No. 44 — 1893.] epic of parakrama. 



Parakrama's greatness lay, he would have replied: "He 

 brought all Lanka under one rule." That was Parakrama's 

 great exploit ; that was the great action which gives unity to 

 his history. He brought all Lanka under one royal canopy, 

 made it one nation again. Our author recognises this in a 

 true patriotic spirit. He genuinely rejoiced in the unity and 

 greatness which had been restored to his native country ; 

 and the monarch who had achieved it was not only the 

 master whose deeds it was his business to record, but was 

 enthroned in his imagination, the hero of his heart. 



He is not describing a monarch alone, but a popular hero ; 

 a well-known and well-loved character, whose fun and love 

 of sport, whose kindliness of heart, as well as his reckless 

 daring, had endeared him to every man in his dominions. In 

 using these terms I am but putting into modern language 

 what breathes throughout these chapters, though it finds a 

 very different expression. I fancy I perceive in them, in 

 spite of the conventional turns of phrase, the feeling 

 which in a modern might have prompted the exclamation : 



Oh ! was there ever such a knight, in friendship or in war, 

 As our sovereign lord King Henry, the hero of Navarre ! 



The hero's earlier days, with their rough fun and incessant 

 adventure, were evidently regarded, in the popular mind, 

 with the same sort of homely affectionate admiration with 

 which the English remembered the boisterous youth of 

 Henry V., to whom — though here I must be forgiven as an 

 Englishman for putting in the proviso, si pcirva licet com- 

 moner e magnis — Parakramais a Sinhalese parallel. Thus the 

 hero's well-marked personality, and the achievement of 

 one transcendent action, made it possible for our author, 

 though standing too near to him in time, to grasp his career 

 as a whole, and to be sensible of its poetical value. 



To the disadvantage for poetical purpose, of too great near- 

 ness to the events, I attribute in part the fact — which can 

 hardly be disputed — that the earlier portions of the life are 

 more interesting than the later. These earlier portions are 



