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



But those later glories lie a little beyond my present scope : 

 it is enough for our epic purpose to leave our hero with his 

 foot upon his foes in Lanka, and all that great future opening 

 before him ; for one evening's Paper at any rate it must 

 suffice if I can conduct him in triumph to Pulatthi. 



The course of the campaign, if we could identify even a 

 fair proportion of the places, would be very interesting as a 

 study of geography, but it must be confessed that in other 

 aspects it is tedious. Our author's battlepieces in this part 

 are utterly inferior to those in which he describes the hero's 

 later contest with Manabharana. In that part there is inci- 

 dent and detail, here there is neither, and the contrast is so 

 marked that one is tempted to think of a difference of 

 authors, I incline to think that the later contest took place 

 in the author's neighbourhood, while of the earlier campaign 

 he had only the official reports. 



In this part at least the author seems to have no appre- 

 ciation of the poetic value of vicissitudes of fortune. The 

 record of uniform success is extremely tedious. This general 

 defeated the foe at such a place ; another general won a great 

 victory at such a place ; at another place Parakrama's general 

 killed multitudes of the enemy ; the foes came out to meet the 

 king's forces at such a place but were utterly destroyed ; — 

 and so on to an interminable length. 



If a defeat has to be admitted it is mentioned briefly and 

 obscurely. After Parakrama's forces had taken Pulatthi and 

 Gaja Bahu was a prisoner, Manabharana, the rival king of the 

 south, came suddenly northward, joined his forces to those 

 of the northern kingdom, and utterly defeated, as the author 

 says, " all that large host." The reader has some difficulty 

 in assuring himself whether it was Parakrama's army that 

 was defeated, for neither is his name mentioned, nor is the 

 defeated force called the king's. Mr. Wijesinha has intro- 

 duced the name of Parakrama into his translation (and very 

 rightly, for it helps his reader), but he ought to have put 

 it in brackets, that the reticence of the author might be 

 seen. 



