NO. 44.— 1893.] KURUNEGALA VIST All A YA. 35 



KURUNEGALA VISTARAYA ;* WITH NOTES ON 

 KURUNEGALA, ANCIENT AND MODERN. 



By F. Modder. 



Introductory Note. 



The Kurunegala Vistaraya is a topographical description 

 of the city of Hastisailapura (Kurunegala) in the thirteenth 

 and fourteenth centuries. There are various editions and 

 different versions of the Vistaraya extant in the Seven 

 Korales, and of the half a dozen or more I have had the 

 opportunity of examining and collating, for the purposes 

 of this translation, no two copies agree in detail, though 

 they agree in the main, each editor making his own emen- 

 dations and additions to the original, or supposed original, 

 as his taste and fancy led him, in the hope perhaps 

 of making his edition fuller and more attractive than its 

 predecessors, and bringing it up to date. 



The Vistaraya makes no pretension to scholarship ; indeed 

 it is devoid of all literary merit, and judging by the plain 

 and often commonplace language in which it is written,, 

 and the unsystematic arrangement of the subjects dealt with 

 therein, it would appear that the editors were men of ordinary 

 intelligence, their one object being to reduce into writing 

 the legends, traditions, and other historical information 

 respecting men. places, and things which might otherwise 

 have been lost to the world. 



As a chronological authority no importance can be attached 

 to the work. But as an interesting topographical account of 

 the city of Hastisailapura, with multifarious scraps of 

 historical and other information not usually found in the 

 more regular historical books of reference, it is perhaps on a 

 par with such sister-works as Kadaim-pot, which treat of the 

 boundaries of the ancient divisions of Ceylon, and from which 

 a great deal of invaluable information may be gleaned ; 

 Vitii-pot, which describe the state of the villages in the Seven 

 Korales and Puttalam District, and record the amount of paddy 

 land cultivated in each village, the height of water in the tank, 

 the number of dams and tracts of land, large and small, the 



* Being 1 a translation from the Sinhalese of a description of the city of 

 Hastimilapura (Kurunegala) in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, 

 with a collation from other contemporaneous Sinhalese records, and notes 

 and comments. 



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