and the Hill Temple of Mehenteélé. 469 
Jambu-dwipa, yet by their power they expelled the devils from Ceylon, as 
the influences and rays of the sun pervade the darkest recesses ; but other 
Bupuus came in person to cast out the fiends, and to make the island of 
Ceylon a habitation for men, by depositing in consecrated places the Dawtoo, 
or bones of Bupuu, and the branch which grows in the right side of the 
tree called Bogaha, by which means the island became possessed of the 
most precious things, viz. the said Dawtoo, the Bogaha tree, and the religion 
of Bupuu ; and hence it follows that this island can never be governed by 
a king who is not of Bupuv’s religion.” 
In the sketch of the history of Ceylon given by Davy in his Travels, 
p- 295, but which does not give the authorities on which it rests, we find 
that, ‘in A.B. 236, Dewrnepatisss, the fifteenth king, commenced his reign, 
which was remarkable for the introduction of Budhism ; and that Duar- 
mAsOKA (King of Maddadisay, a country to the eastward of Ceylon) sent 
a branch of the identical Bo-tree, under which S1ipp’Harta became Bupuu, 
in charge of eight princes and five hundred Rahdtuns, and accompanied by 
eighteen different castes of people, ninety thousand blacksmiths, and a 
proportionate number of other artists. This branch was planted at Anoo- 
radapoora in a bed eighty cubits high, where it took root, contrary to the 
nature of the tree, which can be propagated by seed only ; and it has lived 
ever since—even to this moment, it is said—always green, neither growing 
nor decaying.”* 
* The coincidence between this tradition and the actual state of the trees, none of which are 
of the size of a man’s body, is not a little curious. The reverence in which the trees are held, 
and the tradition in regard to them, are also confirmed by Rosert Knox, who thus speaks of 
them :—“ His (Bupuv’s) great festival is in the month of March, at the new year’s tide. The 
places where he is commemorated are two, not temples, but one a mountain and the other a 
tree: either to one or to the other they at this time go with their wives and children, for dignity 
or merit, one being esteemed equal with the other. The mountain is at the south end of the 
island, is called Hammetella, but by the Christian people ‘ Adam’s Peak,’ &c. The tree is at 
the north end of the king’s dominions at Annarodgburro. This tree they say came flying over 
from the other coast, and there planted itself as it now stands; under which the Bupuovu god, 
while on earth, used, as they say, to sit. This is now become a place of solemn worship, 
the due performance of which they reckon not to be a little meritorious, insomuch that they 
report that ninety kings have since reigned there successively ; where, by ruins which still 
remain, it appears that they spared not pains and labour to build temples and high monuments 
to the honour of this god, as if they had been born only to hew rocks and great stones, and lay 
them up in heaps. These kings are now happy spirits, having merited it by this their labour.”— 
P. 16], edition of 1817. 
8$P2 
