Chap. II.] 



CAUSEWAY AT TAIKUM. 



625 



browse in the glades, bears and jackals ' skulk amongst 

 fallen columns, and innumerable birds, especially pea- 

 fowl, jungle-cocks, and paroquets break the still soh- 

 tude by theii' incessant calls. 



Before leaving for Aripo, the priests of the great 

 temple waited upon me bringing with them a youth, 

 the hneal representative of an ancestor wlio accom- 

 panied the Bo-tree in its voyage from Magadlia to 

 Ceylon B.C. 289. The chiefship of the district has 

 been ever since in the same family, and the boy, who 

 bears the title of Sm^iya-Kumara-Singha, " Prince of 

 the Lion and the Sun," can boast an unbroken descent, 

 compared with whose antiquity the most renowned 

 peerages of Europe are but creations of yesterday. 



From Anarajapoora, I returned to the west coast, 

 following the Hne of the Malwatte-oya ^ the ancient 

 Kadamba, which flows into the Gulf of Manaar, north 

 of Aripo. Within a few miles of the coast oiu' party 

 passed, at Taikum, the immense causeway of cut 

 granite, two hundred and fifty yards in length, and 

 upwards of fifteen feet high, by wliich it was attempted 

 to divert the waters of the river into the canal, that was 

 designed to supply the Giants' Tank.^ None of the great 

 rescrvoii's of Ceylon have attracted so much attention 

 as this stupendous work. The retaining bund of the 

 reservoir, which is three hundred feet broad at the 

 base, can be traced for more than fifteen miles, and. 



^ It is a curious coincidence tli.it 

 the belief in the alleged alliance 

 between the lion and the jackal, 

 which seems to prevail in every 

 country where the ibruier exists, has 

 extended to Ceylon, where the lion 

 is not found ; and is to be traced in 

 one of their sacred books of the 

 greatest antiqmty. In the Guna 

 Jataka, one of those legendaiy 

 records which describes the trans- 

 migrations of Buddha, and which 

 probably is coeval with the Christian 

 era, he is introduced mider the form 



of a lion, wliich having failed in 

 seizing a deer, is carried by the force 

 of the spring into a marsh, fi-om 

 which he is miable to escape tiU the 

 arrival of a jackal, which " making 

 a channel for the water to come from 

 the lake to the feet of the lion, thus 

 softened the mud and relieved the 

 fomier from his confinement." — 

 IIakdt's Bwldhism, ch. v. p. 113. 



2 Literally tlie "River of the 

 Gai-den of Flowers." 



^ The modem name of the tank is 

 " Kafiwarrc." 



VOL. II. 



S S 



