nearest town to the pearl fishery (and which

Ibn Batuta calls Salawat); and eventually they called the whole island Salabham,

is in connection with missions, whether for the promotion of Buddhism, or for the negotiation of marriages and alliances with the princes of India. The building of dhoneys is adverted to as early as the first century, but they were only intended by a devout king to be stationed along the shores of the island, covered by day with white cloths, and by night illuminated with lamps, in order that from them priests, as the royal almoners, might distribute gifts and donations of food."

The genius of the people seems to have never inclined them to a sea-faring life, and the earliest notice which occurs of ships for the defence of the coast, is in connection with the Malabars who were taken into the royal service from their skill in naval affairs. A national marine was afterwards established for this purpose, A. D. 495, by the King Mogallana. In the Suy shoo, a Chinese history of the Suy dynasty, it is stated that in A.D. 607, the King of Ceylon "sent the Brahman Kew-mo-lo with thirty vessels, to meet the approaching ships which conveyed an embassy from China."5 And in the twelfth century, when Prakrama I. was about to enter on his foreign expeditions, "several hundreds of vessels were equipped for that service within five months."6

It is remarkable that the same apathy, if not antipathy, to navigation still prevails amongst the inhabitants of an island, the long sea-borde of which affords facilities for cultivating a maritime taste did any such exist. But whilst the natives of Hindustan fit out seagoing vessels, and take service as sailors for distant voyages, the Singhalese, though most expert as fishers and boatmen, never embark in foreign vessels, and no in

stance exists of a native ship, owned, built, or manned by Singhalese.

The boats which are in use at the present day, and which differ materially in build at different parts of the island, appear to have been all copied from models supplied by other countries. In the south the curious canoes, which attract the eye of the stranger arriving at Point de Galle by their balance-log and outrigger, were borrowed from the islanders of the Eastern Archipelago; the more substantial canoe called a ballam, which is found in the estuaries and shallow lakes around the northern shore, is imitated from one of similar form on the Malabar coast; and the catamaran is common to Ceylon and Coromandel. The awkward dhoneys, built at Jaffna, and manned by Tamils, are imitated from those at Madras; while the Singhalese dhoney, south of Colombo, is but an enlargement of the Galle canoe with its outrigger, so clumsily constructed that the gunwale is frequently topped by a line of wicker-work smeared with clay, to protect the deck from the wash of the sea.1

One peculiarity in the mode of constructing the native shipping of Ceylon existed in the remotest times, and is retained to the present day. The practice is closely connected with one of the most imaginative incidents in the mediaval romances of the East. Their boats and canoes, like those of the Arabs and other early navigators who crept along the shores of India, are put together without the use of iron nails2, the planks being secured by wooden bolts, and stitched together with cords spun from the fibre of the coco

1 The gunwale of the boat of Ulysses was raised by hurdles of osiers to keep off the waves. Φράξε δέ μιν ῥίπεσσι διαμπερὲς οἰσυΐνησι Κύματος εἷλαρ ἔμεν' πολλὴν δ ̓ ἐπε* χεύατο ὕλην. Od. v. 256.

2 DELAURIER, Études sur la "Re

lation des voyages faits par les Arabes et les Persans dans l'Inde." — Journ. Asiat. tom. xlix. p. 137. See also MALTE BRUN, Hist. de Géogr. tom. i. p. 409, with the references to the Periplus Mar. Erythr., Strabo, Procopius, &c. GIBBON, Decl. and Fall, vol. v. ch. xl.