and the brothers encountered each other in a decisive A.D. engagement at Ambatthakolo in the Seven Corles. 495. Kasyapa, perceiving a swamp in his front, turned the elephant which he rode into a side path to avoid it; on which his army in alarm raised the shout that "their liege lord was flying," and in the confusion which followed, Mogallana, having struck off the head of his brother, returned the krese to its scabbard, and led his followers to take possession of the capital; where he avenged the death of his father, by the execution of the minister who had consented to it. He established a marine force to guard the island against the descents of the Malabars, and "having purified both the orthodox dharma, and the religion of the vanquisher, he died, after reigning eighteen years, signalised by acts of piety."" This story as related by its eye-witness, Mahanamo, forms one of the most characteristic, as well as the best authenticated episodes of contemporary history presented by the annals of Ceylon. Such was the feebleness of the royal house, that of the eight kings who succeeded Mogallana between A.D. 515 and A.D. 586, two died by suicide, three by murder, and one from grief occasioned by the treason of his son. The anarchy consequent upon such disorganisation stimulated the rapacity of the Malabars; and the chronicles of the following centuries are filled with the accounts of their descents on the island and the misery inflicted by their excesses. 1 The doctrines of Buddha. 2 Mahawanso, ch. xxxix. Manuscript translation by TURNOUR. TURNOUR, in his Epitome, says Kasyapa "committed suicide on the field of A.D. 515. A.D. 515. CHAP. X. THE DOMINATION OF THE MALABARS. IT has been already explained that the invaders who engaged in forays into Ceylon, though known by the general epithet of Malabars (or as they are designated in Pali, damilos, "Tamils"), were also natives of places in India remote from that now known as Malabar. They were, in reality, the inhabitants of one of the earliest states organised in Southern India, the kingdom of Pandya', whose sovereigns, from their intelligence, and their encouragement of native literature, have been appropriately styled "the Ptolemies of India." Their dominions, which covered the extremity of the peninsula, comprehended the greater portion of the Coromandel coast, extending to Canara on the western coast, and southwards to the sea. Their kingdom was subsequently contracted in dimensions, by the successive independence of Malabar, the rise of the state of Chera to the west, of Ramnad to the south, and of Chola in the east, till it sank in modern times into the petty government of the Naicks of Madura.3 The relation between this portion of the Dekkan and the early colonisers of Ceylon was rendered intimate by many concurring incidents. Wijayo himself was connected by maternal descent with the king of 1 Pandya, as a kingdom, was not unknown in classical times, and its ruler was the Βασιλευς Πανδίων mentioned in the Periplus of the Erythrean Sea, and the king Pandion, who sent an embassy to Augustus.PLINY, vi. 26; PTOLEMY, vii. 1. 2 See an Historical Sketch of the Kingdom of Pandya, by Prof. H.H. WILSON, Asiat. Journ., vol. iii. 3 See ante, p. 353, n. Kalinga, now known as the Northern Circars; his A.D. second wife was the daughter of the king of Pandya, and 515. the ladies who accompanied her to Ceylon were given in marriage to his ministers and officers.2 Similar alli.. ances were afterwards frequent; and the Singhalese annalists allude on more than one occasion to the "damilo consorts" of their sovereigns.3 of their sovereigns.3 Intimate intercourse and consanguinity were thus established from the remotest period. Adventurers from the opposite coast were encouraged by the previous settlers; high employments were thrown open to them, Malabars were subsidised both as cavalry and as seamen; and the first abuse of their privileges was in the instance of the brothers Sena and Goottika, who, holding naval and military commands, took advantage of their position and seized on the throne, B. c. 237; apparently with such acquiescence on the part of the people, that even the Mahawanso praises the righteousness of their reign, which was prolonged to twenty-two years, when they were put to death by the rightful heir to the throne.4 The easy success of the first usurpers encouraged the ambition of fresh aspirants, and barely ten years elapsed till the first regular invasion of the island took place, under the illustrious Elala, who, with an army from Mysore (then called Chola or Soli), subdued the entire of Ceylon, north of the Mahawelli-ganga, and compelled the chiefs of the rest of the island, and the kings of Rohuna and Maya, to acknowledge his supremacy and become his tributaries.5 As in the instance of the previous revolt, the people exhibited such faint resistance to the usurpation, that the reign of Elala extended to fortyfour years. It is difficult to conceive that their quiescence under a stranger was entirely ascribable to the 1 Mahawanso, ch. vi. p. 43. 