216 On the Ruins of Anuradkapura, [Marcm, 



rians are few and far between, till we reach the period of the arrival of 

 the Portuguese under Almeida in 1505. Indeed for so long a period 

 as two hundred and fifty years previous to that event, I can find not 

 even a passing allusion to it in the chronicles of the island, a proof, I 

 imagine, either of its utter desertion or of its extreme insignificance 

 about that time. Towards the latter end of the seventeenth century it 

 would appear, from Knox's relation, that when he passed through it he 

 found it completely deserted, and nothing left but the ruins of its once 

 magnificent buildings to prove its former greatness. 



The reception of the branch of the sacred Bo-tree by Tisso, three 

 hundred years before our era, and its plantation at Anuradhapura, has 

 already been noticed. To attend to this, the chief object of Buddhistic 

 worship there, a college of priests was established, for whom a suitable 

 building, called the Maha Wiharo, was raised ; of this there are now but 

 few remains, the name having been transferred to the Bo-tree itself and 

 to the pile of building or platform by which it is supported and encom- 

 passed. This platform is a square erection about twelve feet high, from 

 the summit of which the various branches of the Bo-tree appear issuing, 

 and has nothing ahout it worthy of particular notice save the sculptures 

 on the steps leading to a rude and recent building, through which the 

 visitor passes in going to the sacred tree. I know not how better to 

 describe the platform by which the Bo-tree is surrounded than by 

 likening it to a gigantic square flower-pot, from the earth in the centre 

 of which the tree springs. The sculptures to which I have referred are 

 exceedingly interesting as a monument of the state of the arts in the 

 earliest ages of Ceylonese greatness. They were evidently a part of 

 some other building long ago destroyed, and replaced by the rude 

 wooden structure to which allusion has been made. On one of the 

 stones, a large, flat step, a number of concentric semicircular arches 

 have been deeply cut in the spaces, between which are admirably repre- 

 sented in deep and bold cutting, the horse, the buffalo, the elephant, 

 the lion, together with birds and flowers. I was surprised at the excel- 

 lence of these sculptures, having seen nothing before of Singhalese 

 workmanship, at all equal to them. Their spirit, workmanship, design 

 and execution prove incontestibly that those who executed them must 

 have been far indeed from barbarism. They are as superior to the 

 native sculptures which I had seen elsewhere as the massive ruins of 



