A.D. maidens to wait upon the sick, superintending them in person, and bringing his medical knowledge to assist in their direction and management. 1155. Even now the ruins of Pollanarua, the most picturesque in Ceylon, attest the care which he lavished on his capital. He surrounded it with ramparts, raised a fortress within them, and built a palace for his own residence, containing four thousand apartments. He founded schools and libraries; he built halls for music and dancing; formed tanks for public baths; opened streets, and surrounded the whole city with a wall which, if we are to credit the native chronicles, enclosed an area twelve miles broad by nearly thirty in length. By his liberality, Rohuna and Pihiti were equally embellished; the buildings of Vigittapnra and Sigiri were renewed; and the ancient edifices at Anarajapoora were restored, and its temples and palaces repaired, under the personal superintendence of his minister. It is worthy of remark that so greatly had the constructive arts declined, even at that period, in Ceylon, that the king had to "bring Damilo artificers" from the opposite coast of India to repair the structures at his capital.1 The details preserved in the Singhalese chronicles as to the works for irrigation which he formed or restored, afford an idea of the prodigious encouragement bestowed upon agriculture in this reign, as well as of the extent to which the rule of the Malabars had retarded the progress and destroyed the earlier traces of civilisation. Fourteen hundred and seventy tanks were constructed by the king in various parts of the island, three of them of such vast dimensions that they were known as the "Seas of Prakrama ;"" and in addition to these, three hundred others were formed by him for the special benefit of the priests. The "Great Lakes" which he repaired, as specified in the Mahawanso, amount to 1 Mahawanso, ch. lxxv. lxxvii * Rajaratnacari, p. 88. A.D. thirteen hundred and ninety-five, and the smaller ones which he restored or enlarged to nine hundred and 1815. sixty. Besides these, he made five hundred and thirtyfour watercourses and canals, by damming up the rivers, and repaired three thousand six hundred and twenty The bare enumeration of such labours conveys an idea of the prodigious extent to which structures of this kind had been multiplied by the early kings; and we are enabled to form an estimate of the activity of agriculture in the twelfth century, and the vast population whose wants it supplied, by the thousands of reservoirs still partially used, though in ruins; and the still greater number now dry and deserted, and concealed by dense jungle, in districts once waving with yellow grain. Such was the internal tranquillity which, under his rule, pervaded Ceylon, that an inscription, engraved by one of his successors, on the rock of Dambool, after describing the general peace and "security which he established, as well in the wilderness as in the inhabited places," records that, "even a woman might traverse the island with a precious jewel and not be asked what it was."2 In the midst of these congenial operations the energetic king had command of military resources, sufficient not The useful ambition of signalizing | dug and repaired; and sixty-six their reign by the construction of canals: whereby a great deal of rice * ** In works of irrigation, is still exhibited land will be available. by the Buddhist sovereigns of the the reign of Nauraba-dzyar 9999 East, and the king of Burmah in his tanks and canals were constructed: interview with the British envoy in I purpose renewing them."— p. 109. 1855, advanced his exploits of this nature as his highest claim to distinction. The conversation is thus reported in YULE's Narrative of the Mission. London, 1858. 2 Moore's melody, beginning "rich and rare were the gems she wore," was founded on a parallel figure illustrative of the security of Ireland under the rule of King Brien; when, according to Warner, "a maiden undertook a journey alone, from one extremity of the kingdom to another, with only a wand in her hand, at the top of which was a ring of exceeding great value." 