332 



THE SINGHALESE CHRONICLES. 



[PART III. 



B-C. Island of Serpents, to the portion of the country which 



543 * they held, in the same manner that Ehodes and Cyprus 



severally acquired the ancient designation of Ophiusa, 



from the fact of their being the residence of the Ophites, 



who introduced serpent-worship into Greece. 1 



But whatever were the peculiarities of religion which 

 distinguished the aborigines from their conquerors, the 

 attention of Wijayo was not diverted from his projects 

 of colonisation by any anxiety to make converts to his 

 own religious belief. The earliest cares of himself and 

 his followers were directed to implant civilisation, and 

 two centuries were permitted to elapse before the first 

 effort was made to supersede the popular worship by the 

 inculcation of a more intellectual faith. 



NOTE. 



DESCRIPTION IN THE MAHAWANSO OF THE LANDING OF WIJAYO. 



THE coincidences are so remarkable between the structure and 

 treatment of the great Hindu Epic of the Ramayana, and the 

 events and machinery of the Iliad and the Oydssey, as to have 

 given rise to the conjecture that Homer, in his wanderings as a 

 minstrel, must have listened at Rhinocolura or some other port 

 frequented by the Phoenicians, to the metrical romances, brought 

 home by seamen returning from their eastern voyages. 2 Hence 

 it has been said of Valrniki's grand poem, that it is " an Iliad 

 preceded by an Odyssey ;" and even their respective titles coin- 

 cide, the Ramayana (" Ramce vice ") being equivalent to what 

 Statius calls the " Vias Ulixi." 3 The enumeration of the 

 forces, in the Ramayana^&s a striking similarity to Homer's lists 



inhabitants of Ceylon were a colony 

 from the opposite coast of Calinga. 



1 BRYANT'S Analysis of Mythology, 

 chapter on Ophiolatria, vol. i. p. 480, 

 " Eubcea means Oub-mia, and signi- 

 fies the serpent island." (Ib.) 



But STRABO affords us a still more 

 striking illustration of the Maha- 

 wanso, in calling the serpent wor- 

 shippers of Ceylon " Serpents," since 

 he states that in Phrygia and on the 

 Hellespont the people who were styled 

 o / xoyf I'tie, or the Serpent races, actually 

 retained a physical affinity with the 



snakes with whom they were popu- 

 a 



t; avyyvvftav Ttva t\tiv TTQOQ 

 rove otftie." STRABO, lib. xiii. c. 588. 



PLINY alludes to the same fable 

 (lib. vii.). And OVTD, from the in- 

 cident of Cadmus' having sown the 

 dragon's teeth (that is, implanted 

 Ophiolatria in Greece), calls the 

 Athenians Serpentigout. 



2 See Vol. I. p.' 526, 547 ; Vol. II. 

 p. 101. FATJCHE, Ramayana, torn. 

 viii. p. 11. 



3 Sylvarum, lib. ii. p. 7, 49. 



