340 



JOURNAL, R.A.S. (CEYLON). 



[Vol. VI If. 



KALI KO'VILA. 



By Arthur Jay award ana, Esq., Mudaliydr. 



At Yatramulla, in Bentota, traces are still to be seen of 

 the site of a very ancient building. The villagers connect 

 it with the Kali Koolla, a temple dedicated to the she-demon 

 Kali, which they have heard their elders tell stood on this 

 place in very ancient times. 



This demon, and the story of her conversion to Buddhism, 

 is related at length in the Dampiya Atuwdwa. It is there 

 stated that she first appeared in this world as a barren 

 woman, and having passed through many successive births 

 in punishment for child-murder, finally attained, under 

 the preaching of Buddha, to the first of the four paths to 

 Nirwana— the path known as " Sowan." In process of time 

 she came to be invested with supernatural powers, and 

 having, in consideration of the offerings she received of rice, 

 &c, for her maintenance, identified herself entirely with the 

 agricultural interests of the country , she came to be regularly 

 resorted to for intercession by the cultivators before they 

 took a single step in the cultivation of their fields. She is 

 also represented as being specially possessed of the power 

 of predicting the times most suited for dry and wet grain 

 cultivation, the failure or success of harvests, and so on. 



In short, she appears to have developed into the tutelar 

 deity of the Sinhalese paddy fields, corresponding to the 

 Ceres of Greek mythology. Indeed, the tradition is still 

 current in Yatramulla, that the grandparents and great- 

 grandparents of the present generation of adults distinctly 

 remembered the site of this kovila being looked after by 

 two dumb women, who could be seen at early dawn 

 sweeping the place out clean, and, with a lamp burning in 

 a sort of little watch-hut on the site, patiently awaiting 

 the offerings made thereat by goyiyas on their way to work 

 in their paddy fields. 



