faculty of being able to see it all as it was is merely the stirring of a long-buried experience.

If by means of this book, which has been written with genuine enthusiasm, I send a few people to study for themselves these monuments, or to burrow further in Mr. Bell's exhaustive Reports; if I carry one or two away from a war-worn world into the realms of hitherto unknown history, it is all I ask.

A few explanations are necessary. The Reports so constantly referred to in the body of the book are of course the Ceylon Archæological Survey Reports issued by the Government. All historical quotations enclosed in inverted commas without a reference are from Mr. Turnour's and Mr. Wijesinha's translations of the Mahawansa. The Cingalese words, which seem somehow so much more expressive than the English in certain cases, are here and there used. The first time they are so used they are printed in italics with an interpretation. If any one wants to gain an elementary notion of Tamil or Cingalese, the two languages of the island, he cannot do better than get the little manuals, Tamil Self-Taught and Sinhalese Self-Taught, by Don M. de Z. Wickremasinghe (Marlborough & Co.).

On page xvi will be found a table giving the dates of the principal kings mentioned in the book. The first column of figures is compiled from the Mahawansa by the simple method of reckoning backwards and adding up the numbers of years and months specified for each king's reign. This is a rough-and-ready way. Recently new light has been thrown on these dates by the

researches of Don M. de Z. Wickremasinghe, who has gathered new data from ancient inscriptions unearthed in Ceylon. By his permission these figures are given in another column. They are in most cases to be accepted as only provisional, though confirmation of their accuracy has been afforded by comparing them with accounts of embassies to Ceylon from China and India in olden days, of which the dates are known, for in these reference is sometimes made to the then reigning king of Ceylon, and in this striking way it has been found possible to prove Mr. Wickremasinghe's deductions.

Of the help received on the spot from all officials, including Dr. Joseph Pearson, D.Sc., Director of the Colombo Museum, Mr. H. C. P. Bell, ex-Archæological Commissioner, and the representatives of the Survey, Muhandiram D. A. L. Perera at Anuradhapura and Mr. Jayasekera at Polonnaruwa, I cannot speak too warmly. The work would have been quite impossible without their cordial co-operation.

I have also to acknowledge with thanks the very prompt permission accorded me by the Colonial Secretary in Ceylon in reply to my request to reproduce plans and two photographs from the Survey Reports, where my own had failed. The two photographs of which I made use in accordance with this permission are duly notified, the rest are my own. I am grateful also for the kindly help of Mr. G. F. Plant, C.C.S., in reading my proofs while at home in England on leave," which was wholly occupied by work.

G. E. M.

Here ends the Mahawansa, the rest of the kings belong to the

From this point the dates in the first column are from Wijesinha,

the second as before from Wickremasinghe, whose figures in all

THE LOST CITIES OF CEYLON

CHAPTER I

THE WONDER OF THE PAST

AGAINST the smoky orange-red of the after-glow the monkeys looked like little black demons as they leaped from one tree to another. The weird beat of the tom-toms and the droning chant of worshippers round the sacred bo-tree drew me nearer and nearer to the enclosure till I passed under the hideous plaster-coated entrance " erected 1814" by some wealthy devotee. It was almost too dark in the courtyard beyond to distinguish the sturdy round stems, offspring of the parent tree, so dense was the screen of their graceful foliage, but flickering wood fires here and there on the bare sand lit up the solemn dark faces of the pilgrims come from far, and showed strange flashes of Eastern colouring in their clothing. The air was heavy with the fragrance of temple-tree flowers, in scent and shape resembling tuber-roses, lying waxen in saucers ready to be offered. High above, up two terraces, guarded and enclosed, grew the oldest historical tree in the world, with an authentic history of over 2,000 years. Since the ages before Christ the tree has been tended,

guarded, and watered, and surrounded with the perfume of adoration and the atmosphere of prayer. It grows at Anuradhapura, the Ancient Royal City of Ceylon. I had little time, when first I saw it nine years ago, to absorb the wonder and mystery, or to search among the carved granite of that city, but ever after I was possessed with the longing to return and penetrate the full measure of its beauty, and at last the chance came.

There is nothing that so draws the heart of educated man as the age-old ruins of a civilisation differing from his own; and when those ruins, like jewels, are set in the gold of records minute in detail, as authentic as anything in history can be, and reaching back into ages before the Christian Era, their fascination is increased ten-fold. The Cingalese possess, in that wonderful book the Mahawansa, or as it is sometimes called after its first author, the Mahanama, chronicles surpassing anything other nations can show. From about 500 B.C. up to the time of the English occupation these historical records run. And the fact that they are history and not sacred writings distinguishes them from a multitude of documents of equal antiquity.

In the fifth century A.D. a priest of the royal house, called Mahanama, set himself the task of recording in orderly sequence the story of his native land by means of gathering his facts from existing records in the vernacular and collating them.

His version carried the tale up to A.D. 301. Hence it was taken on by one pen after another in the same style, each scribe telling in simple