lese after this are much mixed, because we find the king's successor and grandson Sena II (date 1 A.D. 866 as given by Wijesinha) going to India to help a prince of Pandy who had quarrelled with his father, and the combined forces penetrated to the capital and even recovered many of the things which had been previously carried away from Ceylon.

At last, in the reign of Mahinda V (A.D. 1001), disaster overwhelmed the Cingalese. The kings had been in the habit of maintaining armies of Malabars as mercenaries, but this king, being a mild man, did not enforce the collection of revenue, and had no money to pay them, so they revolted, and he fled by a secret passage (he was at that time at Anuradhapura) and escaped to Rohuna. So the invaders had everything their own way; and, hearing how it was, more enemies came over from India and took all the spoil from the relic houses of Anuradhapura, and "like unto demons who suck up blood, they took to themselves all the substance that was also therein," and they carried the king himself away captive.

Wijaya Bahu I, grandson of Mahinda, ascended 1065 (almost the date of our own William the Conqueror); he reigned for seventeen years in Rohuna, holding together the remnant of his people, and then he attacked Polonnaruwa still held by the Tamils. The Tamils sallied forth, but were driven back into the city, whereupon they shut the gates and manned the walls; but after six weeks they had

1 From this point the dates in the text are taken from Wijesinha's version as Turnour's text goes no further than Kasyapa I.

to give in, and the king became lord of the throne of his ancestors and went up to be crowned at Anuradhapura, but he lived at Polonnaruwa.

He built round Polonnaruwa "a strong wall of great height, and ornamented it with plasterwork, and protected it with towers built thereon, and with a deep moat round about it of great length and breadth, so that the enemy could not easily break through it."

Wijaya Bahu reigned for fifty-five years, he was a great poet among other things, and his good deeds were notorious; even to well-born women that were helpless by becoming widows he gave land and food and raiment according to their necessities." His brother succeeded him, reigning only one year, and then came his son, Wikrama Bahu (A.D. 1121), who was an unfaithful king, and gave away the precious relics to his followers, and apparently also to buy off insurrectionists, so the priests took the sacred Toothrelic and Alms-bowl relic while they were safe and fled to Rohuna with them. The king managed, however, to retain his throne for twenty-one years and handed it on to his son, Gaja Bahu II (A.D. 1142), who reigned twenty-two years, but was defeated and succeeded by the great hero Parakrama Bahu, who ascended in 1164 (according to Wickremasinghe, 1153). He was the son of Princess Ratanavali, daughter of Wijaya Bahu I, of whom he was therefore a grandson. Parakrama's life is interwoven with Polonnaruwa, and most of the existing buildings there owe their origin to him, so his story, which reads like that of one of the old Greek heroes, will be told in connection

with that city. Parakrama was succeeded by weak and bad rulers, who failed to defend Polonnaruwa against the invaders, and in 1592 Kandy became the capital.

Europeans had begun to make themselves felt in the island, first the Portuguese and then the Dutch, appearing and pushing ever inwards to the seat of government in the hills. It was the hills that saved the native race then as before, for when the white-faced invaders appeared at Kandy, they found the precious Tooth-relic and other valuables had been carried away into inaccessible fastnesses.

Both races eventually had to give way before the British, who about the end of the eighteenth century established themselves on the sea-coast. After a long period of desultory fighting, and, it must be noted, some terrible blundering, the last king, Sri Wickrema Raja Singha, was deposed in 1814 and the island definitely became a British possession.

The later Kandyan kings were selfish despots of a mediæval type, who ruthlessly exploited their own subjects. By far the best account of the island during their régime is to be found in a book written by Robert Knox, who was a prisoner in the island for nineteen years from 1660. Knox was a sailor, and as a young man of nineteen was taken prisoner by the Cingalese, with his father and fourteen of their men, when they landed near Trincomalee, having put in to repair their ship. The king treated them with

1 Ceylon. (MacLehose. New edition 1911. First published

perfect humanity and quartered them on various members of the community. He commanded his subjects to find them food, but made no allowance for clothes. After about two years the captain, who shared a hut with his son, died, and for no less than nineteen and a half years the rest remained prisoners. The remarkable part of the story is, that the king, who was in other ways an unmitigated scoundrel, never ill-treated these helpless captives, though he was extraordinarily careful in not allowing them to escape. He was very suspicious of the written word, thinking that plans of escape might be made thereby.

On one occasion one of the English sailors had received a letter from a Portuguese, also a prisoner, and took it to a native to get it translated; this was discovered, and all three were condemned to death, and, according to the ghastly custom prevalent, were torn limb from limb by elephants.

The prisoners, after a while, were put to great shifts for clothing. So they started knitting caps to exchange them for garments, and did quite a brisk trade.

Stephen Rutland was the only other man, besides Knox, who had kept himself free from entanglements with native women, and the two lived together. They succeeded at last in getting quite a decent house and did a good deal of trading in grain and other things.

The king was absolutely autocratic; he would be waited on only by all the best looking youths in his kingdom, and messengers were sent round to collect them every now and again. These unfortunate youths never lived long. They were

invariably executed as the reward of their service. The parents knew quite well what service at court meant, and mourned their son as dead already when he was summoned, but dared not resist, for those who resisted the royal will were impaled or torn to pieces, or if women were flung into the river.

As Knox says, these youths went like an ox to the slaughter, only with far more heavy hearts." Yet he is careful to explain there was no question of improper behaviour by the king in regard to them.

After the wretched youths were killed or handed over as slaves to some one-and one of these two fates none of them escaped-then their father's property was seized. The only good the parents got out of it was that while the boy was actually at court they were free from taxation, a dearly-bought and short-lived privilege.

The soldiers were not paid or even provided with food. Once during Knox's time there was a rebellion and the king fled to the hills, those who had engineered it not having the nerve to seize him before he was aware of it. His only child, a lad of fifteen, kept in close confinement by his father's orders, was brought out and set on the throne, but his aunt ran away with him to the king and the rebellion collapsed.

Knox says that the king himself shortly afterwards poisoned the boy to prevent the possible recurrence of such a plot, but this is not borne out by historical records.

He tells a story showing how unsafe were the heads of the royal entourage on their shoulders.