with that other "milk-rice" dagaba at Polonnaruwa. It is now a mere shapeless mass, only 30 feet high and 200 feet round the base, but from its condition and construction may be ranked among the older, and may possibly have been the oldest of all the large dagabas.

CHAPTER IX

TWO OUTLYING MONASTERIES

MULLEGALLA has been warmly praised by the ex-Archæological Commissioner. Yet it is doubtful if it will appeal to ordinary people as much as Vijayarama with its superb preaching-hall, which gives the imagination something to work upon. Only those who have a live interest in these exceptional ruins will take the trouble to visit this most lonely little monastery, lying amid trees, beneath a carpet of speedwell blue.

To find it, Mihintale Road must first be followed to its junction with that to Jaffna. Some distance further the Jaffna Road is crossed by the railway, and here any conveyance must be left while we turn up the line to the left. A guide is essential, otherwise the narrow jungle path, breaking off about three-quarters of a mile beyond the crossing, would never be found. This leads through dappled light and shade, brightened by the red clusters of leaves of a plant like laurel, shining with the transparency of rubies where they catch the sun-shafts.

The walk is not severe, and almost unexpectedly we face in surprise a very small ruin showing many of the characteristics of the "Outer Pavilions." Wonder deepens as the details of the construc

tion are noted and seen to be exact, though all in miniature. The "moat " is but a ditch, the stone connecting-slab a toy, the little platforms, with and without pillars, respectively, are very small, yet their similarity to those of the larger pavilions is undeniable.

How comes it then that here, far to the northeast of the city, lies, so far as we know, one small isolated example of the same structures so abundantly found on the west? The query is unanswered. But there is this to add, at every fresh disclosure, every new excursion in Anuradhapura, we find some stimulus to the imagination, some distinctive feature which sets thought working; it is this which makes any trouble taken so abundantly well worth while. The interest is

inexhaustible.

The remaining buildings of Mullegalla monastery are founded mostly on the rock, and the quarry from which the stone was procured is but a few yards away.

In one place four short broken flights of steps lead up to what was once a dagaba, and the plainness of the guard-stones and "risers" is another point of similarity with the "Outer Pavilions." There are some faint traces of a vase and blossoms having been scratched on one stone, but otherwise the blocks are plain. Around the dagaba are the stumps of the pillars in which once rested floral altars. The main building is deeply sunk in shade; it lies a little distance from the ruined steps which, in their peaceful abandonment, suggest something of the spirit of the place.

It is possible to extend this excursion by in

cluding in it a visit to the immense monastery of Puliyankulam lying not far away. To do this it is necessary to return to the junction of road and rail and continue onward by the former in the direction of Jaffna.

After about a mile it is worth while to stop in order to inspect some curious deep earth pits, divided into compartments by brick-work, of which the use and meaning have not yet been solved. It is believed that these strange underground dwellings if they were dwellings-belong to the very oldest part of the city life and may even have been in existence before the actual foundation of the city, but very little can be even guessed about them.

"What purpose did these huge mysterious brick-lined pits-ill-shaped, mutually adjacent, though wholly unconnected-serve? Manifestly they are of great age.

They were not the dwellings of troglodytes; they can hardly have been brick or lime kilns from their general unsuitability for such use; nor granaries, nor refuse bins of the ancient city; scavengers. The most reasonable theory at present without further light would seem to be that this gravelly mound or hillock . . . was one of the cemeteries of ancient Anuradhapura, and the brick cists the actual receptacles for cinerary inhumation." (1909 Report.)

Across the road and stretching onward away from it the ruins of the mighty monastery of Puliyankulam claim attention. They are in very good preservation as regards the ground-plan, and would be an excellent model on which any

one could study the disposition of the buildings included in one of these monasteries. Unfortunately a road named " McBride's Folly," after the unlucky originator, has been driven across a part of the monastery, cutting off an angle and thus destroying the symmetry of the plan, but in imagination it is not difficult to efface this and see it as a whole.

In arrangement Puliyankulam resembles Vijayarama, but it has no preaching-hall. At Vijayarama there is but one row of piriven, or monks' cells, all round, and here there are two. Inside the monastery wall all the usual features are to be found, the dagaba, pilimagé, viharas, etc. The walls of the platforms are singularly perfect, and show with great clearness the curious method of the old stone-layers, who, instead of finishing each block rectangularly so that any one fitted any other one, worked one block to fit into another like a puzzle, thus saving themselves trouble in one way, but redoubling it in another. This monastery has suffered perhaps more than any other from stones having been taken from it for culverts and other road-building purposes in the dark days before the archæological authority intervened. The jungle around was cleared out in 1891.

An inscription was unearthed in one place giving a date of twelfth year of Dappula V, which is A.D. 952, and two similar inscriptions were found in the dagaba, so that the age is well known.

Across McBride's Road, separated by only a short distance from the precincts of Puliyankulam, is an unnamed monastery which was apparently quite a separate institution. The ruins here are