CHAP. VIII.] EXTINCTION OF THE " GREAT DYNASTY." 381 



errors, addressed himself with energy to restore the A-.D. 

 buildings he had destroyed, and to redress the mis- ?75 ' 

 chiefs caused by his apostacy. He demolished the 

 dewales of the Hindus, in order to use their sites for 

 Buddhist wiharas ; he erected nunneries, constructed 

 the JaytaAvanarama (a dagoba at Anarajapoora), formed 

 the great tank of Mineri by drawing a dam across the 

 Kara-ganga and that of Kandelay or Gantalawa, and 

 consecrated ^"5*20,000 fields which it irrigated to the 

 Dennanaka Wihare. 1 "He repaired numerous dilapi- 

 dated temples throughout the island, made offerings of 

 a thousand robes to a thousand priests, formed sixteen 

 tanks to extend cultivation there is no defining the 

 extent of his charity" and having performed during 

 his existence acts both of piety and impiety, the Maha- 

 wanso cautiously adds, " his destiny after death was 

 according to his merits." 2 



With King Maha-Sen end the glories of the " superior A.D. 

 dynasty" of Ceylon. The " sovereigns of the Suluwanse, 302 ' 

 who followed," says the Rajavali, " were no longer of 

 the unmixed blood, but the offspring of parents, only 

 one of whom was descended from the sun, and the 

 other from the bringer of the Bo-tree or the sacred 

 tooth ; on that account, because the God Sakkraia had 

 ceased to watch over Ceylon, because piety had dis- 

 appeared, and the city of Anarajapoora was in ruins, 

 and because the fertility of the land was diminished, 

 the kings who succeeded Maha-Sen were no longer 

 reverenced as of old." 3 



The prosperity of Ceylon, though it may not have 

 attained its acme, was sound and auspicious in the 

 beginning of the fourth century, when the solar line 

 became extinct. Pihiti, the northern portion of the 

 island, was that which most engaged the solicitude of 

 the crown, from its containing the ancient capital, 



1 TTTKTOTO'S Epitome, p. 25. I Rajavali, p. 239. 



2 JHahtnoanso, ch. xxxiii. p. 238. 



