A.D. structions which gave the city its lasting renown; stupendous dagobas raised by successive monarchs, each 302. eager to surpass the conceptions of his predecessors; temples in which were deposited statues of gold adorned with gems and native pearls; the decorated terraces of the Bo-tree, and the Brazen Palace, with its thousand chambers and its richly embellished halls. The city was enclosed by a rampart upwards of twenty feet in height, which was afterwards replaced by a wall2; and, so late as the fourth century, the Chinese traveller Fa Hian describes the condition of the place in terms which fully corroborate the accounts of the 1 By WASABHO, A.D. 66. Mahawanso, ch. xxxv. p. 222. 2 TURNOUR, in his Epitome of the History of Ceylon, says that Anarajapoora was enclosed by a rampart seven cubits high, B.C. 41, and that A.D. 66 King Wasabha built a wall round the city sixteen gows in circumference. As he estimates the gow at four English miles, this would give an area equal to about 300 square miles. A space so prodigious for the capital seems to be disproportionate to the extent of the kingdom, and far too extended for the wants of the population. TURNOUR does not furnish the authority on which he gives the dimensions, nor have I been able to discover it in the Rajavali nor in the Rajaratnacari. The Mahawanso alludes to the fact of Anarajapoora having been fortified by Wasabha, but, instead of a wall, the work which it describes this king to have undertaken, was the raising of the height of the rampart from seven cubits to eighteen (Mahawanso, ch. xxxv. p. 222). Major Forbes, in his account of the ruins of the ancient city, repeats the story of their former extent, in which he no doubt considered that the high authority of Turnour in matters of antiquity was sustained by a statement made by Lieutenant Skinner, who had surveyed the ruins in 1822, to the effect that he had discovered near Alia-parte the remains of masonry, which he concluded to be a portion of the ancient city wall A.D. Mahawanso. It was crowded, he says, with nobles, 302. magistrates, and foreign merchants; the houses were handsome, and the public buildings richly adorned. The streets and highways were broad and level, and halls for preaching and reading bana were erected in all the thoroughfares. He was assured that the island contained not less than from fifty to sixty thousand ecclesiastics, who all ate in common; and of whom from five to six thousand were supported by the bounty of the king. The sacred tooth of Buddha was publicly exposed on sacred days in the capital with gorgeous ceremonies, which he recounts, and thence carried in procession to "the mountains without fear;" the road to which was perfumed and decked with flowers for the occasion; and the festival was concluded by a dramatic representation of events in the life of Buddha, illustrated by scenery and costumes, with figures of elephants and stags, so delicately coloured as to be undistinguishable from nature.1 1 FA HIAN, Foě Kouě Ki, ch. xxxviii. p. 334, &c. 385 CHAP. IX. KINGS OF THE "LOWER DYNASTY." A.D. THE story of the kings of Ceylon of the Sulu-wanse or "lower line," is but a narrative of the decline of the 302. power and prosperity which had been matured under the Bengal conquerors and of the rise of the Malabar marauders, whose ceaseless forays and incursions eventually reduced authority to feebleness and the island to desolation. The vapid biography of the royal imbeciles who filled the throne from the third to the thirteenth century scarcely embodies an incident of sufficient interest to diversify the monotonous repetition of temples founded and dagobas repaired, of tanks constructed and priests endowed with lands reclaimed and fertilised by the "forced labour" of the subjugated races. Civil dissensions, religious schisms, royal intrigues and assassinations contributed equally with foreign invasions to diminish the influence of the monarchy and exhaust the strength of the kingdom. Of sixty-two sovereigns who reigned from the death of Maha-Sen, A.D. 301, to the accession of Prakrama Bahu, A.D. 1153, nine met a violent death at the hands of their relatives or subjects, two ended their days in exile, one was slain by the Malabars, and four committed suicide. Of