[Footnote 1:  Mahawanso, ch. lxxx. Rajaratnacari, p. 93; Rajavali, p. 256.  TURNOUR’S Epitome, &c., p. 44.]

KAZWINI, as usual, dwells on the productions of the island, its spices, and its odours, its precious woods and medical drugs, its profusion of gems, its gold and silver work, and its pearls[1]:  but one circumstance will not fail to strike the reader as a strange omission in these frequent enumerations of the exports of Ceylon.  I have traced them from their earliest notices by the Greeks and Romans to the period when the commerce of the East had reached its climax in the hands of the Persians and Arabians; the survey extends over fifteen centuries, during which Ceylon and its productions were familiarly known to the traders of all countries, and yet in the pages of no author, European or Asiatic, from the earliest ages to the close of the thirteenth century, is there the remotest allusion to Cinnamon as an indigenous production, or even as an article of commerce in Ceylon.  I may add, that I have been equally unsuccessful in finding any allusion to it in any Chinese work of ancient date.[2]

[Footnote 1:  KAZWINI, in Gildemeister, Script.  Arab. p. 108.]

[Footnote 2:  In the Chinese Materia Medica, “Pun-tsao-kang-muh,” cinnamon or cassia is described under the name of “kwei” but always as a production of Southern China and of Cochin China.  In the Ming History, a production of Ceylon is mentioned under the name of “Shoo-heang,” or “tree-perfume;” but my informant, Mr. Wylie, of Shanghae, is unable to identify it with cinnamon oil.]

This unexpected result has served to cast a suspicion on the title of Ceylon to be designated par excellence the “Cinnamon Isle,” and even with the knowledge that the cinnamon laurel is indigenous there, it admits of but little doubt that the spice which in the earlier ages was imported into Europe through Arabia, was obtained, first from Africa, and afterwards from India; and that it was not till after the twelfth or thirteenth century that its existence in Ceylon became known to the merchants resorting to the island.  So little was its real history known in Europe, even at the latter period, that Phile, who composed his metrical treatise, [Greek:  Peri Zoon Idiotetos], for the information of the Emperor Michael XI. (Palaeologus), about the year 1310, repeats the ancient fable of Herodotus, that cinnamon grew in an unknown Indian country, whence it was carried by birds, from whose nests it was abstracted by the natives of Arabia.[1]

[Footnote 1: 

[Greek:  Ornis ho kinnamomos onomasmenos To kinnamomon euren agnooumenon, Huph ou kalian organoi tois philtatois Mallon ie tois melasin Indois, autanax Aromatiken hedonen diaplekei.]

  PHILE, xxviii.