102 JOURNAL, R.A.S. (CEYLON). [VOL. XV. 



All are oblong, and all — or nearly all — the chambers had 

 corridors completely round them. Many passages, &c, were 

 paved throughout with quartz slabs ; though much of this 

 choice pavement has been displaced by the wash of centuries, 

 or from being deliberately put to other use by Buddhist 

 monks, when the fortune of war found them located in the 

 " marble halls " of royalty. To this latter accident is also pro- 

 bably due the sorry internal alterations which some of the 

 rooms seem to have undergone, — division and subdivision, — 

 until the original configuration is past tracing with certainty. 



So, too, as regards surface decoration — stucco mouldings, 

 ornament, and the like, that Kasyapa's royal stronghold 

 would hardly lack — a few stray fragments, turned up by 

 the spade, are the sole traces left to us by the " sons of 

 Buddha," inured to simplest surroundings and averse to 

 permit worldly attractions to break in upon the austerity of 

 daily life. 



On cleariDg the tangled mdna grass and low jungle off 

 the west edge of the Rock a surprise awaited us. It became 

 for the first time evident that the whole side of the slope — 

 here more prolonged than on the other faces— had been 

 grooved deeply to hold the foundations of a lower reach of 

 rooms and passages, and drain the summit speedily of the 

 heaviest rainfall. 



The boldness of conception and pre-eminent skill which 

 enabled these old architects to make even the steepest slopes 

 of Slgiri-gala subservient to their will, led them to annex 

 profitably every inch of possible foothold. The exterior wall 

 of the citadel, which wholly engirdled the Rock (except on 

 the south-west), was built everywhere several feet — indeed 

 for a great part of the circuit some yards — below the flat 

 summit, and must have risen majestically all round from 

 the very brink of the precipice. 



Nay more : at one point it positively descended the sheer 

 side of the Rock to a lower reach. 



Two-thirds of the height up the west cliff, towards its 

 northern end, is a ledge of the main Rock nearly 50 yards 



