No. 34.— 1887.] 



POLONN ARUWA. 



47 



hard to accept their conclusion. In the first place, there is no 

 doubt about the lettering of the word in dispute. The part 

 of the inscription in which it occurs is in perfect pr eservation, 

 and the word is indubitably " Segiri." 



Now, to get out of an apparent difficulty by saying that 

 the word which presents the difficulty is obviously a mistake, 

 is rather a heroic measure. That the engravers of these 

 inscriptions did occasionally make mistakes, and those, too, 

 of an elementary and obvious kind, no one who is acquainted 

 with them can deny. But a grammatical blunder is one 

 thing : a mistake in the name of a place thoroughly well 

 known to everybody is another. 



The fact that this enormous piece of granite was trans- 

 ported from a considerable distance by "the strong men of 

 King Nissarjka" is not doubted by Messrs. Rhys Davids and 

 Miiller : but they refuse to believe that it was dragged all 

 the way from Mihintale (Segiriya), — some sixty miles, — and 

 prefer to suppose that it was brought from Sigiriya, which is 

 only fifteen miles distant. Now, in the first place, I would 

 point out that if the fact of its transport is admitted at all 

 (and there is no reason whatever to doubt it), it was not a 

 much more difficult feat, considering the physical character- 

 istics of the country, to transport it from the former than 

 from the latter place. No hills or mountains intervene ; no 

 large rivers are interposed : the country is as level as it can 

 be. The difficulty of making a road through thick jungle 

 applies to the one transit as strongly as to the other. If there 

 was a road in existence from either place to Polonnaruwa, it 

 certainly ran from Mihintale rather than from Sigiriya. 



There is no record whatever of any visit paid by King 

 Nissanka Malla to Sigiriya ; whereas there are several records 

 (more especially the great slab inscription on the platform 

 of the Ruwanweli Dagaba) of the state visit paid by that king 

 to Anuradhapura, of the respect he paid to its shrines, and 

 of the great works his piety prompted him to carry out there. 



We are told that he went thither numerously attended : 

 and the passage of chariots and horsemen, to say nothing of 



