No. 24.— 1881.] ANCIENT KALAH, ETC. 77 



the only such recorded relics of the Ophid, or Nagn, cult in Ceylon. 



I was for a long while struck with surprise that the Ophid, or 

 Naga, image should have been enclosed in a mound of brick like a 

 Buddhist relic, but on reading the notes in Fa-Hian's account of the 

 combination of the Buddhist with the ancient Ophid cult at Samkassa 

 (chapter xvii of Laidlay's translation) in this connection, I unex- 

 pectedly found Cunningham describing the ruins of the Ophid shrine 

 as follows : " It is a small mound of ruined bricks dedicated to the 

 worship of the Naga. Nothing whatever is erected there ; but 

 whenever rain is desired the people proceed to the spot and pray for 

 it. The period of annual worship however is the month of Bysakh, 

 [? Sinhalese, Wesak, ©Seo-asJ] just before the commencement of the 

 seasonal rains, when the village women go there in procession and 

 make offerings of milk, which they pour out on the spot. This is no 

 doubt the identical dragon (Naga) which Fa-Hian mentions as 

 appearing i once every year,' from whose favour the people of Seng- 

 kia-shi [this is Samkassa] obtained propitious rains and abundant 

 harvests." 



I shall be excused for here further quoting the text of Fa-Hian 

 (A.D. 400) to show the conclusive grounds for believing the Ophid 

 cult actually witnessed by Captain Cunningham was practically 

 identical with that witnessed by Fa-Hian. " Their stay being ended, 

 the dragon assumes the form of a little serpent with two ears 

 bordered with white. When the ecclesiastics perceive him, they 



present him with cream in a copper vessel He comes out once 



every year." And again ante: " It is he who confers fertility and abun- 

 dance on the country by causing gentle showers to fall upon the 

 fields, and securing them against all calamities." 



I italicise two points in these accounts as worthy of attention : the 

 one is the ascendancy of " women" in the Ophid ceremony, and the 

 other is the expression " two ears bordered with white." With reference 

 to the former I draw attention to the ascendancy of woman as quite 

 antagonistic to the usual Indo-Aryan customs, and suggest an addi- 

 tional deduction from it, that the Ophid cult was not of origin among 

 an Indo-Aryan race ; as to the snake, local knowledge enables me to 



