78 CEYLON BRANCH— ROYAL ASIATIC SOCIETY. 



him amongst the vassals of Portugal and to allow him a com- 

 pany of soldiers, to be maintained at his own expense, for the 

 protection of his person and dignity. The Viceroy readily ac- 

 cepted his proposals, and dispatched Antonio Monis Barreto,. 

 with an hundred soldiers to be stationed at Jaffna patam ; but it 

 does not appear that the King had ever changed his religion, 

 though he did not afterwards molest his Christian subjects. 



Valentyn relates,* that about A. D. 1580, the Portuguese 

 having obtained the permission of the King to build a Franciscan 

 Church at Jaffnapatam, they, in marking out the site, carefully 

 included a square place beyond its precints, in the angles of 

 which they constructed circular bastions and furnished them with 

 ordnance, and being thus provided with the means of attack they 

 suddenly fell upon the King, slaughtered him together with 

 Bis wives and children and secured to themselves the exclu- 

 sive dominion of the country. This account, however, is at 

 variance with that given by the anonymous author Philalethes 

 in his History of Ceylon, p. 227. It is there stated that Jaffna 

 was subjugated by the Portuguese under the brave Don Andra 

 Hurtado De Mendoza, who had been sent there by Mathias 

 Albequerque, Viceroy of Goa, only in A. D. 1591, but even 

 then the royal race was not extirpated, the King was only re- 

 . duced to a state of vassalage and forced to furnish the expe- 

 dition against Kandy, which was undertaken by Don Pedro. 

 Lopus De Sous a, with 19,900 fighting men, 10 war elephants, 

 3,000 draft bullocks, and 2,000 Coolies, f What became of the 

 King after this period is not known with any degree of certainty. 

 There is, however, a vague tradition, that some time afterwards he 

 was deprived of his dignity and expelled the kingdom under a 

 pretence that he had engaged in treacherous proceedings. The 

 foundation of the Jaffna Fort was laid by the Portuguese in 



♦History of India, vol, v. p. 216. f Baldeus' Beschryvinge van 

 het Machtige Eyland Ceylon, Cap. iii. p. 6. 



