63 



ON THE ORIGIN OF 

 THE SRI' PA'DA, OR SACRED FOOT-PRINT ON 

 THE SUMMIT OF ADAM'S PEAK. 

 By William Skeen, Esq. 



The tendency of the human mind to attach itself to visible 

 objects in matters of religious belief, and to attribute especial 

 sanctity to objects and places associated with the presence of the 

 Beings it adores, is one so widely spread as to be almost universal. 

 It operates alike among Brahmans, Buddhists, Romanists, Russo- 

 Greeks and Mohammedans. With different degrees of intensity it 

 influences men of most opposite views. Polytheists, atheists, image 

 and picture worshippers, and the most fanatical of deistic icono- 

 clasts are swayed by it ; while Heathendom at large is more or less 

 permeated with it. Intimately connected with it, is the idea that 

 the practice of penance, or other rigorous austerity, propitiates the 

 Being adored, and thus becomes a meritorious act, conducive to the 

 ultimate happiness of the individual practising it. This tendency, 

 with its associated idea, is strikingly manifested among the 

 Buddhists of Ceylon, in the annual pilgrimages made to the summit 

 of the Samanala, to worship the so-called Foot-print, which, it is 

 alleged, was there made by Buddha in the eighth year of his 

 Buddhahood ; an occurrence which, from the fifth century onwards 

 of the Christian era, has been recorded with much circumstantiality 

 of detail by the historians and poets of the Island, and which is 

 thus referred to in the " Samantakiita wannana," supposed to have 

 been written in the early part of the 14th century, by Wedeha, 

 chief priest of the Patiraja Piriwena Vihara. 



ce<a<^)©<sa cewes©®£0 ©£D6v£>>53 



