NO. 42—1891.] ANCIENT INDUSTRIES. 



55 



astonishment. In all this pageant he would miss the skin 

 garments, the feathers and paint, the scalps, skulls, and 

 trophies that form the familiar accompaniments on such 

 occasions, of which he had read on accounts of nomade tribes 

 and " devourers of men." 



Proceeding a little further, to read of the dispersion of 

 Wijayo's ministers, to establish his authority, and to found 

 courts and governments all over the country, the student 

 would probably pause to consider how such a dispersion of 

 such men, for such purposes, would have fared among 

 Hottentots, Red Indians, or Bushmen, the present represen- 

 tatives of the mode of life ascribed by Tennent to the people 

 of Ceylon during the first few centuries of the Mahdwansa 

 history ! 



The testimony of the Mahdwansa as to the character of the 

 people and their mode of life, is not less explicit than the 

 evidence it affords of the staple food of the Island. The 

 brief space of time required for the establishing of courts 

 and governments in various parts of the country for the 

 consolidation of Wijayo's rule by his ministers, the embassy 

 to the powerful monarch Panduwo, the nearest neighbour, 

 only a few years after the landing, for a wife, — that monarch's 

 magnificent response in sending his own daughter, accom- 

 panied by numerous noble ladies and a splendid dowry, — 

 and, in short, all the events and circumstances of the 

 narrative combine to prove that the country was inhabited 

 by a settled population, engaged in industries widely 

 different from any pursued by wandering tribes living by 

 the chase. Proofs do not depend upon isolated passages, 

 but abound and constitute the whole tenour of the narrative. 

 The evidence of cities, with cemeteries, royal gardens, 

 palaces, and tanks is even less convincing than such events 

 as Citta's bribing the herdsman's wife with 1,000 pieces of 

 money to conceal and keep her babe ; the story of the two 

 native princes who sat in State with Panduwasa, Wijayo's 

 immediate successor, on thrones of equal dignity ; the love 

 scene between young Pandukabhaya and the princess on 



