170 JOURNAL, R.A.S. (CEYLON). [VOL. XII. 



taking place. Among the splendours of the city, which was 

 all well built and well kept, he admired specially an image 

 of the Buddha, twenty cubits high, made of green jade. 

 This may well have been one of the very images specified in 

 chapter XXXVII. of the Mahdwaiisa, and it was made of 

 green jade, a material which is not to be obtained, I believe, 

 in any quantity in Ceylon, and which must therefore have 

 been brought from India. It is interesting, I think, to 

 notice, though it cannot surprise us, how closely the picture 

 given by this intelligent visitor agrees with the narrative of 

 the native historian. 



From the fifth century I leap to the seventeenth. The testi- 

 mony of Robert Knox is the more remarkable because it bears 

 upon the period for which — as I have already remarked — the 

 versified chronicle was not contemporaneous. If it is found 

 to support the versified chronicle, it will prove that the latter 

 was made from contemporaneous records. Knox was detained 

 in the Kandyan country from about 1660 to about 1680. He 

 gives a very full account of the person, character, habits, and 

 policy of the king Raja Sinha II., tells us where the king lived, 

 and describes his relations with the Portuguese and with the 

 Dutch. He reports the condition of many of the towns, 

 Kandy, Badulla, Anuradhapura, and Alutnuwara; describes 

 thecustomsof the people, andgivesaveryvividpictureof their 

 religion as he saw it. In all this he may be said on the whole to 

 confirm the Mahdwansa — not indeed in its estimate of the pro- 

 portion of things, but in its general representation of events and 

 facts. The Mahdwansa gives of Raja Sinha a less unfavour- 

 able account than Knox. Knox describes him as a tyrant of 

 diabolical brutality and cruelty, but not without very con- 

 siderable capacities for governing, of great personal strength 

 and activity, and a warlike and fearless temper. The Mahd- 

 wansa calls him (XCVI.-6) "an imperious man, whom none 

 could approach or conquer, and brave as a lion, courageous, 

 endowed with great strength of body, and tells several 

 anecdotes of his athletic feats." And again, " an imperious 

 ruler." But it gives him credit for great zeal for Buddhism, 



