A - Early Notices of the Maldives

Summary

The race which now inhabits the Maldivian archipelago, and which has occupied it from the earliest times of which we have any record, is unquestionably of the same stock as the Sinhalese. This conclusion is borne out by evidence of language, physical traits, tradition, folk-lore, manners, and customs, which has been in part adduced or referred to in these volumes. It does not appear that the atolls were inhabited before they were colonised by the Sinhalese, no traces existing of any race, such as the Veddas of Ceylon, which the settlers may have conquered or gradually displaced; and the recognised admixture of foreign blood in the northern atolls being attributable to intercourse within the historical period with merchants from India and Arabia, and with negro slaves from Africa. While, as has been seen, the local tradition of Pyrard's time asserted a colonisation from Ceylon, it was silent as to any war accompanying the settlement, or any intermarriage of the conquerors with the daughters of the land.

The colonisation must be assigned to a period not anterior to that of Ceylon by the Sinhalese, an event which probably occurred about the fifth or sixth century b.c. It is improbable that the Maldives would have any attraction for the adventurers from Bengal at a time when the broad lands of Ceylon were still untilled, offering a more ample return to their enterprise than the tiny coral islets and lagoons of the West.