No. 55.— 1904.] ALAKESWARA : HIS LIFE AND TIMES. 293 » 
sovereign. That night the returned exile was murdered in 
his capital" and the Minister governed the country. He did 
not consider it expedient to assume the Crown at once, 
fearing that his complicity in the late revolution might be 
suspected, and his assumption of the royal title would be 
resented by the nation. However, his ambition would not 
rest satisfied with the power without the style and dignity of 
Sovereign, and he proceeded warily to secure the Crown 
which was already in his grasp. With this object, runs the 
old tradition,! he attempted to win over to his cause the 
aged Widagama Maha Sami, the Great Priest of Rayigama, 
but the old loyalist had other schemes. 
When Kotte was sacked and the King captured, Wijaya 
Bahu's Queen Sunetra Devi, with her young son, escaped in 
the confusion and fled to Widagama. His only possible rival 
to the throne, Alakeswara feared the young prince Sri Para- 
krama Epana, called by the Chinese Seay-pa-nae-na, and 
despatched men to kill him. Several attempts to destroy 
the son of Wijaya Bahu having failed, the prince was secretly 
concealed by Widagama Maha Sami in the monastery. 
Here he lived unknown to Alakeswara, and was brought up 
and educated by the priest, who concerted measures to place 
the boy on his father's throne. And legend tells how 
Alakeswara bade Widagama set the crown of Lanka on his 
head, how the priest put the usurper oflE by telling him that a 
great capital should be built to hold so great a King, and till 
then he should not be crowned. Hence during the three 
years of his dictatorship to fulfil the condition and get the 
Chief Priest to perform the rite, Alakeswara added to and 
improved his city of Kotte, converting it from a bare fortress 
into a magnificent capital with stone baths and cisterns, 
spacious streets, and fine edifices. At length the city which 
Widagama meant for another master was completed and a 
*De Couto. 
t Fit?^ my article on "The Ruins of Kotte," Ceylon Literary Register 
Supplement (Dec. 1900), p. 41 ; Mdjdvaliya, p. 68. The countryside tradition 
supplements the bare summary of events in the Rdjdvaliya. 