the lives of the larger number the Buddhist historians fail to furnish any important incidents; they relate merely the merit which each acquired by his liberality to the national religion or the more substantial benefits conferred on the people by the formation of lakes for irrigation. A.D. 330. Unembarrassed by any questions of external policy or foreign expeditions, and limited to a narrow range of internal administration, a few of the early kings addressed themselves to intellectual pursuits. One immortalised himself in the estimation of the devout by his skill in painting and sculpture, and in carving in ivory, arts which he displayed by modelling statues of Buddha, and which he employed himself in teaching to his A.D. subjects. Another was equally renowned as a medical 339. author and a practitioner of surgery2, and a third was so passionately attached to poetry that in despair for the death of Kalidas3, he flung himself into the flames of the poet's funeral pile. With the exception of the embassy sent from Ceylon to Rome in the reign of the Emperor Claudius 4, the earliest diplomatic intercourse with foreigners of which a record exists, occurred in the fourth or fifth centuries, when the Singhalese appear to have sent ambassadors to the Emperor Julian5, and for the first time to have established a friendly connection with China. It is strange, considering the religious sympathies which united the two people, that the native chronicles make no mention of the latter negotiations or their results, so that we learn of them only through Chinese historians. The Encyclopædia of MA-TOUAN-LIN, written at the close of the thirteenth century, records that Ceylon 1 Detoo Tissa, A. D. 330, Maha- | Ceylon, A. D. 513. For an account of wanso, xxxvii. p. 242. 2 Budha Daasa, A. D. 339. Maha- 9 Not KALIDAS, the author of Sa- Kalidas, see DE ALWIS's Sidath Sangara, p. cliv. 4 PLINY, lib. vi. c. 24. 5 AMMIANUS MARCELLINUS, lib. xx. c. 7. • KLAPROTH doubts, "si la science de l'Europe a produit jusqu'à présent un ouvrage de ce genre aussi bien exécuté et capable de soutenir la comparaison avec cette encyclopédie chinoise."-Journ. Asiat. tom. xxi. p. 3. See also Asiatic Journal, London, 1832, vol. xxxv. p. 110. It has been often reprinted in 100 large first entered into political relations with China in the fourth century. It was about the year 400 A.D., says the author, "in the reign of the Emperor Nyan-ti, that ambassadors arrived from Ceylon bearing a statue of Fo in jade-stone four feet two inches high, painted in five colours, and of such singular beauty that one would have almost doubted its being a work of human ingenuity. It was placed in the Buddhist temple at Kien-Kang (Nankin)." In the year 428 A.D., the King of Ceylon (Maha Nama) sent envoys to offer tribute, and this homage was repeated between that period and A.D. 529, by three other Singhalese kings, whose names it is dif ficult to identity with their Chinese designations of Kia-oe, Kia-lo, and the Ho-li-ye. In A.D. 670, another ambassador arrived from Ceylon, and A.D. 742, Chi-lo-mi-kia sent presents to the Emperor of China consisting of pearls (perles de feu), golden flowers, precious stones, ivory, and pieces of fine cotton cloth. At a later period mutual intercourse became frequent between the two countries, and some of the Chinese travellers who resorted to Ceylon have left valuable records as to the state of the island. A.D. 400. A r. It was during the reign of Maha Nama, about the year 413 A.D., that Ceylon was visited by Fa Hian, and the 413. statements of the Mahawanso are curiously corroborated by the observations recorded by this Chinese traveller. He describes accurately the geniality of the climate, whose uniform temperature rendered the seasons undistinguishable. Winter and summer, he says, are alike unknown, but perpetual verdure realises the idea of a volumes. M. STANISLAS JULIEN says that in another Chinese work Pien-itien, or The History of Foreign Nations, there is a compilation including every passage in which Chinese authors have written of Ceylon, which occupies about forty pages 4to. Ib. tom. xxix. p. 39. A number of these authorities will be found ex- ch. iii. 1 Between the years 317 and 420 A. D.-Journ. Asiat. tom. xxviii. p. 401. |