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CHAPTER I.

SOURCES OF SINGHALESE HISTORY. -THE MAHAWANSO AND OTHER NATIVE ANNALS.

Ir was long affirmed by Europeans that the Singhalese annals, like those of the Hindus, were devoid of interest or value as historical material; that, as religious disquisitions, they were the ravings of fanaticism, and that myths and romances had been reduced to the semblance of national chronicles. Such was the opinion of the Portuguese writers DE BARROS and DE COUTO; and VALENTYN, who, about the year 1725, published his great work on the Dutch possessions in India, states his conviction that no reliance can be placed on such of the Singhalese books as profess to record the ancient condition of the country. These he held to be even of less authority than the traditions of the same events which had descended from father to son. On the information of learned Singhalese, drawn apparently from the Rajavali, he inserted an account of the native sovereigns, from the earliest times to the arrival of the Portuguese; but, wearied by the monotonous inanity of the story, he omitted every reign between the fifth and fifteenth centuries of the Christian era.1

A writer, who, under the signature of PHILALETHES, published, in 1816, A History of Ceylon from the earliest period, adopted the dictum of Valentyn, and contented himself with still further condensing the "account," which the latter had given "of the ancient Emperors

1

VALENTYN, Oud en Nieuw Oost-Indien, &c., Landbeschryving van ť Eyland Ceylon. ch. iv. p. 60.

and Kings" of the island. Dr. DAVY compiled that portion of his excellent narrative which has reference to the early history of Kandy, chiefly from the recitals of the most intelligent natives, borrowed, as in the case of the informants of Valentyn, from the perusal of the popular legends; and he and every other author unacquainted with the native language, who wrote on Ceylon previous to 1833, assumed without inquiry the nonexistence of historic data.1

It was not till about the year 1826 that the discovery was made and communicated to Europe, that whilst the history of India was only to be conjectured from myths and elaborated from the dates on copper grants, or fading inscriptions on rocks and columns 2, Ceylon was in possession of continuous written chronicles, rich in authentic facts, and not only presenting a connected history of the island itself, but also yielding valuable materials for elucidating that of India. At the moment when Prinsep was deciphering the mysterious Buddhist inscriptions, which are scattered over Hindustan and Western India, and when Csoma de Körrös was unrolling the Buddhist records of Thibet, and Hodgson those of Nepaul, a fellow labourer of kindred genius was successfully exploring the Pali manuscripts of Ceylon, and developing results not less remarkable nor less conducive to the illustration of the early history of Southern Asia. Mr. Turnour, a civil officer of the Ceylon service3, was then administering

1 DAVY'S Ceylon, ch. x. p. 293. See also PERCEVAL'S Ceylon, p. 4.

2 REINAUD, Mémoire sur l'Inde, p. 3. 3 GEORGE TURNOUR was the eldest son of the Hon. George Turnour, son of the first Earl of Winterton; his mother being Emilie, niece to the Cardinal Duc de Beausset. He was born in Ceylon in 1799, and having been educated in England under the guardianship of the Right Hon. Sir Thomas Maitland, then governor of the island, he entered the Civil Ser

the government of the district of Saffragam, and being resident at Ratnapoora near the foot of Adam's Peak, he was enabled to pursue his studies under the guid

