CiiAp. II.] ABORIGINAL INHABITANTS OF CEYLON. 



331 



daughter of one of the native chiefs, and having speedily 

 made himself master of the island by her inlliience, he 

 estabhshed his capital at Tamana Neuera^, and fomided 

 a dynasty, which, for nearly eight centmies, retained 

 supreme authority in Ceylon. 



The people whom he mastered with so much facihty 

 are described in the sacred books as Yakkhos or " de- 

 mons," ^ and Nagas^, or "snakes;" designations wliich 

 the Buddhist historians are supposed to have employed 

 in order to mark their contempt for the uncivilised 

 aborigines^, in the same manner that the aborigines in 

 the Dekkan were denominated goblins and demons by 

 the Hindus^, from the fact that, hke the Yakklios of 

 Ceylon, they too were demon worshippers. The ISTagas, 

 another section of the same superstition, worshipped 

 the cobra de capello as an emblem of the destroying 

 power. These appear to have chiefly inhabited the 

 northern and western coasts of Ceylon, and the Yakkhos 

 the interior ^ ; and, notwithstanding their aUeged bar- 

 barism, both had organised some form of government, 

 however rude.^ The Yakkhos had a capital which they 

 called Lankapura, and tlie Nagas a Idng, the possession 

 of whose " throne of gems"^ was disputed by the rival 

 sovereign of a neighbouring kingdom. So numerous 

 were the followers of this gloomy idolatry of that time 

 in Ceylon, that they gave the name of Nagadipo ^, the 



B.C. 



543. 



tween Trincomalie and Jaifna-patam, 

 and that the first city founded by 

 him was Mantotte. — Decade v. 1. 1. 

 c. 5. 



^ See a note at the end of this 

 chapter, on the landing- of Wijayo in 

 Ceylon, as described in the Maha- 

 wanso. 



^ Mohawanso, ch. \\i. ; Fa Hian, 

 Foe-koue-ki, ch. xxxvii. 



3 BajavaJi, p. 169. 



^ Reinatjd, Introd. to Ahmdfeda, 

 vol. i. sec. iii. p. ccxvi. See also 

 CLOUGn's Singhalese Dictionary, vol, 

 ii. p. 2. 



^ MoTTNTSTtrAET ErrHINSTONE's, 



History of India, b. iv. ch. xi. p. 216. 



c The first descent of Gotama 

 Buddha in Ceylon was amongst the 

 Yakkhos at Biutenne ; in his second 

 visit he converted the '' Naga King 

 of Kalany," near Colombo, Maha- 

 wanso, ch. i. p. 5. 



' Faber, Oriyin of Idolatry, b. ii. 

 ch. vii. p. 440. 



^ 3Iahawanso, ch. i. 



^ TtTRXOUR was imable to deter- 

 mine the position on the modem 

 map of the ancient tei-ritoiy of Na- 

 gadipo. — Introd. p. xxxiv. Casie 

 Chitty, in a paper in the Journal of 

 the Ceylon Asiatic Society, 1848, p. 71, 

 endeavoiu'S to identify it with Jafiha, 

 The Rajaratnacari places it at tlie 



