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JOURNAL, K.A.S. (CEYLON ) 



[Vol. X. 



principle. He looked upon that trench as a protest." In the 

 same way, there are many followers of Mr. Phoebus who 

 looked upon the Palk Strait and the Gulf of Mannar as a 

 protest, a watery intervention between the Tamil iconoclast 

 and the Aryan artist. I confess that my own view of the 

 matter is different, though an Aryan fellow-feeling makes 

 me hope that the arguments which weigh with me will be 

 successfully demolished. They are these : — 



1. Failing evidence to the contrary (and I submit that 

 there is none trustworthy), the natural hypothesis to form 

 concerning the architectural and artistic ideas which are 

 realised in stone at Anuradhapura is that they gradually 

 travelled down from north to south, and so were imported 

 into the Island from the extremity of the continent, and not 

 vice versa. 



2. Unless we are to believe in the mystical flight through 

 the air of the great missionary Mahindo, the assumption is 

 that he travelled through the south of India to Ceylon, 

 carrying with him reminiscences of the sacred edifices he 

 had seen in his native land and on his journey, which he 

 persuaded his insular converts to imitate, and perhaps 

 surpass, for the honour and glory of Buddha. 



3. If we may trust the " Mahawanso," we know as a fact 

 that the early Rajas all sought their wives from Southern 

 India, that the Tamil Elala reigned peaceably for 44 years, 

 that the great Polonnaruwa monarch, Parakrama Bahu, 

 imported Tamil artificers to carve his temples, and, as a 

 pretty certain inference, that the early religion of the Island 

 was Hinduism. 



4. Nearly all the religious emblems are plainly imported, 

 and not originally representations of local animals and ideas. 

 The conventional rendering of the horse, the lion, the bull, 

 and probably of the goose, must have travelled southward 

 from the continent ; while the dvdrapdla or door-guardians, 

 the makara toran and the frescoes at the Isurumuniya 

 Temple are obviously of Hinduistic origin. 



5. The interesting ruins thirty-five miles south of Madras, 