aries then existed to assist in defining of the Bengal Asiatic Society, v. 521, the meaning of Pali terms which no vi. 299, 790, 1049, contributed a teacher could be found capable of ren- series of essays on the Pali-Buddhisdering into English, so that Mr. Tur- tical Annals, which were published in nour was entirely dependent on his 1836, 1837, 1838.-Journ. Asiatic knowledge of Singhalese as a medium Soc. Bengal, vi. 501, 714, vii. 686, for translating them. To an ordinary 789, 919. At various times he pubmind such obstructions would have lished in the same journal an account proved insurmountable, aggravated of the Tooth Relic of Ceylon, Ib. as they were by discouragements vi. 856, and notes on the inscriptions arising from the assumed barrenness on the columns of Delhi, Allahabad, of the field, and the absence of all and Betiah, &c. &c., and frequent sympathy with his pursuits, on the notices of Ceylon coins and inscrippart of those around him, who re- tions. He had likewise planned served their applause and encourage- another undertaking of signal imment till success had rendered him portance, the translation into Enindependent of either. To this in-glish of a Pali version of the Buddifference of the government officers, Major Forbes, who was then the resident at Matelle, formed an honourable exception; and his narrative of Eleven Years in Ceylon shows with what ardour and success he shared the tastes and cultivated the studies to which he had been directed by the genius and example of Turnour. So zealous and unobtrusive were the pursuits of the latter, that even his immediate connexions and relatives were unaware of the value and extent of his acquirements till apprised of their importance and profundity by the acclamation with which his discoveries and translations from the Pali were received by the savans of Europe. Major Forbes, in a private letter, which I have been permitted to see, speaking of the difficulty of doing justice to the literary character of Turnour, and the ability, energy, and perseverance which he exhibited in his historical investigations, says, "his Epitome of the History of Ceylon was from the first correct; I saw it seven years before it was published, and it scarcely required an alteration afterwards." Whilst engaged in his translation of the Mahawanso, TURNOUR, amongst other able papers on Buddhist History and Indian Chronology in the Journal

dhist scriptures, an ancient copy of which he had discovered, unencumbered by the ignorant commentaries of later writers, and the fables with which they have defaced the plain and simple doctrines of the early faith. He announced his intention in the Introduction to the Mahawanso to expedite the publication, as "the least tardy means of effecting a comparison of the Pali with the Sanskrit version" (p. cx.). His correspondence with Prinsep, which I have been permitted by his family to inspect, abounds with the evidence of inchoate inquiries in which their congenial spirits had a common interest, but which were abruptly ended by the premature decease of both. Turnour, with shattered health, returned to Europe in 1842, and died at Naples on the 10th of April in the following year. The first volume of his translation of the Mahawanso, which contains thirty-eight chapters out of the hundred which form the original work, was published at Colombo in 1837; and apprehensive that scepticism might assail the authenticity of a discovery so important, he accompanied his English version with a reprint of the original Pali in Roman characters with diacritical points.

ance of Gallé, a learned priest, through whose instru mentality he obtained from the Wihara, at Mulgiri-galla, near Tangalle (a temple founded about 130 years before the Christian era), some rare and important manuscripts, the perusal of which gave an impulse and direction to the investigations which occupied the rest of his life.

It is necessary to premise, that the most renowned of the Singhalese books is the Mahawanso, a metrical chronicle, containing a dynastic history of the island for twenty-three centuries from B.C. 543 to A.D. 1758. But being written in Pali verse its existence in modern times was only known to the priests, and owing to the obscurity of its diction it had ceased to be studied by even the learned amongst them.

To relieve the obscurity of their writings, and supply the omissions, occasioned by the fetters of rhythm and the necessity of permutations and elisions, required to accommodate their phraseology to the obligations of verse; the Pali authors of antiquity were accustomed to accompany their metrical compositions with a tika or running commentary, which contained a literal version of the mystical text, and supplied illustrations of its more abstruse passages. Such a tika on the Mahawanso was generally known to have been written; but so utter was the neglect into which both it and the original text had been permitted to fall, that Turnour till 1826 had never met with an individual who had critically read the one, or more than casually heard of the existence of the other.1

He did not live to conclude the task he had so nobly begun; he died while engaged on the second volume of his translation, and only a few chapters, executed with his characteristic accuracy, remain in manuscript in the possession of his surviving relatives. It diminishes, though in a slight degree, our regret for the interruption of his literary labours to know that the section of the Mahawanso which

At length, amongst

he left unfinished is inferior both in authority and value to the earlier portion of the work, and that being composed at a period when literature was at its lowest ebb in Ceylon, it differs little if at all from other chronicles written during the decline of the native dynasty.

1 TURNOUR'S Mahawanso, introduction, vol. i. p. ii.