410 



THE SINGHALESE CIIROXICLES. 



[PART III. 



A.D. only to repress revolt within his own dominions, but 

 1;L55 ' also to carry war into distant countries, that had 

 offered him insult or inflicted injury on his subjects. 

 His first foreign expedition was fitted out to chastise 

 the king of Cambodia and Arramana 1 in the Siamese 

 peninsula, who had plundered merchants from Ceylon, 

 visiting those countries to trade in elephants ; he had 

 likewise intercepted a vessel which was carrying some 

 Singhalese princesses, had outraged Prakrama's ambas- 

 sador, and had dismissed him mutilated and maimed. 

 Prakrama sailed on this service with a fleet in the sixteenth 

 j^ear of his reign. He effected a landing in Arramana, van- 

 quished the king, and obtained full satisfaction. 2 He 

 next directed his arms against the Pandyan king, for the 

 countenance which that prince had uniformly given to 

 the Malabar invaders of the island. He reduced Pandya 

 and Chola, rendered their sovereigns his tributaries, and 

 having founded a city within the territory of the latter, and 

 coined money in his own name, he returned in triumph 

 to Ceylon. 3 



" Thus," says the Mahawanso, " was the whole island 

 of Lanka improved and beautified by this king, whose 

 majesty is famous in the annals of good deeds, who was 

 faithful in the religion of Buddha, and whose fame ex- 

 tended abroad as the light of the moon." 4 " Having 

 departed this life," adds the author of the Rajavali, 

 " he was found on a silver rock in the wilderness of the 

 Himalaya, where are eighty-four thousand mountains 

 of gold, and where he will reign as a king as long as the 

 world endures." 5 



1 See ante, p. 406, n. 



2 TrRNOTO s Epitome, p. 41 ; Ma- 

 hawanso, Ixxiv. ; Rajaratnacari, p. 

 87 ; Rajavali, p. 254. 



3 Mahawanso, ch. Ixxvi. I am not 

 aware whether the Tamil historians 

 have chronicled this remarkable ex- 

 pedition, and the conquest of this 

 portion of the Dekkan by the king 

 of Ceylon ; but in the catalogue of the 

 Kings appended by Prof. WILSON 



to his Historical Sketch of Pandya 

 (Asiat. Joum. vol. iii. p. 201) the 

 name of " Pracrama Baghu " occurs as 

 the sixty-fifth in the list of sovereigns 

 of that state. For an account of Dipal- 

 denia, where he probably coined his 

 Indian money, see Asiat. Soc. Jaurn. 

 Bengal, v. vi." pp. 218, 301. 



4 Mahawanso, ch. Ixxviii. 



5 Rajaratnacari, p. 91. 



