CEYLON BRANCH — ROYAL ASIATIC SOCIETY. 



the spotless face of the Chola-kmg (a), and observing 

 " what shall I say to the infatuated Buddhist who speaks 

 foolish words?" thus interrogated him (the Buddhist) : 



" Thou saidst that thy Lord inculcated dharmma in his 

 scriptures ; thou also -saidst that sentiments are produced, 

 and vanish at every moment, How can it be possible for 

 thee to practice the dharmma which thy benighted scrip- 

 tures inculcate, if the sentiment thou conceivest should va- 

 nish before thou canst express it? thou hast therefore no 

 dharmma Sastra (b). 



"Thou saidst that thy Lord was born through many 

 matrices for the sake of sentient beings (that he might re- 

 deem them from the miseries of birth). If a person who 

 came to remove the delusions of others become himself 

 more deluded than they, how can he relieve them ? 



" Thou saidst that thy Lord would not think of killing 

 (any animal). Would thy great Bodhinath have eaten grass 

 and leaves when he, in the course of his transmigration on 

 the earth through different matrices, assumed the bodies of 

 tigers and jackals, and felt hungry ? 



" Thou saidst in thy false scriptures that the body (rupa) 

 would be annihilated with the five Kandhas. Where is 

 then an (identical) body for thy Lord ? O fool ! why dost 

 thou say that he (the identical individual) assumed a body, 

 and was born through many matrices that he might bestow 

 grace on the sentient beings ? 



" The body is the effect, and the soul is the cause. Were 

 it not so, thy Lord, who sits under the shade of the beau- 

 teous Bodhi-tree, could not have a body. O thou of im- 

 perfect knowledge ! Who was it that revealed the Pitaka 

 scriptures, which absurdly assert the annihilation of the 

 five Kandhas to be the ultimate beatitude. 



" Thou saidst that thy Buddpias, twenty-one in number 

 (c), were born by piercing through the wombs of their 



(a) In the original Ponni-naden (0ofjw<K5flra<n_«>m), a title of the 

 Chola-king implying "the possessor of the country watered by 

 the river Ponni," which is the same with Caveri. 



(b) In the original Aranool (^^nso), rules for the practice of 

 virtue. 



(c) Twenty-one Buddhas : this must be a mistake ; for in all 

 the Singhalese authorities which I have consulted I find twenty 

 five mentioned and the subjoined is a list of their names in the 

 order they manifested themselves : 1. Dipankara ; 2. Kondhanyo ; 

 3. Mungalo ; 4. Sumano ; 5, Reweto ; 6, Sobhito ; 7. Anoma- 



