72 JOURNAL, R.A.S. (CEYLON). [VOL. XIII. 



inmates, by whom they were maintained and waited on, and obtained 

 the position of moral instructors and guides. In this capacity they 

 undermined the loyalty of those persons, and gave such counsel as 

 should bring them under their own influence. 



The result of all this policy was, that in course of time 

 Parakrama had become acquainted with the mind of every 

 courtier and almost of each commoner in the realm he desired 

 to conquer, had friends in every corner of it, and knew every 

 path in its forests. 



Acquainted as he was with the various kinds of paths, the prince 

 ascertained exactly from hunters the way by which a force could enter 

 the city and the way convenient for his own spies. Himself, too, 

 roaming the forest near the city under pretence of hunting, could 

 distinguish all the ways and byways by marks which he set.* 



After a time, when he felt any longer delay would be time 

 lost, he returned to his uncle's court at Saiikhatthali ; but it 

 was not long before Kitti Sirimegha died, and Gaja Bahu saw 

 without apprehension his young friend established on the 

 neighbouring throne. 



His first care was to develop the resources of his country. 

 He was extremely conscious of its smallness and poverty, 

 but he seems at once to have taken in hand districts far 

 beyond any of which we have heard as having been practi- 

 cally under his father's or his uncle's sway. From Adam's 

 Peak to the sea, he is said to have placed his soldiers ; 

 he drained the marshes of the Pasdun Korale, and built a 

 causeway (or anicut ?) across the Deduru-oya in the 

 Kolonna Korale — part of a system of irrigation works, ruins 

 of which, Mr. Wijesinha tells us, are still to be seen. 



It is impossible not to admire the high conception of the 

 duties of a ruler which is here set forth: — 



All throughout this realm that belongs to me, he said to his minis- 

 ters, besides the many corn lands that are ripened by the water of the 

 rain- clouds, the fields maintained in dependence on rivers whose 

 waters fail not, and on mighty reservoirs, are few ; and the kingdom 

 includes very many rocky mountains and thick forests, and great far- 

 stretching marshes. In such a land as this, surely not even the least 



* So both translations from Nanasanlietaknmate . 



