N*0. 60. — 1908.] PORTUGUESE HISTORY OF CEYLON, 



395 



Dom Joao a large force under the command of Aritta Kivendu 

 Perumal, an erstwhile fakir from the Solian country, who had 

 been appointed Mannamperuma Mohotti 1 . Dom Joao and 

 his army, however, blocked the pass of Balane, thus preventing 

 the invaders from gaining access to the hill-country. Raja 

 Sinha arriving with the rest of the army encamped at Ma vela 2 , 

 whence he dispatched a large body of troops by way of Balane 

 and Kadugannawa ; but these were as unsuccessful as the 

 former, being beaten back by the army of Dom Joao, who 

 thereupon assuming the aggressive marched down at the head 

 of his army and encountered Raja Sinha in battle. The old 

 king, seeing the assumption of the insignia of royalty by the man 

 whose father he had treacherously murdered, appears to have 

 lost heart, and given the signal for retreat 3 . Leaving Man- 

 namperuma Mohotti in command of Galbocla korale and 

 Paranakuruva, he retired to the park at Petangoda, where a 

 bamboo splinter ran into his foot 4 , causing a wound which 

 speedily mortified. Feeling his end approaching, he ordered 

 the royal barge to be prepared, and in this he was conveyed to 

 Sitavaka, where he soon afterwards died 5 . This took place 

 in the year 1592. 



1 See Rdjdv. 93 ; Val. Ceylon 82. 



2 In the Ganne pattu of the Galboda korale. 



3 See Rdjdvaliya 93- 94 ; Bald. Ceylon iii. ; Col. de Trat. i 221. 



4 So says the Rdjdvaliya. The document in Col. de Trat. i. 

 (221) and Baldseus (Ceylon iii.), as well as other writers, accuse Raja 

 Siijha of wilfully wounding his foot and refusing to allow it to be 

 healed. 



5 That Raja Sinha died in Sitavaka there can be no doubt (the sen- 

 tence in Rdjdvaliya 94 is wrongly translated). As regards his age at 

 death there has been a great deal of misstatement, owing to an absurd 

 blunder of Valentyn's, founded on a misreading of a statement in 

 Baldseus (see Mudaliyar W. F. Gunawardhana's " Raja Sinha I.," in C 

 A. S. Jl. xviii. 386-7, which, however, itself contains several errors). 

 According to the Vida de M. de Alb. i. xxiii., at the time of his death Raja 

 Sinha had ruled the island for 38 years, that is from 1554 to 1592, the 

 former year (or 1555) being actually that when, as a youth in his 

 teens, Tikiri Bandara first saw active service and obtained his title 

 (see Rdjdv. 82-3, and cf. supra, p. 208, note 3 ). Although, therefore, 

 I have spoken of him here as " the old king," he must have been well 

 under sixty years of age when he died. 



