580 



THE RUINED CITIES. 



[Part X. 



him ill it, with his face to the east, and phistering the 

 aperture with clay.^ Having repaired to Sigiri, a place 

 difficult of access to men, and clearing it all round, he 

 surrounded it with a rampart. He built there habitations 

 which could only be reached by flights of steps, and 

 these he ornamented with figures of hons, Siha, whence 

 it obtained the name of Siha-giri, the ' Lions' Eock.' " "^ 

 There are still the remains of an embankment, wliich, 

 as tradition tells, once enclosed the entire area of the 

 rock, forming a deep fosse filled with water, by which 

 the fortress was protected. Of this the tank ah'eady 

 alluded to was a part. It swarms with crocodiles, and at 

 the time of my \dsit was thickly covered with the Avhite 

 and red flowers of the lotus. 



To render this extraordinary retreat secure, Kasyapa 

 carried galleries along the face of the chfF, partially hollow- 

 ing them out of the rock, and protected them in fi'ont by 

 strong curtain-walls of stone. A spring still trickles down 

 the precipice, the existence of which has given rise to the 

 tradition that a cistern was formed at the top, whose 

 waters overflow after the torrents of the monsoons, but 

 no adventm'ous cHmber has succeeded in testing the truth 

 of the popular behef. The palace of the king stood on a 

 triangular bastion, facing the north-west, and protected 

 on two sides by the moat. It is now a shapeless mass of 

 debris and fallen brickwork. 



Our attein]:)ts to penetrate the ruined galleries were 

 defeated by the insufferable heat which glowed within 

 the waUs, and the oppressive smell caused by the bats 

 that inhabit them in thousands. Numbers of snakes 



* Mahmcanso, ch. xxxviii. 



"^ A writer in the nvmiber of 

 Young Cei/lon, for April, 1851, 

 p. 77, says tliat liavinjr succeeded in 

 penetrating the great gallery, which 

 innst have been constructed nearly 

 fourteen hundred years ago, he found 

 it "covered with a thick coat of 

 chunam, as white and as bright as if 



it were only a month old, with fresco 

 paintings, chiefly of lions, whence its 

 name Singha-gu-i or Sigiri.'' This 

 serves to con-ect an eiTor in Forbks's 

 Eleven Years in Ceylon, val. ii. p. 2, 

 in wliich the existence of the lions is 

 disputed, and Sihhari is said to be an 

 ordinary term for any ''hill-fort." 



