An Historical Relation of the Island Ceylon
Encyclopedia
An Historical Relation of the Island Ceylon together With somewhat Concerning Severall Remarkable passages of my life that hath hapned since my Deliverance out of Captivity is a book written by the English trader and sailor Robert Knox
Robert Knox (sailor)
Robert Knox was an English sea captain in the service of the British East India Company. He was the son of another sea captain, also called Robert Knox....
in 1681. It describes his experiences some years earlier on the South Asian island now best known as Sri Lanka
Sri Lanka
Sri Lanka, officially the Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka is a country off the southern coast of the Indian subcontinent. Known until 1972 as Ceylon , Sri Lanka is an island surrounded by the Indian Ocean, the Gulf of Mannar and the Palk Strait, and lies in the vicinity of India and the...
and provides one of the most important contemporary accounts of 17th century Ceylonese life.
Knox spent 19 years on Ceylon after being taken prisoner by King Râjasimha II. He survived by knitting caps, selling goods and lending rice and corn. He finally escaped with one companion in 1679 and reached Arippu, a Dutch
Netherlands
The Netherlands is a constituent country of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, located mainly in North-West Europe and with several islands in the Caribbean. Mainland Netherlands borders the North Sea to the north and west, Belgium to the south, and Germany to the east, and shares maritime borders...
settlement on the north-west coast of the island, from where he was able eventually to return to England in 1680.
The book was written during the voyage back to England. It came to the attention of Knox's employers, the directors of the British East India Company
British East India Company
The East India Company was an early English joint-stock company that was formed initially for pursuing trade with the East Indies, but that ended up trading mainly with the Indian subcontinent and China...
, who recommended its publication. The historian and biographer John Strype
John Strype
John Strype was an English historian and biographer. He was a cousin of Robert Knox, a famous sailor.Born in Houndsditch, London, he was the son of John Strype, or van Stryp, a member of a Huguenot family whom, in order to escape religious persecution within Brabant, had settled in East London...
, Knox's cousin, helped him to prepare the book for publication with the encouragement of the natural philosopher and polymath
Polymath
A polymath is a person whose expertise spans a significant number of different subject areas. In less formal terms, a polymath may simply be someone who is very knowledgeable...
Robert Hooke
Robert Hooke
Robert Hooke FRS was an English natural philosopher, architect and polymath.His adult life comprised three distinct periods: as a scientific inquirer lacking money; achieving great wealth and standing through his reputation for hard work and scrupulous honesty following the great fire of 1666, but...
. It was printed by Richard Chiswell, the printer to the Royal Society, under the imprimaturs of the Society and the Company. When the book was published in 1681 it was widely read and was translated in Knox's lifetime into German
German language
German is a West Germanic language, related to and classified alongside English and Dutch. With an estimated 90 – 98 million native speakers, German is one of the world's major languages and is the most widely-spoken first language in the European Union....
(1689), Dutch
Dutch language
Dutch is a West Germanic language and the native language of the majority of the population of the Netherlands, Belgium, and Suriname, the three member states of the Dutch Language Union. Most speakers live in the European Union, where it is a first language for about 23 million and a second...
(1692) and French
French language
French is a Romance language spoken as a first language in France, the Romandy region in Switzerland, Wallonia and Brussels in Belgium, Monaco, the regions of Quebec and Acadia in Canada, and by various communities elsewhere. Second-language speakers of French are distributed throughout many parts...
(1693) editions. It made Knox internationally famous and was a major influence on the works of Daniel Defoe
Daniel Defoe
Daniel Defoe , born Daniel Foe, was an English trader, writer, journalist, and pamphleteer, who gained fame for his novel Robinson Crusoe. Defoe is notable for being one of the earliest proponents of the novel, as he helped to popularise the form in Britain and along with others such as Richardson,...
; Robinson Crusoe
Robinson Crusoe
Robinson Crusoe is a novel by Daniel Defoe that was first published in 1719. Epistolary, confessional, and didactic in form, the book is a fictional autobiography of the title character—a castaway who spends 28 years on a remote tropical island near Trinidad, encountering cannibals, captives, and...
and the later Captain Singleton
Captain Singleton
The Life, Adventures and Piracies of the Famous Captain Singleton is a novel by Daniel Defoe. It is believed to have been partly inspired by the exploits of English pirate Henry Every....
both draw on the experiences of Knox.
The preface provides maps and descriptions of Tamil royal and rural life in the country Vanni
Vanni (Sri Lanka)
The Vanni is the name given to the mainland area of the Northern Province, Sri Lanka. It covers the entirety of Mannar, Mullaitivu and Vavuniya Districts, and most of Kilinochchi District. It has an area of approximately 7,650 km2...
which he stumbled into in the north and east of the island. The book is accompanied by seventeen copperplate engravings of unknown provenance to illustrate topics addressed by Knox. The engravings are not particularly artistically accomplished, but they do at least fit the text well. However, the artist suffers from evidently not having seen his subjects; H.A.I. Goonetileke comments that "the animals are near caricatures and the human subjects are obviously based on more familiar European models." The non-English editions of the book imitate or adapt the original English engravings. The Dutch edition, for instance, incorporates engravings by Jan Luyken
Jan Luyken
Johannes or Jan Luyken was a Dutch poet, illustrator and engraver.-Biography:...
which are based on the English originals but provide a more animated setting, with more detailed backgrounds of buildings and landscapes.