[Footnote 1:  PLINY, Nat.  Hist., lib. vi. ch. xxiv.  Transl.  Philemon Holland, p. 130.  This passage has been sometimes supposed to refer to the Serae, but a reference to the text will confirm the opinion of MARTIANUS and SOLINUS, that Pliny applies it to the Singhalese; and that the allusion to red hair and grey eyes, “rutilis comis” and “caeruleis oculis” applies to some northern tribes whom the Singhalese had seen in their overland journeys to China, “Later travellers,” says COOLEY, “have likewise had glimpses, on the frontiers of India, of these German features; but nothing is yet known with certainty of the tribe to which they properly belonged.”—­Hist.  Inland and Maritime Discovery, vol. i. p. 71.]

The fact, thus established, of the aversion to commerce, immemorially evinced by the southern Singhalese, and of their desire to escape from intercourse with the strangers resorting to trade on their coasts, serves to explain the singular scantiness of information regarding the interior of the island which is apparent in the writings of the Arabians and Persians, between the eighth and thirteenth centuries.  Their knowledge of the coast was extensive, they were familiar with the lofty mountain which served as its landmark, they dwell with admiration on its productions, and record with particularity the objects of commerce which were to be found in the island; but, regarding the Singhalese themselves and their social and intellectual condition, little, if any, real information is to be gleaned from the Oriental geographers of the middle ages.

ALBATENY and MASSOUDI, the earliest of the Arabian geographers[1], were contemporaries of Abou-zeyd, in the ninth century, and neither adds much to the description of Ceylon, given in the narratives of “The two Mahometans.”  The former assigns to the island the fabulous dimensions ascribed to it by the Hindus, and only alludes to the ruby and the sapphire[2] as being found in the rivers that flow from its majestic mountains.  MASSOUDI asserts that he visited Ceylon[3], and describes, from actual knowledge, the funeral ceremonies of a king, and the incremation of his remains; but as these are borrowed almost verbatim from the account given by Soleyman[4], there is reason to believe that he merely copied from Abou-zeyd the portions of the “Meadows of Gold"[5] that have relation to Ceylon.

[Footnote 1:  Probably the earliest allusion to Ceylon by any Arabian or Persian author, is that of Tabari, who was born in A.D. 838; but he limits his notices to an exaggerated account of Adam’s Peak, “than which the whole world does not contain a mountain of greater height.”—­OUSELLY’S Travels, vol i. p. 34, n.]

[Footnote 2:  “Le rubis rouge, et la pierre qui est couleur de ciel.”  ALBATENY, quoted by Reinaud, Introd.  ABOULFEDA p. ccclxxxv.]

[Footnote 3:  MASSOUDI in Gildemeister, Script.  Arab. p. 154.  Gildemeister discredits the assertion of Massoudi, that he had been in Ceylon. (Ib. p. 154, n.) He describes Kalah as an island distinct from Serendib.]