68 JOURNAL R. A. S. (CEYLON). [Vol. VII., Pt. II. 



inhabitants, and driving away the others to a neighbouring 

 Island, and then, having destroyed their town, established a 

 kingdom in his name " Seng-hla-lo" (Sinhala) to which people 

 rapidly collected from other countries. Let us treat this as a 

 true tradition, merely garnished by the persons who gave it to 

 Hiouen-Thsang with the false representation that the unhappy 

 wife was really a devil, as it suited her betrayer to represent 

 when he effected the murder of the King, who had taken her 

 part against him, together with the inmates of the palace. 

 It is scarcely surprising the Buddhist annalists omitted 

 to record in their chronicles this horrible crime and the 

 successful conspiracy that brought Seng-kia-lo back from India 

 again, to the land of his birth, as a conqueror of the whole 

 land ; nor, priding themselves on their pure Gangetic race, 

 would the Kings descended from Wijaya care to see it re- 

 corded that Wijaya was the son of a Gangetic Chief and a 

 Yakkho Princess. On the other hand, there was absolutely 

 no inducement for Hiouen-Thsang to invent the story, had it not 

 been the current oral tradition. 



I should also here refer to the extract from the Pracli- 

 pihdwa, given by Alwis at page xxv of the Introduction to 

 his Siclat Sangardwa, in which Gurulugomi* quotes from the 

 lost Atuwds (original Sinhalese commentaries on the Pali 

 Scripture) compiled B.C. 92. 



He says : " ( Since King Sinhabahu took the Sinha (lion) 

 captive, he was (called) Sinhala, and his descendants were (thence 

 also called) Sinhala,' so the name Sinhala is derived from the 

 circumstance of the lion being taken captive by Sinhabahu, 



* Gurulugomi, the learned There- of Aluvihare (Matale" District), says the 

 legend, wrote Amdwatura at his sister's request for the instruction of his 

 nephew. Said the mother : — *' Brother, the diction is not good; my son's 

 style needs improving." Then he wrote Pradipikdwa ; and yet the student 

 of Sinhalese prose " undefiled" (Elu) may perhaps best study Gurulu- 

 gomi's earlier work. — H. C. P. B.^ Hon. Sec, 



