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X.—A Sketch of the Constitution of the Kandyan Kingdom. By the late Sir 
Joun D’Oxvzy.—Communicated by Sir A. Jounston, Vice-President, R.A.S., 
F.R.S. 
Read May 7, 1831. 
To Graves C. Havecuron, Esq., M.A., F.R.S., Honorary Secretary to the 
Royal Asiatic Society. 
19, Great Cumberland Place, 
Sir: December 31, 1831. 
I beg leave, in answer to your letter of the 17th instant, to submit it as my opinion 
to the Council, that the Account of the Constitution of the late Government of the King- 
dom of Kandy is of sufficient interest to be published in the Proceedings of the Society. 
It appears, as well by the English translations which I caused to be made while I was 
on Ceylon of the three most ancient histories of that island, the Mahavansi, the Raja- 
valli, and the Rajaratnacarri, as by the several histories of the ancient kingdoms 
of Madura, Ramnad, Tanjore, and Trichinopoly, formerly situated in the southern 
part of the peninsula of India, that between four and five hundred years before the 
Christian era, a prince of the royal dynasty, then known by the Hindu historians as 
the Pandzan Dynasty, and then reigning over that part of the peninsula described by 
Ptolemy under the name of the Regio Pandionis, crossed over from the peninsula to the 
island of Ceylon; and finding it thinly inhabited, established a colony of his own people 
in the interior of the island, and introduced amongst them the same form of government, 
the same laws, and the same institutions as prevailed at that time in his native country. 
It further appears by the same ancient authorities, and by many modern histories in my 
possession, that this form of government, and that these laws and institutions, had never 
been altered or modified by any foreign conqueror, but had continued to prevail in 
their original state, from the time they were first introduced into the interior of Ceylon, 
till the year 1815, when the kingdom of Kandy was conquered by the British arms, 
and when this account of its ancient government was drawn up by the late Sir John 
D’Oyly, then chief civil officer of the British government in the town of Kandy, 
from the information of the principal officers of the former Kandian government, wha 
at that time had no motive to suppress the truth, and were perfectly competent to give 
him an authentic account of all that related to the nature and the constitution of their 
former government,* It therefore may be considered to be an authentic account, not 
* The Mahomedans, although they conquered the whole of the peninsula of India, did not ex- 
tend their conquests to the island of Ceylon. 
Vou. III. Bic 
