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



to have connections with almost all neighbouring tribes. 

 And about the year 1300 A.D., Bheemsi, their king, finding 

 no consort in India suited for his high descent, comes to 

 Ceylon and espouses Princess Padmani, or Padmavati, the 

 daughter of Vijaya Bahu (?), who takes with her to Rajaputana 

 a large retinue of Sinhalese ladies and gentlemen, who con- 

 tract marriages among the pure Rajputs. The grand story 

 of the heroism of this Sinhalese princess, and the bravery of 

 her uncle and nephew, Sinhalese princes — Gorah and Badul — 

 is recorded in the annals of Mewar, and will repay perusal 

 to all lovers of the beautiful, the good, and the brave. I 

 mention the fact only as a proof, that so late as the 

 fourteenth century the Sinhalese , had the reputation of 

 having preserved the purity of their Aryan descent. 



5. Mr. W. P. RANASINHA said : — The conclusion which 

 Mr. Nell wishes us to draw from his arguments is opposed 

 to the traditions, chronicles, and inscriptions of the Sinhalese. 

 Mr. Nell is struck with the so-called similarity of the 

 Malayalam with the Sinhalese characters, the relation of the 

 costume of the Kandyan women to that of the Tamil or 

 Indian women, the affinity of the Telugu, Canarese, and 

 Malayalam characters to the Sinhalese, the physical resem- 

 blances of the Sinhalese to the Dravidian races of South 

 India, and infers that the Sinhalese are of Dravidian origin. 



Having set up a theory founded on a superficial observa- 

 tion, he labours hard to give it a good foundation. Mr. Nell 

 thinks, that just about the time that Buddha died the whole 

 population of Magadha should have been Buddhists, and 

 concludes that Yijaya and his followers did not come to 

 Ceylon from Behar, because some two hundred and thirty 

 years after his arrival the resident Sinhalese had to be 

 converted to Buddhism. Speaking of the reign of Parakrama, 

 he says it is impossible to consider the sovereignty of a son 

 of a king of Pandu, who came from a part of India quite as 

 distant as the territory of the Cholians, without concluding 

 that there were Tamil settlements, however small, in the 

 Ruhuna territory. What is Mr. Nell's authority for saying 

 that Parakrama was the son of a Pandiyan king ? He 

 evidently is misled by the words in the Mahdwansa, where 

 Parakrama is said to be a son of Pandu. This Pandu was 

 not a king of Madura, but was the son of Yikrama Pandu, 

 who reigned in Ceylon in 1053 A.D. 



The writer is also mistaken in saying that the Natu 

 Kottaya Chetties and others of the tribe of Shanars worship 

 Ravana at Kataragama. The worship paid at Kataragama 

 is not to Ravana but to Kartikeya, the warrior-god of 

 the Aryas, the Kataragama Deviyo of the Sinhalese. At 



