for the (dévatá) Wessawano, and a temple for the Wiyádhodévo." "He also constructed a dwelling for the various classes of devotees." "The king built a temple for the Nighantho Kumbhundo, which was called by his name. Το the westward of that temple...... he provided a residence for 500 persons of various foreign religious faiths. Above the dwelling of Jótiyo [a Brahman-his chief engineer] and below the Gamini tank, he built a residence for the Paribújika devotees. In the same quarter, but on separate sites, he. constructed a residence for the Ajiwako, a hall for the worshippers of Brahma, (another for those) of Sivá, as well as a hospital."

These Brahmans seem to have continued to reside peaceably in Ceylon, until B. C. 246, when two Malabar adventurers, military chiefs in the pay of the monarch Suratissa, murdered the king and usurped the throne. Elála, of Solí (Tanjore) on the Coromandel coast soon after their dethronement by Aséla, invaded the island, and defeating that king possessed himself of the entire country, with the exception of Ruhuna. He retained his power till B. c. 164, when in his turn he was overthrown and slain in battle by Duṭṭhágamíne, and his followers driven out of the island. An army of Malabars again invaded Ceylon in the reign of Walagambáhu, and held possession until B. C. 88. They seem to have remained quiet after their expulsion by Walagambáhu until A. D. 106, when the prince of the Solíans once more ravaged the country with an army, and after plundering and devastating it returned to his own land with immense booty

and 12,000 captives. Six years later, this invasion was avenged by Gajabáhu, the captives recovered, and a similar number of Solíans led prisoners to Ceylon. Respecting these transactions however, the Malabar and Sinhalese annalists give dissimilar accounts, the former asserting that the Solíans voluntarily migrated to Ceylon at the request of Gajabáhu, who made them large grants of land for the support of a temple to Sivá, by way of expiation for a sin of intention, he having at one time purposed to pull the said temple down. It is at any rate certain that at the time alluded to a Solían colony was established in Trincomalee, and that the colonists were Sivaites. Another Malabar invasion took place a. D. 433, and the invaders again held possession of the land for six-and-twenty years. Anarchy and internal discord more or less prevailed from this time to the seventh century, in which the Malabars every now and again took part. In A. D. 838 these inveterate invaders once more overran the country. Driven back after awhile, they remained quiet until a. D. 954, when war broke out afresh. A short peace ensued, and again the Solíans ravaged the country; and the number of Malabars increased so much in successive reigns that A. D. 1023, they menaced the throne, and an army of Solíans coming to their aid, the king Mihindu IV. was captured, and with his queen died a prisoner in the country of his foes. The Solíans after this held the northern and mountain districts for upwards of fifty years, when they were reduced by Wejayabáhu, who died A. D. 1126; and during this period the Dhamilos [Tamils] succeeded in driving almost all the

Buddhist priests out of the island. Seventy years of peace followed, when a fresh period of internal discord tempted the Solíans to a fresh invasion, and the whole island became the prey of confusion, irreligion and anarchy, in which state it continued a third of a century. In other words, Hinduism prevailed, and Buddhism was all but extirpated under the strong hand of Mágha Rájá, the Malabar king.* He reigned for twenty-one years, when A. D. 1240 Wijaya succeeded in expelling the Malabars from the Máyá and Ruhuna divisions of the island; but they were too numerous and too firmly rooted in the Pihiți or northern kingdom to be driven thence; and their descendants remain there to the present day.†

The readiness with which the Sinhalese associated the worship of Hindu divinities with that of their national faith is easily to be accounted for. Buddha, while neither

The term "Malabar" is the common but improper name applied by Europeans to the Tamils of Ceylon, whether they come from Malabar proper, in the southwest of the Dekkan, from Tanjore, or from parts as far north as Cuttack and Orissa. The word never occurs in Sinhalese writings. The term used in the Mahawansó and other Páli works is 25 Dhamilá, and in Sinhalese works 6 Demalu, corresponding to the Sanskrit word Dravida, Tamils. The king Mágha Rájá, was a native of Kalinga or Telegu, in the Northern Circars.

The District of Nuwarakaláviya, however, which formed a large portion of the Kingdom of Pihiti, and in which was included Anuradhapura, the ancient capital, is still, as it always has been, occupied by the Sinhalese, but with a large admixture of the Tamil race.

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denying nor disputing the claims of these divinities to godship, asserted his own immeasurable superiority over each and all in every godlike attribute they were supposed to be invested with his followers therefore could worship whom they pleased, so long as they acknowledged and took refuge in him as the All-Supreme. But this assumption of superiority was intolerable to those who rejected his doctrines, and in their eyes his system was abominably obnoxious-in short, it was a most pestilent heresy. It nevertheless made its way, for its originator was a king's son, and kings and princes were its nursing fathers; and ere long it became the dominant religion in the land of its birth. In process of time, however, there came a reaction. Brahmanism again prevailed, and proselytes were made with facility; for when argument failed to convince, the sword was brought to bear, and in the hands of its warlike wielders, it wrought such effectual conversions, that ultimately Buddhism was either expelled from or extirpated throughout the whole of Central India.

But, while the Hindus rejected Buddhism as heretical, and extirpated it wherever they could, they have all along manifested as ready a tendency as the most tolerant of Buddhists to add to the number of their gods, though their name already be legion. The ancient Tamil Poet Pudattazhvár, a native of Mávilipuram near Sadras, has thus been deified by the Vaishnavas, worshippers of Vishnu; in like manner the two poetesses Uppei and Uruvei, who lived in the ninth century of the Christian era, have been numbered

with the goddesses, and obtained elevated niches in the Hindu Pantheon; while in more recent times the founder of a temple at Nellore, in the north of the island, has become the divinity worshipped within it walls.

Such a tendency, it is but reasonable to suppose, would develope itself in connection with the Samanala peak, when the country in which it is situated became subjected to Hindu rule. The conquerors found the mountain dedicated to Saman, and its summit reverenced by Buddhists. Sivaite fakeers or ascetics discovered upon it medicinal trees and plants well known to them on the Himalayan ranges, the peaks of which are supposed to be Sivá's favorite abodes. They sought upon its slopes and surrounding valleys,—as their successors still continue the search for,-the plant "Sansévi," the tree of life and immortality, whereof whoso eateth he shall live for ever. Amongst them the mountain came to be called "Swargarrhanam," the ascent to heaven; and as all those whom Sivá destines to celestial bliss are said to receive upon their heads the impress of his sacred foot, by an easy process of transition the belief would become prevalent among the uneducated mass of his worshippers, that the foot-print upon the mountain top, alleged by the Sinhalese to be that of Buddha, was none other than Sivá's own. When once such a belief obtained a hold upon the Hindu mind, the legend to account for it would speedily be framed.

As already stated, however, many of the most orthodox of the Hindus repudiate the legend and decline to accept the