CKTLON BRANCH ROYAL ASIATIC SOCIETY. 35 



for his country's life. — but Greece alone could exhibit such 

 nien,— yet we have the noble spectacle of rival brothers* 

 combating for the throne,, dismissing their emnity, and re- 

 turning to the bonds of fraternal affection, by mutual con- 

 cession : and the still nobler spectacle of a King chosen by 

 the unanimous suffrage of the people, resigning that throne 

 to a youthful nephew on the same day on which he first 

 seated himself upon it, because the latter had the better claim, 

 and then retiring to happiness and obscurity .+ These events 

 are to be found in Singhalese history, and such events as 

 these suew of what the Singhalese heart was capable. He 

 who comes to these relations, however, must not approach 

 them as he would a romance, brimful of expectations of ad- 

 ventures and excitement : he must approach the History of 

 Ceylon, as a student of his race, be content to gather the 

 thorn with the rose, and have the patience to read the 

 uneventful as well as the more stirring periods, if he wishes 

 to discover what manner of nation it is, and how it came to 

 be, what he there finds it described. He will find, it is true, 

 much that is absurd — he will find the narrator in some cases 

 dignifying with every virtue, the donor of yellow robes to the 

 priesthood, whilst the compiler of a new code of laws, or the 

 constructor of a tank is passed by as unworthy of any re- 

 markable notice ;. but even here he may read a lesson in the 

 chart of the human mind, by discovering the evils attendant 

 on an adhesion to any system of falsehood, and the greater 

 evil of allowing those adhering to it, and interested in its 

 promulgation, to become the teachers of mankind. The 

 student of Singhalese history will find in it, that attachment 

 to trifles, and that eagerness about nothings, which too often 

 characterize the over-zealous in any undertaking, and if he 

 should discover pages devoted to the form of a priest's robe, 



• Datugaimonq and his brother Tisso, about 350 B. C. 



t This prince is styled in the Raiavraii, Sakaia Calawala. The event occurred 

 about 1530. A. D. 



