83 



glyph ically and phonetically, was known amongst the Egyptians, 

 Hebrews, Chaldeans, Moabites, Ninevites, and Assyrians, as well as 

 amongst the Chinese, hundreds of years before the birth of Buddha. 

 It was known and practised amongst the Babylonians and the Medes 

 and Persians at the time of his advent ; and there are no grounds for 

 supposing that it was unknown in the country in which he lived. 

 On the contrary, we know that the ten books of the Vedas, com- 

 prising 1028 hymns, existed in a written form, and had existed in 

 India for, at least, four hundred years before.* A king's son, sur- 

 rounded by learned Brahmans, the prince Siddhartha, the coming 



the Buddhist religion can hardly be over-estimated, Mr. Turnour remarks, in his 

 ' Examination of the Pali Buddhistical Annals, No. 4," published in the Journal 

 of the Asiatic Society in 1838, "It has been shewn in the introduction to the 

 Mahawanso, that its author Mahanamo, compiled his history in the reign of his 

 nephew Dhatasino, the monarch of Ceylon who reigned between A. d, 459 and 

 477, from the materials above described — [the Sihaia Mahawanso, the Attha- 

 katha of the Mahawiharo, the Sihaia Atthakatha and the Mahawanso of. the 

 Uttaiawiharo fraternities], — a part of which was the version of the Atthakatha 

 brought by Mahinda from India in 307 before Christ, and translated by him into 

 the Sihaia language. This fact, coupled with many other circumstances in- 

 advertently disclosed in the histories of the Convocations, go far to prove that 

 the Pitikattayan and Atthakatha were actually reduced to writing from the 

 commencement of the Buddhistical era, and that the concealment of their record 

 till the reign of the Ceylonese ruler Wattagamini [ Walagambahu] between b. c. 

 104 and 76, was a part of the esoteric scheme of that creed, had recourse to in 

 order to keep up the imposture as to the priesthood being endowed with the gift 

 of inspiration. The cessation of the concealment of these scriptures at that parti- 

 cular period, though attributed to the subsidence of the spirit of inspiration, in all 

 probability proceeded from the public disorders consequent upon the Chdlian 

 invasion, which led to the expulsion of that king and the priesthood from Anu- 

 radhapura by a foreign enemy, and to their fugitive existence in the wilderness 

 of the Island during a period of nearly 15 years." 



* The collection of the Vedas in their present form has been referred, from 

 general considerations, and with much of probability, to the earlier half of the 



