No. 55—1904.] ALAKESWARA : HIS LIFE AND TIMES. 291 
could bend to his will, and who would owe the throne 
itself to the Minister. Vira Bahu Epa marched down from 
Gampola, and in a battle at Rayigama severely defeated his 
elder brother Vira Alakeswara, who fled the country.* 
During this period {circa 1408) a Chinese Admiral,! who 
was cruising the Indian seas with a mandate from the Chinese 
Emperor to offer tribute or the sword to the Kings of the 
East, landed in Ceylon. Refusing to yield tribute or allow 
him to plant a pillar of victory on the coast in token of 
Chinese sovereignty, with all his old vigour and resource 
Alakeswara defeated the Chinese in an engagement and beat 
them back to their ships. 
Meanwhile Vira Alakeswara returned from India with 
succours from the King of Chola (Maha Desa),J defeated his 
brother, and mounted the throne at Kotte {circa 1401-03). He 
assumed the crown under the title of Vira Wijaya Bahu 
VI.,§ the crown which Alakeswara coveted but dared not 
assume, so much did popular prejudice incline to the old 
royal line. Subsequent events show that the ambitious 
Prime Minister was even then aiming at the throne, but the 
time was not yet ripe for the execution of his design. The 
new king, unlike his predecessor, was a warrior and a 
vigorous and capable ruler, and would be dictated to by no 
master. 
A few years later, when the Chinese Admiral Ching-Ho 
returned to avenge the insult to the Chinese flag, as sketched 
* Saddharmaratndkara (Museum MS.), C. 12, p. @^®,c). 
t Tennent, vol. I., pp. 416, 417, 622-624, 628, and the Chinese authorities 
quoted ; Beal's Buddhist Recordsof the Western World," vol. IL, 246-282. 
J I am inclined to think that the Dos Raja or Maha Dos Raja referred 
to in the Rdjdvaliya^ p. 66, is a mistake for a Maha Desa Raja, a Tamil King 
of the great country, probably Chola (cf. Brito's Yalpanam Malai^ p. xxv), 
who helped Wijaya Bahu to defeat his brother Vira Bahu of Gampola, 
whom perhaps he took captive. Valentyn, who has had access to a more 
reliable edition of the Rdjdvaliya than the one that has come down to us, 
describes him as a Tamil monarch. Some pages of the original Rdjdvaliya 
have been lost, and in an attempt to make a consistent narrative of a 
broken record a later scribe has rolled up two invasions into one, besides 
making other serious blunders Saddharmaratnakara, p. ®G^.c). 
Vira Bahu, Mahdwansa, 
