No. 56.— 1905.] 
RAJA SINHA I. 
387 
on the Rdjdwaliya^ Mayadunne was forty -one years older 
than his warlike son, and died eleven years earlier ; so that at 
the time of his death he would have been ninety-one years 
old, quite a natural and likely age. We cannot be too much 
impressed with the remarkable agreement between this and 
the statement in the Bdjdwaliya that Mayadunne died after a 
reign of seventy years. For what is more natural or more 
in accord with Oriental custom, than that a royal prince of 
the great ability of Mayadunne should have been called, 
when about the age of twenty-one years, to rule one of the 
numerous principalities of his family ? ^ 
Perhaps the assignment of one hundred and twenty years 
for Raja Sinha's age is the result of a mistake. Baldaeus, in 
speaking of the death of this prince, says : " Just before his 
death he sent for the before-mentioned Tireanco^ or High 
Priest, desiring him to forgive the death of his brethren, 
offering him considerable presents at the same time ; he 
refused the last, but pardoned the crime, and so returned to 
Candy, where he died in the 120th year of his age."t Here, 
be it observed, the passage opens on the death-bed of Raja 
Sinha, and closes on a death-bed ; and if the incautious reader, 
by a slight confusion, took the curtain to have risen and fallen 
on the same scene, the mistake is only natural and to be 
expected. 
To sum up, then, the evidence of history leads us to the 
following conclusions : — 
Mayadunne was not murdered by his son, but died an 
honoured parent and a powerful prince, at or about the good 
old age of ninety-one years. 
Raja Sinha I., who succeeded to the power and fortunes of 
his illustrious father, and brilliantly maintained the prestige 
of his family and of his nation, followed his honoured parent 
to the grave when sixty-one years old. 
4. Mr. C. M. Fernando read the following Paper : — 
* I.e.^ Terunnanse, the term for a Buddhist priest, 
t Baldseus, Churchill's Collection," vol. III., p. 671 
F 
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