NO. 5. — 1850.] THE ELU LANGUAGE. 



311 



(such) ill befallen thee in thy journey ? Happy friend ! who 

 possessest inviolate, and with increasing vigour, an attachment 

 which thou mayest form : what is bliss save that which is known 

 in thy presence ? 



Totagamuwa undertook this work with grateful affection 

 for the king and his country. He felt interested in the 

 welfare of the young family of Parakrama Bahu VI., and 

 indeed sympathised with the Princess Ulkuda, who 

 mournfully longed for a child. The argument of the poem 

 is well conceived. It is an epistle addressed to Vibushana, 

 the presiding deity of the Kelani temple, invoking the 

 blessing of a grandson to the king (or rather a son to the 

 princess), and as if intended to be conveyed by means of a 

 bird of the name of Selalihini from Kotte, the seat of the 

 then Government. No precise date is given in this work, 

 although we learn from other data that it was written a 

 year after the last. It contains one hundred stanzas. 



The poet next gave to the world his 



Paravi Sandese (e3<5©©@,3^@e£). 

 "An epistle per a pigeon." 

 A poem of great merit, and generally of a piece with the 

 last in style, although perhaps in many parts inferior to it 

 in imagery. It was an epistle addressed to Krishna, invok- 

 ing blessiugs upon the army — the king's brother of the 

 name of Parakrama, who had the government of Jaffna, 

 or Mayaduna — and upon Chandrawati, the granddaughter 

 of the King Parakrama Bahu VI. The poet's attachment 

 to the family of his sovereign seems to have been indeed 

 great. Even in this there are tender allusions to the royal 

 familv. That Chandrawati might soon enter the bonds of 

 matrimony, and that, allied to a noble prince, she might 

 soon be the mother of a virtuous son, are amongst the 

 orisons of the writer and the topics of his song. No date is 

 given to this work ; nor is it easy to ascertain it. But from 

 the slight difference of style to which allusion has been 