1155. A.D. only to repress revolt within his own dominions, but also to carry war into distant countries, which had offered him insult or inflicted injury on his subjects. His first foreign expedition was fitted out to chastise the king of Cambodia and Arramana1 in the Siamese peninsula, who had plundered merchants from Ceylon, visiting those countries to trade in elephants; he had likewise intercepted a vessel which was carrying some Singhalese princesses, had outraged Prakrama's ambassador, and had dismissed him mutilated and maimed. A fleet sailed on this service in the sixteenth year of Prakrama's reign, he effected a landing in Arramana, vanquished the king, and obtained full satisfaction. He next directed his arms against the Pandyan king, for the countenance which that prince had uniformly given to the Malabar invaders of the island. He reduced Pandya and Chola, rendered their sovereigns his tributaries, and having founded a city within the territory of the latter, and coined money in his own name, he returned in triumph to Ceylon.3 "Thus," says the Mahawanso, "was the whole island. of Lanka improved and beautified by this king, whose majesty is famous in the annals of good deeds, who was faithful in the religion of Buddha, and whose fame extended abroad as the light of the moon."4 "Having departed this life," adds the author of the Rajavali, "he was found on a silver rock in the wilderness of the Himalaya, where are eighty-four thousand mountains of gold, and where he will reign as a king as long as the world endures."5 1 See ante, p. 406 n. 2 TURNOUR'S Epitome, p. 41; Mahawanso, lxxiv.; Rajaratnacari, p. 87; Rajavali, p. 254 3 Mahawanso, ch. lxxvi. I am not aware whether the Tamil historians have chronicled this remarkable expedition, and the conquest of this portion of the Dekhan by the king of Ceylon; but in the catalogue of the Kings appended by Prof. WILSON to his Historical Sketch of Pandya (Asiat. Journ. vol. iii. p. 201) the name of "Praerama Baghu" occurs as the sixty-fifth in the list of sovereigns of that state. For an account of Dipaldeniya, where he probably coined his Indian money, see Asiat. Soc. Journ. Bengal, v. vi., p. 218, 301. 5 Mahawanso, ch. lxxviii. 411 CHAP. XII. FATE OF THE SINGHALESE MONARCHY-ARRIVAL OF any A.D. 1155. A.D. A.D. A.D. THE reign of Prakrama Bahu, the most glorious in the annals of Ceylon, is the last which has pretension to renown. His family were unequal to sustain or extend the honours he had won, and his nephew', a pious voluptuary, by whom he was succeeded, was killed in an intrigue with the daughter 1186. of a herdsınan whilst awaiting the result of an appeal to the Buddhist sovereign of Arramana to aid him in reforming religion. His murderer, whom he had previously nominated his successor, himself fell by 1187. assassination. An heir to the throne was discovered amongst the Singhalese exiles on the coast of India', but death soon ended his brief reign. His brother and his nephew in turn assumed the crown; both were dis- 1196. patched by the Adikar who, having allied himself with the royal family by marrying the widow of the great Prakrama, contrived to place her on the throne, under the title of Queen Leela-Wattee, A. D. 1197. Within A.D. less than three years she was deposed by an usurper, and he being speedily put to flight, another queen, Kalyana-Watee, was placed at the head of the kingdom. 1202. The next ill-fated sovereign, a baby of three months by | 2 Kirti Nissanga, brought from Kalinga, A.D. 1192. 1 Wijayo Bahu II., killed by Mihindo, A. D. 1187. 1192. A.D. 1197. A.D. 1202. A D. old, was speedily set aside by means of a hired force, and the first queen, Leela-Wattee, restored to the throne. But the same band who had effected a revolution in her favour were prompt to repeat the exploit; she was a second time deposed, and a third time recalled by the intervention of foreign mercenaries.1 A.D. Within thirty years from the decease of Prakrama 1211. Bahu, the kingdom was reduced to such an extremity of weakness by contentions amongst the royal family, and by the excesses of their partisans, that the vigilant Malabars seized the opportunity to land with an army of 24,000 men, reconquered the whole of the island, and Maagha, their leader, became king of Ceylon A. D. 1211.2 The adventurers who invaded Ceylon on this occasion came not from Chola or Pandya, as before, but from Kalinga, that portion of the Dekkan which now forms the Northern Circars. Their domination was marked by more than ordinary cruelty, and the Mahawanso and Rajaratnacari describe with painful elaboration the extinction of Buddhism, the overthrow of temples, the ruin of dagobas, the expulsion of priests and the occupation of their dwellings by Damilos, the outrage of castes, the violation of property, and the torture of its possessors to extract the disclosure of their treasures, "till the whole island resembled a dwelling in flames or a house darkened by funeral rites." 3 On all former occasions Rohuna and the South had been comparatively free from the actual presence of the enemy, but in this instance they established themselves |