2 Mahawanso, ch. vii. p. 53; the Rajavali (p. 173,) says they were 700 in number. ♦ Mahawanso, ch. xxi. p. 127. p. 188. 3 Mahawanso, ch. xxxviii. p. 253. A.D. fact, that the rule of the Malabars, although adverse to Buddhism, was characterised by justice and impartiality. Possibly they recognised to some extent their pretensions, as founded on their relationship to the legitimate sovereigns of the island, and hence they bore their sway without impatience.1 The majority of the subsequent invasions of Ceylon by the Malabars partook less of the character of conquest than of forays, by a restless and energetic race, into a fertile and defenceless country. Mantotte, on the north-west coast, near Adam's Bridge, became the great place of debarcation; and here successive bands of marauders landed time after time without meeting any effectual resistance from the unwarlike Singhalese. The second great invasion took place about a century after the first, B. c. 103, when seven Malabar leaders effected simultaneous descents at different points of the coast 2, and combined with a disaffected "Brahman prince" of Rohuna, to force Walagam-bahu I. to surrender his sovereignty. The king, after an ineffectual show of resistance, fled to the mountains of Malaya; one of the invaders carried off the queen to the coast of India ; a third despoiled the temples of Anarajapoora and retired, whilst the others continued in possession of the capital for nearly fifteen years, till Walagam-bahu, by the aid of the Rohuna highlanders, succeeded in recovering the throne. The third great invasion on record was in its cha 1 See ante, p. 360, n. 2 TURNOUR'S Epitome, p. 16. The Mahawanso says they landed at "Mahatittha.”—Mantotte, ch. xxxiii. p. 203. 3 This incursion of the Malabars is not mentioned in the Mahawanso, but it is described in the Rajavali, p. 229, and mentioned by TURNOUR, in his Epitome, &c., p. 21. There is evidence of the conscious supremacy of the Malabars over the north of Ceylon, in the fourth century, in a very curious document, relating to that period. The existence of a colony of Jews at Cochin, in the southwestern extremity of the Dekkan, has long been known in Europe, and half a century ago, particulars of their condition and numbers were published by Dr. Claudius Buchanan. (Christian Researches, &c.) Amongst other facts, he made known their possession of Hebrew MSS. demonstrative of the great antiquity of their settlement in India, and also of their racter still more predatory than those which preceded A.D. it, but it was headed by a king in person, who carried 515, away 12,000 Singhalese as slaves to Mysore. It occurred in the reign of Waknais, A.D. 110, whose son Gaja-bahu, A.D. 113, avenged the outrage by invading the Solee country with an expedition which sailed from Jaffnapatam, and brought back not only the rescued Singhalese captives, but also a multitude of Solleans, whom the king established on lands in the Alootcoor Corle, where the Malabar features are thought to be discernible to the present day.1 A long interval of repose followed, and no fresh expedition from India is mentioned in the chronicles of Ceylon till A.D. 433, when the capital was again taken by the Malabars; the Singhalese families fled beyond the Mahawelli-ganga; and the invaders occupied the entire extent of the Pihiti Ratta, where for twentyseven years, five of them in succession administered the government, till Dhatu Sena collected forces sufficient to overpower the strangers, and, emerging from his retreat in Rohuna, recovered possession of the north of the island.2 Dhatu Sena, after his victory, seems to have made an attempt, though an ineffectual one, to reverse the policy which had operated under his predecessors as an incentive to the immigration of Malabars; settlement title deeds of land (sasanams), engraved on plates of copper, and presented to them by the early kings of that portion of the peninsula. Some of the latter have been carefully translated into English (see Madras Journ., vol. xiii. xiv.). One of their MSS. has recently been brought to England, under circumstances which are recounted by Mr. FORSTER, in the third vol. of his One Primeval Language, p. 303. This MS. I have been permitted to examine. It is in corrupted Rabbinical Hebrew, written about the year 1781, and contains a partial synopsis of the modern his |