A tablet has just been unearthed at Galle, bearing an inscription in Arabic, Chinese and Tamil.

The Arabic is beyond decipherment, but enough is left of the Chinese to show that the tablet was erected in 1409 to commemorate a visit by the eunuch Cheng Ho, who passed several times backwards and forwards over that route.

In 1411 the same eunuch was sent as envoy to Japan, and narrowly escaped with his life.
The emperor was a warm patron of literature, and succeeded in bringing about the achievement of the most gigantic literary task that the world has ever seen.

He employed a huge staff of scholars to compile an encyclopaedia which should contain within the compass of a single work all that had ever been written in the four departments of (1) the Confucian Canon, (2) history, (3) philosophy, and (4) general literature, including astronomy, geography, cosmogony, medicine, divination, Buddhism, Taoism, handicrafts and arts.

The completed work, over which a small army of scholars--more than two thousand in all--had spent five years, ran to no fewer than 22,877 sections, to which must be added an index occupying 60 sections.