HAi'. X.] LITERATURE. 517 



nolooy it controls ; and luisnrpassed, if it be equalled, 

 by the native annals of China or Kashmir. So conscious 

 were the Singhalese kings of the value of this national 

 monument, that its continuation was an object of royal 

 sohcitude to successive dynasties ^ from the third to 

 the thirteenth century ; and even in the decay of the 

 monarchy the compilation was performed in A. d. 1696, 

 by an unknown hand, and, finally, brought down to 

 A. D. 1758 by order of one of the last of the Kandyan 

 kings. 



Of the chronicles thus carefidly constructed, which 

 exhibit in their marvellously preserved leaves the 

 study and elaboration of upwards of twelve hundi-ed 

 years, Prinsep, supreme as an authority, declared 

 that they served to " clear away the chief of dif- 

 ficulties m Indian genealogies, which seem to have 

 been intentionally falsified by the Biahmans and 

 thrown back into remote antiquity, in order to confound 

 their Buddhist rivals." '^ 



But they display in their mysterious rhpnes few 

 facts or revelations to repay the ordinary reader for 

 the labour of their perusal. Written exclusively by 

 the Buddiiist priesthood, they present the meagre cha- 

 racteristics of the soulless system which it is their 

 purpose to extol. No occurrence finds a record in 

 tlieir pages which does not tend to exalt the genius of 

 Buddhism or commemorate the acts of its patrons : 

 the reigns of the monarchs who erected temples for its 

 worship, or consecrated shrines for its rehcs, are traced 

 with tu'esome precision ; even where their accession 



' CosmasIndico-pleustes, Edrist, 

 Abou-zetd, and almost all the tra- 

 vellers and geographers of the middle 

 ages, have related, as a trait of the 

 native rulers of Ceylon, their em- 

 ployment of annalists to record the 

 history of the kingdom. — Edeisi, 

 dim. i. sec. 8, p. 3. 



* Pbinsep, in a private letter to 



L I. 3 



Turnour, in 1836, speaking of the 

 singular value of the JIahawanso in 

 collating the chronology of India, 

 says, " had yom* Buddhist chronicles 

 been accessible to Sir W. Jones and 

 Wilford, they would have been 

 greedily seized to correct anomalies 

 at every step." 



