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



prevent foreign nations and enemies from coming, and that 

 they are thus employed in his majesty's service ; so it is for 

 sustenance which they want that occasioned their coming 

 up into his majesty's country." Knox tells us that Kandy 

 had been burnt by them, and that the king lived, all the 

 latter part of his reign, in Hewaheta (probably at Hanguran- 

 keta) in retirement. The Mahdwansa says nothing of this 

 except that the king went to the east part of the Island. But 

 in its silence it agrees with Knox ; for it never mentions this 

 king's being at Kandy or building anything there. 



In Knox's minute account of the perahera at Kandy there is 

 no allusion to the Tooth, nor is there any reference to it in 

 all his descriptions of the religion, though he specifies the 

 _E>o-tree and the Foot-print. It is quite certain in fact that he 

 had never heard of the Tooth. The Mahdwansa tells us that 

 Raja Sinha's father had placed the Tooth in safe hiding. 

 Whatever may be the truth about that — whether the Sin- 

 halese or the Portuguese account of its fate be correct — the 

 Mahdwansa admits that it was not in Kandy. 



Such are some illustrations of the work of verifying or test- 

 ing our Island histories, in which I invite the Members of this 

 learned Society to combine. The instances which I have 

 chosen are no doubt among the most striking, but each of 

 them requires fuller and more exact treatment than I have 

 given it, and there are many more lodes to be worked 

 even in the same mine. Then there is the wide field of 

 buildings, monuments, and inscriptions to supply new tests 

 for these Pali histories, and besides these the Sinhalese 

 histories, which treat of the recent period and of the low- 

 country, where they come directly under the test of the 

 Portuguese and Dutch chronicles and records. 



Of the matters I have touched upon, the whole, I believe, can 

 be read in English ; but of the Rdjawaliya and its companions 

 a good English translation is still, I believe, wanting. To 

 translate the later portions of that work and compare them 

 minutely with Ribeyro and the other European writers 

 would be, if I am not mistaken, labour well spent. 



