"Elephant Pavilion," for its wonderfully life-like elephants in panels are the feature that remains in the mind. The pavilion rises in three stages, or platforms, each a little smaller than the one below. The sides of these are broken into panels and carved. The lowest with the largest panels is devoted to elephants, the next above shows conventional lions with upraised paw, and the one above that merry little dwarfs. There is a moonstone at the remaining entrance; lions rest at the head of the steps, and the pillars on the platform are richly carved, not alone as to capitals but on the sides. At a little distance the whole looks as if cut in a peculiarly soft yellow sandstone, but it is all of granite, which, owing to the red quality of the surrounding soil, tends to weather to this unlikely hue.

It is to the elephants we return after looking at the rest. They are all about the height of a man's knee, and are designed by a master mind. They are still or slowly moving or galloping forward, and each single one is a perfect model of his action. Trunks and tails express that action as well as the body and legs. The man who did them had studied elephants in every pose and gloried in his details. The building was excavated in 1905, and is, on a much smaller scale, after the pattern of the Council Chamber on the promontory. A path to the south-east of this pavilion winds through a hedge, once the boundary wall of the citadel on this side; it passes through a hole, probably representing an ancient postern gate, and drops to a sunken paved space outside. This is the Kumara Pokuna, or Prince's Bathing-place,

with a small vihara beside it. The water was conveyed into the bath through the mouths of crocodiles, fashioned as spouts, of which one remains. Three lions, modelled in an upright position, standing on their hind legs, lie on the ground neglected. The flat spaces on the tops of their heads show that they once supported something; what was it? Possibly the round stool or seat of stone which now lies beside them. This has been referred to as the pedestal of a statue; if so, it seems strangely out of place here. Is it not possible to picture instead the prince of the time seated on it, while his attendants poured water over him, after the Ceylon fashion of bathing to this day?

The shrine close to the bath displays no feature of special interest.

The path leading onward to the rest of the Polonnaruwa ruins goes northward between the Palace and the Elephant Pavilion. It is one of the neat well-cut paths made by the Survey for the use of visitors. The undergrowth has all been cleared out on each side, leaving visible the stems of the larger trees, from the branches of which come the songs of innumerable birds. The ceaseless shrilling of crickets is an undercurrent of sound always present in this Eastern world, and it so repeats itself in the ear that the silence of northern lands at first strikes one as unpleasantly still.

At a little distance the trees resemble many of those with which we are familiar in England; there is the Ceylon oak, with its tufts of red leaves, closely resembling an English oak. These sprays of young growth are very noticeable in this country

where nature ceaselessly renews her efforts. There is another tree remarkably like an ash with pinnate leaves, the fashion of which is very common with trees in Ceylon, and there are many dark glossy, thick-leaved species. In Parakrama's park were planted coconut, mango, jak, areca, palmyra, jasmine, plantain, and many another, whose descendants flourish still in the same neighbourhood.

Beneath the trees the ground is covered with the feathery leaf of a little plant like our wood anemone, and here and there appears the familiar twinkle of a mauve periwinkle, and so we pass to the limits of the citadel-enclosure on the north.

CHAPTER XV

A NECKLET OF ARCHITECTURE

ON emerging from the citadel boundary the splendid group of buildings which lies in the very heart of the city is seen ahead, standing up on a raised platform, but before reaching any of them attention is arrested by a comparatively humble little temple, in Hindu style, of one storey only.

This is so satisfactory to the eye in its proportions and general outlines that it seems natural to sit down and study it carefully. Popularly known as the Dalada Maligawa, the Tooth Temple, this little gem of architecture is officially called Siva Devalé, No. 1, being undoubtedly Hindu in its origin, though it may possibly for a while have given shelter to the much-revered Tooth. Devalé means a temple in which devils or demons are worshipped.

At Polonnaruwa the constantly growing ascendancy of the Hindu religion over the purer Buddhist belief is noticeable everywhere. As the swarms of invaders from South India grew greater, and as each receding tide left behind individuals who settled down and brought their own beliefs and habits to influence the dwellers in the land, Buddhism lost some of its distinctive peculiarities and

the gods of the Hindus were more and more worshipped in its temples.

"The architecture of this handsome ruin is markedly Dravidian (Southern Indian); not a finer example exists in Ceylon.

"How did a shrine so manifestly self-declared a temple of uncompromising Hindu design and worship that moreover of its most antagonistic cult Saivism-ever acquire the appellation of Dalada Maligawa?

"Can the devalé. have been for a season allowed to receive and shelter the sacred tooth pending its permanent lodgment in a Buddhist shrine worthy of its sanctity? If so-the hypothesis is just possible, but assuredly not more the tradition may have clung to the structure and been handed on down to the present day unquestioned. And at that we may leave it." (1907 Report.)

There is a strong barbed-wire fence around the area in which the temple stands; this is to keep out the wild beasts of the forest, who have done as much damage to some of these beautiful shrines as ever the rank growth of vegetation has. The precaution is not unnecessary even now, though the increased number of visitors is driving the wild things ever further and further afield.

When Major Forbes visited Polonnaruwa in 1828, he discovered that

"bears in numbers find shelter amongst these ruins, and this sanctuary [Siva Devalé] had only been vacated by some of them on hearing the noise of our approach. The guides, although armed with