NO, 43.— 1892.] ANCIENT CHRONICLES OF CEYLON. 



169 



itself : that is, Fa Hian came at a time for which we know for 

 certain that the chronicler's history was nearly contemporary. 

 Still it is interesting to notice their agreement. 



From considerations into which I cannot now enter, I think 

 the date of his visit may be fixed with probability to the earliest 

 years of the reign of King Mahanama, about 412 A.D. Those, 

 we learn from the Mahdwa?isa, were the flourishing days of 

 Anuradhapura. The kings of that period were accomplished- 

 some in art and some in science ; literature was thriving, as 

 the Mahdivaiisa itself proves ; sculpture especially and images 

 are mentioned ; and the stimulus which had promoted these 

 was intercourse with India, of which intercourse the bringing 

 of the tooth-relic by a Brahman princess and the visit of the 

 great commentator, Buddhaghosha, were illustrations. Fur- 

 ther, about this period the rivalry ran very high between the 

 two principal monastic establishments of Anuradhapura, the 

 Mahd-vihdra (from which the Mahdwansa issued) and the 

 Abhayagiri Vihara, each in turn obtaining the pre-eminence 

 and securing royal patronage, though several, perhaps most 

 of the kings, are represented as patronising both. 



Fa Hian begins by repeating what he learnt of the tradition 

 about the early inhabitants of Ceylon and of the visits of the 

 Buddha to the Island, just as they are recorded in the Mahd- 

 wansa. Then he describes the magnificence of the dagabas 

 and the vast number of the monks in the viharas to which 

 these dagabas belonged. He was most impressed by the 

 Abhayagiri Dagaba : it was forty cubits high and adorned 

 with gold and silver and precious stones. In its monastery 

 there were 5,000 monks. The Mahd-vihdra held in his eyes 

 quite a secondary position, though it had 3,000 monks. But a 

 monk of very high attainments had just died then, and there 

 was living at the Chaitya Hill (long afterwards called Mihin- 

 tale), which also belonged to the Mahd-vihdra, a famous 

 monk, Dhammagutta. He speaks of the vihare of the Tooth, 

 and gives a long account of the perahera — or carrying round 

 in procession — of the Tooth, but it is at the Abhayagiri, not at 

 the Mahd-vihdra, that he describes the chief ceremonies as 



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