CEYLON BRANCH— ROYAL ASIATIC SOCIETY. 60 



ON THE HISTORY OF JAFFNA, 



I ROM THE EARLIEST PERIOD TO THE DUTCH CONQUEST. 



By Simon Casie Chitty, Esq., C. M. R. A. S. 

 (Read 22d May 1847 J 



In periods of remote antiquity, the northern and north-west- 

 ern portions of Ceylon, including Jaffna, are said to have been 

 inhabited by the Ndgas, and hence distinguished under the ap- 

 pellation of Ndgadipo, or the peninsula of the Ndgas. The 

 Ndgas, it should be observed, were not serpents as their name 

 implies, but a race of people so called merely from their wor- 

 ship of the serpents; and in the account given in the Maha- 

 wanso* of a visit made to them by Buddha, in the year B. C, 

 581, they are described as having had at that time a complete 

 social and political organisation with a King of their own, who 

 was possessed of " a gem-set throne. " We are, however, pro- 

 foundly in the dark as to what became of the Ndgas after the 

 invasion of Ceylon by Wijaya, in the year B. C. 543: and 

 consequently we are unable to ascertain whether they were 

 extirpated by the victor, or merged into the succeeding po- 

 pulation ; but the latter may be considered as more probable than 

 the former. Be this as it may, the name Nagadipo seems to have 

 continued to be applied to the northern portion of the island to a 

 later period at least by the Singhalese f ; and Ptolemy, who 

 ^flourished about A. D. 200, refers to Nagadibii as a town in 

 Taprobane at his time, but erroneously places it on the east 

 side. J It may also be mentioned, that in the list of Singhalese 

 sovereigns we meet with several who bore the epithet Ndga 

 as an affix to their patronymics, and there is still a temple oii 



* Tumour's Translation of the Mahawanso, Chap. 1. p. p. 4—5, 

 f Ibid. Chap. xxxv. p. p. 225—227. % Vincent's Periplus of the 

 Erythrean Sea, Vol, II P. 450, 



