and using Arabic as their ritual dialect.  Their vernacular is Tamil, mixed with a number of Arabic words; and all their religious books, except the Koran, are in that dialect.  Casie Chitty, the erudite District Judge of Chilaw, writes to me that “the Moors of Ceylon believe themselves to be of the posterity of Hashem; and, according to one tradition, their progenitors were driven from Arabia by Mahomet himself, as a punishment for their cowardice at the battle of Ohod.  But according to another version, they fled from the tyranny of the Khalif Abu al Malek ben Merivan, in the early part of the eighth century.  Their first settlement in India was formed at Kail-patam, to the east of Cape Comorin, whence that place is still regarded as the ‘father-land of the Moors.’”

Another of their traditions is, that their first landing-place in Ceylon was at Barberyn, south of Caltura, in the 402nd year of the Hejira, (A.D. 1024.) These legends would seem to refer to the arrival of some important section of the Moors, but not to the first appearance of this remarkable people in Ceylon.  The Ceylon Gazetteer, Cotta, 1834, p. 254, contains a valuable paper by Casie Chitty on “the Manners and Customs of the Moors of Ceylon.”]

MARCO POLO, in the thirteenth century, found the Moors in uncontested possession of this busy and lucrative trade, and BARBOSA, in his account of the island, A.D. 1519, says, that not only were they to be found in every sea-port and city, conducting and monopolising its commerce, but Moors from the coast of Malabar were continually arriving to swell their numbers, allured by the facilities of commerce and the unrestrained freedom enjoyed under the government.[1] In process of time their prosperity invested them with political influence, and in the decline of the Singhalese monarchy they took advantage of the feebleness of the king of Cotta, to direct armed expeditions against parts of the coast, to plunder the inhabitants, and supply themselves with elephants and pearls.[2] They engaged in conspiracies against the native princes; and Wijayo Bahu VII., who was murdered in 1534, was slain by a turbulent Moorish leader called Soleyman, whom his eldest son and successor had instigated to the crime.[3]

[Footnote 1:  “Molti Mori Malabari vengono a stantiare in questa isola per esser in grandissima liberta, oltra tutte le commodita e delitie del mondo,” etc.—­ODOARDO BARBOSA, Sommario delle Indie Orientale, in Ramusio, vol. i. p. 313.]

[Footnote 2:  Rajavali, p. 274.]

[Footnote 3:  Ib., p. 284.  PORCACCHI, in his Isolario, written at Venice A.D. 1576, thus records the traditional reputation of the Moors of Ceylon:—­“I Mori ch’ habitano hoggi la Taprobana fanno grandissimi traffichi, nauigando per tutto:  et piu anchora vengono da diverse parte molte mercantie, massimamente dal paese di Cambaia, con coralli, cinabrio, et argento vivo.  Ma son questi Mori perfidi et ammazzono spesse, volte i lor Re; et ne creano degli altri.”—­Page 188.]