( 24 ) 



Tn the middle of the outer side of the verandah there is a large 

 slab, the Doudra Slab,* recording the grant of land to the Temple 

 of Vishnu at Dondra Head in the fourteenth century. This slab 

 and the Dondra Pillart at the front outer corner of the verandah 

 are of particular interest on account of their association with Dondra 

 Head near Matara in the Southern Province, the most southerly 

 point of Ceylon. " Like Cape Comorin on the Continent of India," 

 says Professor Rhys Davids (Indian xintiquary, I., 1872, p. 329), 

 " Dondra Head has always been a place of pilgrimage, and seems 

 to have derived its sanctity from its being the extreme southerly 

 point of land, where the known and firm earth ceases, and man 

 looks out upon the ocean — the ever-moving, the impassable, the 

 infinite." 



Opposite to the Dondra Slab is the Jtlaliakalattewa Pillar, from 

 the bund of a tank of that name six miles from Anuradhapura on 

 the road to Galkulam. It is remarkable for its perfect preser- 

 vation, not a single letter missing ; the inscription is on all four 

 sides.J 



Occasionally other symbols besides those mentioned above are 

 engraved upon the pillars, such as a cobra and a priest's fan. The 

 latter occurs, for example, on the Roiig'OUewa Pillai'§ (placed near 

 to the Dondra Slab). 



The stone slab bearing the Royal Arms of Portugal was found 

 at Menikkadawara in the Kegalla District by Mr. H. C. P. Bell 

 (Kegalla Report, 1892, p. 31, and plate). 



Leaving now the West Verandah one crosses the Stone Gallery 

 to the 



NORTH VERANDAH 



at the back of the Museum, where more tombstones, capitals, 

 inscriptions, &c., will be met with. Here may be noted quaint 

 Portuguese tombstones! ; a couple of Maldivian tombstones 

 characteristically carved in coralline limestone ; a " dressed stone " 

 with a Tamil inscription of the fifteenth century from the Kota- 

 gama vihare, found by Mr. Bell, who remarks upon the singularity 

 of discovering a Tamil inscription in the heart of a Sinhalese 

 district; this is called the Kota^ailia Tamil Slab1[ ; another stone 



* Miiller's Inscriptions, No. 163, p. 71. First translated by Rhys Davids. Journ. 

 Ceylon R. Asiat. Soc, vol. V., 1370-1871, p. 25. 



+ Miiller's Inscriptions, No. 159, p. 69. Rhys Davids, hw. cit., 1872, p. 57. 



I Miiller's Inscriptions, No. 110, p. 55, with plates 110 A -HOD. 



§ Miiller's Inscriptions, No. 112, p. 55. Kongollewa lies about two miles north 

 of Madawachchi in the North-Central Province. 



II A fully illustrated and historical account of these tombstones will be found 

 in a paper on "Portuguese Inscriptions in Ceylon," by Mr. J. P. Lewis, C.C.S., 

 to be published shortly in the Journ. Ceylon R. Asiat. Soc. 



f H. C. P. Bell. Report, Kegalla District, 1892, pp. 68 and 86, with figure on 

 plate facintf p. 72. 



