are 1 Called by that name. When Wijeya, the founder of the 

 first known Ceylon dynasty, in the year of Gautama Buddha T s 

 death, 543 B. 0., landed in the island, he found an already 

 organized Yakkho state 5. and indeed it is said of Gautama 

 Buddha himself that he came to Lanka r " & settlement of the 

 Yakkhos." It is hardly allowable to conclude from this, with 

 Sir Emerson Tennent and others, that these were identical with 

 the Yeddas, and that up to 1 the time of Wijeya an aboriginal 

 homogeneous race inhabited the island, though it may not be a 

 mistake to assume that in the earliest period almost the entire 

 population were devoted to this Yakkho-worship as it now exists 

 amongst the Yeddas. The identification of the Yeddas with 

 those Yakkhos would require us to assume such a deep physical 

 and intellectual degeneration of the present Yeddas from the 

 old Yakkho times as would be without parallel in history,, as 

 well as in ethnology, and such- as the author cannot bring him- 

 self to admit. Not a single fact sustains the conjecture that 

 Wijeya, with his followers from the valley of the Ganges, 

 was the first stranger who came to Ceylon. On the contrary^ 

 the legend of the advent of Gautama Buddha, and, no 

 less, the old traditions of the Rainayana r clearly point 

 to earlier arrivals and invasions, and if Wijeya found 

 some kind of political organization on the ? island, the time 

 in which the whole north of the island was Yedda-land 

 must then be placed a good deal further back. The first 

 visit of Gautama Buddha to the island was, according to 

 the Mahawaiiso, in Mahiyangana, near Bintenne. According 

 to the Yakkhos, in whose midst the Buddha here appeared, he 

 visited on a second occasion Nagadipo, the abode of the KSjgas,. 

 or snake-worshippers, which is generally assumed to be the 

 name for the north and west of the island ; at any rate mention 

 is made of Nagas living by the ocean as well as mountain 

 Nagas, and a Naga King of Kalyani, in the neighbourhood of 

 Colombo 1 , is spoken of. If any importance is to be attached to' 

 these traditions, a number of tribes, or at least a division of the 

 original population, must be inferred. And it is not without 

 value that the description of the Naga States, in these most 

 ancient myths, disclose to us a much more perfect organization 

 than we find any account of in the tales of the Yakkhos » 



