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posed. Mahhida, the son of the powerful Indian conqueror Asoka, 

 asserting the possession of such gifts and powers, found a ready and 

 a credulous convert in the king Devananpiyatissa ; and to establish 

 his faith, declared, by virtue of his 'divine inspiration,' that the spots 

 and places dedicated by the monarch to the service of the new 

 religion, had ages before been selected and foreordained by pre- 

 ceding Buddhas, as well as by Gautama, to the purposes to which 

 they were then assigned. 



Mahinda, "a luminary like unto the divine teacher himself," com- 

 posed, as already hinted, additional Attakathas in the Sinhalese 

 language, and from these, as well as from the Pitakas, the authors of 

 the Dipawansa would necessarily draw much of their materials. 

 That these works were kept as a sacred secret, and specially guarded 

 by the chiefs of the Buddhist hierarchy, we may well infer, from 

 the events which took place on the restoration of King Walagam- 

 bahu, in the year 88 b. c. King and priests had, for a period of 

 nearly fifteen years, been fleeing and hiding as refugees from the 

 usurping dhamilos. There was, consequently, a peril lest the *'Pita- 

 kattaya," and the *' Attakatha" might be lost. The priests there- 

 fore, to prevent such a possibility thereafter, or, as they phrased 

 the occurrence, " foreseeing the perdition of the people (from the 

 perversion of the true doctrines) assembled, and in order that 

 the religion might endure for ages, recorded the same in books."* 

 Their 'profound wisdom and inspiration' had previously enabled 

 them to promulgate the Bana orally, but now that under the auspices 

 of the king, and thethero Maliyadewo, the sacred books were made 

 public, the age of inspiration passed away. The place at which 

 this publication was made was at the Alu-vihara in Matale. 



Now, as the contents of the Tripitaka are regarded by Buddhists 

 "as a record of pure unmixed truth, without any deposit of error, 



* Mahawanso, ch. xxxiii. 







