Mediaeval Sinhalese Art c6.51

c6.51

In the long reign of Rāja Simha II. (A.D. 1633-1687) the Portuguese wars were continued; an alliance was made with the Dutch, and the Portuguese finally expelled in A.D. 1658, but the Dutch did not prove more faithful allies, although theirs was a policy more purely commercial; there is a Sinhalese proverb, spoken when a man makes a bad exchange and used in reference to the Dutch succeeding the Portuguese, “I have given pepper and got ginger.” Rāja Simha seems to have been a very cruel and capricious monarch. One Robert Knox was a prisoner at his court for twenty years, escaping then to write one of the most truthful, and at the same time fascinating books of travel ever set down. His “Historical Relation of the Island Ceylon” (A.D. 1681) is a compendium of invaluable information, written in spirited and idiomatic English; it is still the most interesting work on Ceylon and the Sinhalese, and is often quoted in the present volume. Ribeiro’s “Fatalidade Historica de Ceilao,” written a few years later, gives a valuable account of the low-country at the same period.