No. 27;— 1884.] tissamaharAma archaeology. 19 



near the eastern end of the bund, many buildings stood, 

 and the discoveries made in our excavations show that, in 

 addition, a large village of artificers was established on the 

 spot. All the ground here, too, far away from the tank, is 

 full of fragments of brick, and tile, and pottery, below the 

 surface. This, therefore, was undoubtedly once a large city; 

 yet, if not Magama, it was a city without a name ! Pro- 

 bably after the final breaching of the Tissa tank the people 

 who remained removed to a suburb a few miles lower down 

 the river, where it was possible to cultivate paddy without 

 the assistance of the tank, as is done to the present day. 

 Unless we adopt this hypothesis, we are driven to the con- 

 clusion that two separate cities existed, with their centres 

 only four or five miles apart ; and that the one with the 

 most extensive ruins in the south of the Island must yield 

 the title of " capital" to the other with its half a dozen scat- 

 tered pillars. The whole neighbourhood may have once 

 been termed Mahagama, though the name has since become 

 restricted to the present village. 



The available evidence shows that from the time of the 

 compilation of the Atthakatha to the time of the compilation 

 of the Rajawalliya, it was believed that during the formation 

 of the first Aryan settlements in the Island, while travel- 

 lers from the south of India usually landed at Mahatittha 

 (or Mantota), all those from the Ganges came southward 

 with the north-east monsoon winds, and landed at Magama. 

 As stated in the Dipawamsa, thousands of immigrants must 

 certainly have arrived during the lifetime of Wijaya j or 

 his followers would never have ventured to settle down, 

 among a possibly hostile race,* at points so far distant as 

 the first towns from each other ; and the route must have 

 been almost as well known, even in those early times, as 

 the short passage from Ram6cvaram to Mahatittha was to 

 the traders who came for chanks and pearls and the other 

 commodities carried away ages before to Arabia and 

 Palestine. That trading vessels from India came to 

 Magama at a later date (205 B.C.) is clear from Mak., p. 135, 

 where it is stated that ships arrived with " golden utensils 



* Even succeeding sovereigns found it advisable to conciliate the 

 "fierce Yakkhas" by granting their chiefs special privileges. 



b 2 



