THE RUINED CITIES.

said to be the parent-tree from which all other Bo trees in the island have been propagated. A wall is now built round it, and a flight of stone steps leads to the sacred enclosure. Pilgrims come to visit it from China, and even from Japan. The solitary column on the right marks the place where Elala, a Malabar invader, who reigned with justice and moderation, fell (B.c. 160). It was erected by his rival in admiration of his bravery, and it is still regarded with veneration. Among the neighbouring ruins is a beautifully carved stone of great antiquity, now forming a doorstep, and representing the lotus flower in the centre, a procession of wild animals on the outside, and in the intermediate circle the hanza, or sacred goose, an object of veneration formerly in all parts of India.

Pollonarua and Anurajapura, the two ancient and long ruined capitals

of Ceylon, lie to the north-east and north of Kandy. The tourist starts by the road to Trincomalee as far as Matale, sixteen miles, near which (three miles off) is a cave temple, called the Alu Wihare, curiously built, amid loose and tumbled masses of rock. The place is specially interesting as the spot where, as the Mahawanso says, the books of Buddhism were first compiled, and its precepts reduced to writing. The statement runs: "The wise monks of former days handed down the text of the Three Pitakas by word of mouth. But seeing the destruction of men, the monks of this time assembled, and, that the Faith might last, wrote them in books." Leaving Matale, we make our way through Nalande (fourteen miles) to Dambulla (fifteen miles), where is one of the oldest rock temples in Ceylon. The rock is five hundred feet high, and is visible from afar. The temple is reached by

hewn steps, and upon climbing these we behold a noble gateway adorned with carvings. The building was known as "the cave of the golden rock," darkness being the characteristic of the interior of all Buddhist temples. Indeed, the word Wihara or Vihara, now denoting any Buddhist temple or monastery, literally signifies "a residence." In the forest stretching south of Dambulla there stands a colossal statue of Buddha carved in a mass of rock. It is upwards of fifty feet high, and reminds one of the Daibutz of Japan. It would appear that in early times this statue was roofed over. It is called the Aukana Wihara.

The road leads on through jungle by the great tank of Topare to POLLONARUA, or Pulastipura, where are the ruins of a city built by the famous King Prakrama Bahu, which continued to be the capital of the Kandyan

monarchs till the fourteenth century. The remains are extensive and interesting, displaying beauty of design and excellence of execution. The forest abounds with them, but perhaps the most striking is the Jayata-wanarama, a huge Buddhist temple, containing, between two octagonal towers forming the main entrance, a statue of Buddha, fifty feet high, formed of brick covered with polished chunam or cement. The side view gives a good idea of the elaborate carving and extensive range of this building.

Another still more curious building at Pulastipura is the Gal-wihara, a rock temple, which has in front four richly-carved columns, a raised altar, with a statue of Buddha seated, a statue of Buddha standing, and a statue of the same famous saint reclining-forty-five feet in length-the attitude of his attaining Nirvana.

ANURAJAPURA.

North of Matale about sixty miles is another and still more ancient ruined city called ANURAJAPURA. According to the narrative of the Mahawanso this city was founded four hundred years B.C. When King Asoka sent his son Mahinda to introduce Buddhism to Ceylon, the reigning monarch was Tissa (250-230 B.C.) who received him with favour and espoused the new religion. He built the famous temple called the Thuparama Dagoba, of bell-shaped outline, the most elegant in Ceylon, which

still rises sixty-three feet from the ground, and stands on a platform fifty yards square, with three rows of monolith pillars twenty-six feet high, one hundred and fifty in all. He erected it as a shrine for the right collarbone of Buddha. The pillars are supposed to represent and answer to the stone rail surrounding the topes in India. They were probably connected with each other by beams of wood and frames of canvas covered with paintings. Paintings, as distinct from sculptures, are characteristic of Ceylon temples.

A precipitous rocky hill, a thousand feet high, eight miles to the east,

connected with the city by a long street, was chosen as an appropriate site for another huge temple of brick, under which was deposited another relic of Buddha-a hair which grew on a mole between his eyebrows. Regarding this hill, the hill of Mihintale, a visitor to it thus writes: "It was on this hill, the three peaks of which, each now surmounted by a dagoba, form so striking an object from the central trunk road which runs along its side, that the famous missionary Mahinda spent most of his after years. Here, on the precipitous western side of the hill, under a large mass of granite rock, at a spot which, completely shut out from the world, affords a magnificent view of the plains below, he had his study hollowed out, and steps cut in the rock over which alone it could be reached. The great rock effectually protects the cave from the heat of the sun, in whose warm light

GAL-WIHARA, PULASTIPURA; IMAGE OF BUDDHA RECUMBENT.

the valley below lies basking; not a sound reaches it from the plain, now a far-reaching forest, then full of busy homesteads; there is only heard that hum of insects which never ceases, and the rustling of the leaves of the trees which cling to the sides of the precipice. I shall not easily forget the day when I first entered that lonely, cool, and quiet chamber, so simple and yet so beautiful, where more than two thousand years ago the great teacher of Ceylon had sat and thought and worked through long years of his peaceful and useful life. On that hill he afterwards died, and his ashes still rest under the dagoba, which is the principal object of the reverence and care of the few monks who still reside in the Mahintale Wihare." " The square of the entire city of Anurajapura, including tanks, was walled

Buddhism, by T. W. Rhys Davids. Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge.

I

CHRISTIANITY.

in about B.C. 48, by Queen Anula, and each side is said to have been sixteen miles long. The entire distance from Anurajapura to Colombo by way of Kandy is one hundred and sixty miles.

Conjectures have been eagerly made concerning traces of Christianity in Ceylon in the early centuries; but if in those days there were any Christians in Ceylon, they must have been sojourners only from among the Syrian Christians on the Coromandel coast. "Its light appears," says Sir J. E. Tennent, "to have been transiently kindled, and to have speedily

become extinguished." Cosmas, A.D. 535, speaks of Christians here, with a priest and deacon ordained in Persia. These were probably Nestorians. The two Mohammedan travellers of the ninth century, whose narratives have been translated, are silent as to the existence of any form of Christianity, and Marco Polo, A.D. 1290, declares that the inhabitants were idolaters. The Portuguese in the sixteenth century brought with them Romanism, and Xavier was invited in 1544 to come to Jaffna, but though many were baptized, he has recorded his disappointment at the