to the Archæological Survey Offices and the small attached museum. Returning again to the other side of the bazaar near the fruit market, we see the ruin of the Ransimalakaya also enclosed. This at one time was used merely as a cattle pound, and was only saved from total destruction by being enclosed. The name is a modern one; its history also being unknown.

But far the most striking object in the vicinity of the bo-tree is the group of 1,600 columns known as Lohopasada, or the Brazen Palace, built first in the reign of King Dutugemunu in the second century B.C., though subsequently often restored.

We have a most minute account of the building of this marvellous place in the Mahawansa. The king, contrary to the usual custom of his time, decided to pay his workmen, and before beginning deposited "eight lacs" and a thousand suits of clothing, and vessels filled with honey and sugar at the four gates for their use. The palace rose to the height of nine storeys (afterwards reduced to seven), all covered with brazen tiles, which shone like gold in the burning sun. It was surrounded by a polished wall broken by the four gates, which were "embattled." Inside, the splendour was so great as to be almost unbeliev able. Each storey contained one hundred apartments festooned with beads and flower ornaments consisting of gems set in gold. There was a gilt hall supported on golden columns in the centre, and besides the usual decorations this hall had festoons of pearls also. In the centre was an ivory throne with the sun on it in gold, the moon in silver, and the stars in pearls. As for the

furnishing of this magnificent shell, it sounds like that of a modern house, for it was provided with chairs and couches and woollen carpets, but all of the most costly materials of their kind, for it is particularly mentioned that even the ladle of the rice-boiler was of gold! It is not exactly known with what intention this splendid building was founded, but it is supposed to have been the chief residence of the monks of the Maha vihara, the most important and oldest established community in Anuradhapura. This word vihara, or viharé, for it is written either way, is applied either to monasteries or temples in the Mahawansa, but always refers to some religious building and never to a secular one. A vihara seems to have been at first a hall or meetingplace of monks, and afterwards was naturally used to signify a temple which may have included an inner shrine.

The gnarled grey monoliths are still standing in a perfect forest closely crowded together and occupy the space of a fair-sized English cathedral. They are in forty parallel lines with forty pillars in each. The problem is to conjecture how anyone could have found space to walk between them, but it is highly probable that the groundspace was not occupied, being, after the fashion of the choungs, or monks' dwellings in Burma, merely an open space unwalled. The building underwent many vicissitudes, being thrown down by Maha Sena, the "apostate" king in A.D. 286, and rebuilt by his son and successor. It will be noted that in the centre and at the corners the columns are of double thickness, com

pared with the outer ones, which are narrower, having been split, probably to supply the place of some which had been lost or broken. The last rebuilding was due to Parakrama the Great in the twelfth century.

I do not know if the Cingalese monks, like the Burmese ones, dislike having any one's feet above their heads, but it seems that it cannot have been so in the old days if each storey were divided into a number of apartments (the round number 100 may be taken as merely symbolic of many) instead of those above the first being merely ornamental shells, roofed in but unoccupied as in Burmese monasteries.

It is a curious sensation to stand alone in this stone forest, recalling the march of time and picturing the sombre flitting of the dark-skinned priests, and the many intrigues which were carried on within these precincts ages ago.

"But all their life is rounded by a shade,

And every road goes down behind the rim.”

Now the little striped furry-tailed squirrels run up and down with a curious clockwork movement, and flitting lizards sun themselves and vanish.

The legend told of the common or palm-squirrel is that it helped the monkeys in making Adam's Bridge for the god Rama, by rolling in the sand and so gathering it up in its hairs, and then bestowing it between the stones to bind them together. To encourage it Rama stroked it with three fingers, leaving the impress in the form of three stripes down its back.

Straight up from the Bo-tree, past the Brazen

Palace runs the Sacred Road, for tens of hundreds of years trodden by the feet of pilgrims. Overshadowed by spreading "rain-trees," bordered by green spaces, this ancient road was one of the great thoroughfares of Anuradhapura the Royal. Down it have passed in procession the halt and sick, eager to be cured, believing that the sight of the blessed Bo-tree would restore health; the beggar making the most of his misery; the schemer; the braggart Pharisee; the humbleminded and devout; the woman aching for the joys and pains of motherhood; the young boy on the threshold of life, awed by its mystery. Surrounded by his courtiers, with flashing umbrellas and flags, and accompanied by the beat of drums came the despotic king, holding in his hand the lives of thousands of such as these, and maybe in his train followed the blood-thirsty prince, his near relative, scheming to dispossess him. They glide by, these shadows of the past, and then the vision falls away like a coloured veil-one sees the road, empty save for two Cingalese clerks, clad in European garments and with cropped heads, hastening to the Kachcheri, or government offices, to work under the direction of white men of whom these ancestors of theirs had never heard.

The next object that attracts attention, bulking huge across the space where cattle are peacefully feeding, is the great dagaba Ruanweli. Of all the ideas that entered the mind of man this surely was the most extraordinary-to erect huge piles of stones in the shape of an inverted bowl, solid except for a tiny passage to a secret chamber