2S^ Voyage of the Novara. 



cinnamon-bushes, clove-trees, nutmeg-trees, (^Areca catechii), 

 oranges, lemons, pine-apples, and bread-fruit trees (^Arctocarpus 

 incisa), flourishing in wildest profusion. 



A second temple, which we also visited, was the Dadale 

 Panzela, the largest in the province, and the seat of the 

 high-priest of the Buddhists. This worthy personage, a 

 septuagenary, is named Nanalangara Seresumana Mahdama- 

 radjigurii Ganatchari-Naikunangi, and is surrounded by a 

 staff of priests of the temple who are reputed holy, and who 

 apparently venerate him as a superior being. This temple 

 did not differ much in construction and arrangement from the 

 first ; but the place set apart for instruction, where, at the 

 time of our visit, some youths were busily engaged in copying 

 the sacred books upon palm leaves, as also the residences of the 

 priests, made a much more imposing impression, and spoke of a 

 certain degree of opulence. In the midst of a piece of ground 

 laid out like a garden was planted the sacred Bo-tree, which is 

 looked upon as holy by the Buddhists, because, according to 

 an ancient tradition, Buddha was in the habit of reposing 

 under the shadow of its branches, as often as he visited the 

 earth. Towering above everything wherever a Buddhist 

 temple is raised, there a Bo-tree is planted ; but the particular 

 sacred tree, the original plant from which the legend took its 

 rise, grows at Anaradnapura, in the northern part of the 

 former kingdom of Kandi, whither it had been suddenly 

 translated from a far-distant land, and spontaneously took root 

 in the spot where it at present stands, in order to serve as 



