NO. 47. — 1896.] ANCIENT CITIES AND TEMPLES. 



151 



The Mahdwansa would never have passed over in silence the 

 endowment of a dagoba in these early times with so many as eight 

 gold images of Buddha, or with the relics undoubtedly deposited in 

 this one. Tennent (foot-note, vol. I., p. 477) refers to a statue of gold 

 in the second century B.C. {Mahdwansa, XXX., p. 180), but from 

 what he says at page 458 it seems probable statues were brought from 

 India, whence almost all the gold in Ceylon has been brought. But 

 in vol. I., p. 344, he says that Asoka, who lived nearly 200 years after 

 Panduwas, was the first of his dynasty to become a Buddhist, and 

 that no building or sculptured stones of a previous date have yet been 

 discovered in India. The Thuparama dagoba, which is said in the 

 Mahdwansa to be the oldest in Ceylon, was erected about this time, 

 but not until Mahindo had arrived. It seems almost impossible that 

 a dagoba should have been erected by a king who is not known to 

 have been a Buddhist, and have had figures of Buddha and relics 

 deposited in it nearly 200 years before the Thiiparama was built, and 

 yet no notice of it be taken by a book so particular in mentioning the 

 religious acts of the sovereigns as is the Mahdwansa. 



Tennent (vol. I., p. 347) also says : " The images of Gotama which 

 in time became objects of veneration, were but a late innovation ; " 

 and in a foot-note to this states that the first mention of a statue of 

 Buddha occurs in an inscription at Mihintale, dated 246 a.d. 



Panduwas, having married a relation of G-otama, was certainly the 

 most likely man of that time to be a Buddhist ; and if he did not 

 build the dagoba it cannot have been erected till after Mahindo's 

 arrival. 



Another thing against the Panduwas hypothesis is the exact re- 

 semblance of the small old dagoba to the Thiiparama dagoba at 

 Anuradhapura. The Thiiparama, according to this idea, must have 

 been built to resemble it 150 or 200 years after it was buried, which is 

 more than improbable. But it is quite likely it has been made after 

 the pattern of the Thiiparama. The shape of the other dagobas at 

 Anuradhapura shows there was not an exact conventional type of 

 dagoba on which they were all designed. 



All the brickwork is laid in mud or clay ; this appears to indicate 

 that the dagoba was built at any rate not very much later than the 

 Anuradhapura dagobas. It is interesting to notice that whilst the 

 people of that day built these dagobas with bricks laid in mud, they 

 well knew the use of mortar, the interior of the lower chamber of this 

 one being lined with about an inch of mortar — the stone roof alone 

 excepted. That they were well acquainted with the nature of lime 

 and brick is apparent from the fact of pounded brick, or " surki," 

 being largely mixed with the sand in the mortar. Tennent says that 

 as early as the second century B.C. the Sinhalese made cement from 

 pearl-oyster shells, and that it took a very good polish (Mahdwansa, 

 CXXVIL, p. 164). 



