i'A CEYLON BKANC'rt—ROUL ASIATIC SOCIETY , 



The ascetic thus departing, arrived at the town in which 

 the supremely excellent king of Ha resided, and there 

 wheresoever he resorted, began to repeat from an inward 

 love (to the God), "may the Sanctuary of Tillei endure 

 prosperously for countless times ! " 



As the ascetic, wheresoever he resorted, continued to 

 speak thus of the renowned Ponnambalam («), the vicious 

 and senseless Buddhists, who dwelt in Ud 9 went before their 

 king, and respectfully bowing down to him, thus addressed 

 him : " O king, listen to a thing we will tell thee ! " 



" There is a certain one, perfect in ability, sojourning in 

 this town ; he has for ornament merely a string of Ruddrak- 

 mha beads (£), and lives upon daily alms, and whether he 

 stands or sits, repeats still the word "Ponnambalam ." 



The king said, "Go bring him hither this very day." 

 They went accordingly, and said to him, "Beloved, the 

 king calleth thee, come." To which he replied, "Has the 

 king any concern with those who think on nothing, and 

 live upon the innocent alms which they daily collect?" 



Then said they to him, " Though thou livest upon alms 

 collected in the country, and hast no other concern but that, 

 yet must thou come to our king, who weareth the garland 



nymous with "gold.' ; and was probably conferred on the island 

 in allusion to the legend in the Ramayana of its having been 

 formed out of the three peaks of the golden mountain (Maha 

 Meru), which were severed from the parent rock and hurled in- 

 to the sea during a fierce contest between the thousand headed 

 hydra and the God of winds as to which of them was the strong- 

 est. Mr. Taylor, in his annotations to the forty fourth Tiru- 

 villeiadel, or "Amusements of Siva," in which a songstress from 

 Ila is stated to have been engaged in a musical contest in the 

 court of the Pandian king at Madura, confesses himself to be 

 embarrassed as to what country was meant by Ila ; but this em- 

 barrasment arose entirely with himself in writing the word Ira 

 instead of Ila, which gave it a nearer approach to Iran, and al- 

 most induced him to identify it with Persia but for the difficulty 

 which interposed, " Could one from Persia speak Tamil ? " Vide 

 Taylor's Oriental Historical Manuscripts, vol. i. p. 132. 



(a) Ponnambalam cot lo u u>) , the same with Chillam- 

 baram, implying "the Golden Court" : so called from one of 

 the courts of that temple having been originally covered with 

 plates of gold. 



[b) Ruddraksha (-/^.gW^u,), the nuts of the Eleocarpus lan- 

 ceolatus, perforated and used as beads in the rosaries of the wor- 

 shippers of Siva 



