In illustration of this matter-of-fact character of the Arab topographers, the most familiar example is that known by the popular title of the Voyages of the two Mahometans[1], who travelled in India and China in the beginning of the ninth century.  The book professes to give an account of the countries lying between Bassora and Canton; and in its unpretending style, and useful notices of commerce in those seas, it resembles the record, which the merchant ARRIAN has left us in the Periplus, of the same trade as it existed seven centuries previously, in the hands of the Greeks.  The early portion of the book, which was written A.D. 851, was taken down, from the recital of Soleyman, a merchant who had frequently made the voyages he describes, at the epoch when the commerce of Bagdad, under the Khalifs, was at the height of its prosperity.  The second part was added sixty years later, by Abou-zeyd Hassan, an amateur geographer, of Bassora (contemporary with Massoudi), from the reports of mariners returning from China, and is, to a great extent, an amplification of the notices supplied by Soleyman.

[Footnote 1:  It was first published by RENAUDOT in 1718, and from the unique MS., now in the Bibliotheque imperiale of Paris, and again by REINAUD in 1845, with a valuable discourse prefixed on the nature and extent of the Indian trade prior to the tenth century.—­Relation des Voyages faits par les Arabes et les Persans dans l’Inde et Chine dans le IX’e Siecle, &c. 2 vols. 18mo.  Paris, 1845.]

SOLEYMAN describes the sea of Herkend, as it lay between the Laccadives and Maldives[1], on the west, and swept round eastward by Cape Comorin and Adam’s Bridge to Ceylon, thus enclosing the precious fishery for pearls.  In Serendib, his earliest attention was devoutly directed to the sacred footstep on Adam’s Peak; in his name for which, “Al-rohoun," we trace the Buddhist name for the district, Rohuna, so often occurring in the Mahawanso.[2] This is the earliest notice of the Mussulman tradition, which associates the story of Adam with Ceylon, though it was current amongst the Copts in the fourth and fifth centuries.[3] On all sides of the mountain, he adds, are the mines of rubies, hyacinths, and other gems; the interior produces aloes; and the sea the highly valued chank shells, which served the Indians for trumpets.[4] The island was subject to two kings; and on the death of the chief one his body was placed on a low carriage, with the head declining till the hair swept the ground, and, as it was drawn slowly along, a female, with a bunch of leaves, swept dust upon the features, crying:  “Men, behold your king, whose will, but yesterday, was law!  To-day, he bids farewell to the world, and the Angel of Death has seized his spirit.  Cease, any longer, to be deluded by the shadowy pleasures of life.”  At the conclusion of this ceremony, which lasted for three days, the corpse was consumed on a pyre of sandal, camphor, and aromatic woods, and the ashes scattered to the winds.[5] The widow of the king was sometimes burnt along with his remains, but compliance with the custom was not held to be compulsory.