ocks said to have been built by Rama as a passage for his army of monkeys leads to the mainland. It is therefore natural that the population should have relations with southern India. Sinhalese

e and the Sinhalese, who were often at war with the Tamils, were not disposed to imitate th

connecting them with Gotama who was himself a Hindu, were more likely than these distant islanders to preserve the spirit of his teaching. But there is another side to the question. The Hindus being addicted to theological and metaphysical studies produced original thinkers who, if not able to found new religions, at least modified what their predecessors had laid down. If certain old texts were held in too high esteem to be neglected, the ingenuity of the commentator rarely failed to reinterpret them as favourable to the views popular in his time. But the Sinhalese had not this passion for theology. So far as we can judge of them in earlier periods they were endow

nected with Pali (or rather with the spoken dialect from which ecclesiastical Pali was derived) and still more closely with the Maharashtri Prakrit of western India. It is not however a derivative of this Prakrit but parallel to it and in some words presents older forms.[11] It does not seem possible to ascribe the introduction of this language to the later mission of Mahinda, for, though Buddhist monks have in many countries influenced literature and the literary vocabulary, no instance is recorded of their c

how he subsequently had a Sakya princess brought over from India to be his wife and how her brothers established cities in Ceylon,[16] if not true in detail, are probably true in spirit in so far as they imply that the Sinhalese kept up intercourse with India and were familiar with the principal forms of Indian religion. Thus we are told[17] that King Pan?d?ukabhaya built religious edifices for Nigan?t?has (Jains), Brahmans, Paribbajakas (possibly Buddhists) and j?vikas. When Devanampiya Tissa ascended the throne (circ. 245 B.C.) he sent a complimentary mission bearing wonderful treasures to Asoka with

y Indian inscriptions and Chinese pilgrims. The names of missionaries mentioned in the D?pa and Mahavamsas recur on urns found at Sanchi and on its gateways are pictures in relief which appear to represent the transfer of a branch of the Bo-tree in solemn procession to some destination which, t

the fifth century A.D. and perhaps in the fourth century the old Sinhalese in which the prose parts of the Atthakatha were written was growing unintelligible, and that it was becoming more and more the fashion to use Pali as the language of ecclesiastical literature, for at least three writers set themselves to turn part of the traditions not into the vernacular but into Pali. The earliest and least artistic is the unknown author of the short chronicle called D?pavamsa, who wrote between 302 A.D. and 430 A.D.[22] His work is weak both as a specimen of Pali and as a narrative and he probably did little but patch together the Pali verses occurring from time to time in the Sinhalese prose o

galiputta whereas the inscriptions of Asoka imply that the king himself initiated the momentous project. But the difference is small. We cannot now tell to whom the great idea first occurred but it must have been carried out by the clergy with the assistance of Asoka, the apostle selected for Cey

esting the king's intellectual capacity by some curious dialectical puzzles, had no difficulty in converting him.[28] Next morning he proceeded to Anuradhapura and was received with all honour and enthu

d. The catalogue of them is given in the Mahavamsa[30] and the most important was the Mahavihara monastery, which became specially famous and influential in the history of Buddhism. It was situated in the Mahamegha garden close to the Bo-tre

gods, and the relics obtained, of which the principal was the Buddha's alms-bowl,[31] were deposited in Anuradhapura. The king then built the Thuparama dagoba over them and there

he mission was successful. A branch from the Bo-tree was detached, conveyed by Asoka to the coast with much ceremony and received in Ceylon by Tissa with equal respect. The princess accompanied it. The Bo-tree was planted in the Meghavana garden. It may still be seen and attracts pilgrims not only from Ceylon but from Burma and Siam. Unlike the buildings of Anuradhapura it has never been entirely neglected and it is clear that it has been venerated as the Bo-tree from an early period of Sinhalese history. Botanists con

dhists, although the chroniclers praise their justice and the respect which they showed to the Church. The most importa

orated and it consisted of nine storeys, of which the four uppermost were set apart for Arhats, and the lower assigned to the inferior grades of monks. Perhaps the nine storeys are an exaggeration: at any rate the building suffered from fire and underwent numerous reconstructions and modifications. King Mahasena (301 A.D.) destroyed it and then repenting of his errors rebuilt it, but the ruins now representing it at Anuradhapura, which consist of stone pillars only, date from the reign of Parakrama Bahu I (about A.D. 1150). The immense pile known as the Ruwanweli Dagoba, though often injured by invaders in search of treasure, still exists. The somewhat dilap

, but only by the monks of the Mahavihara, and the text which they wrote down was their special version and not universally accepted. It included the Parivara, which was apparently a recent manual composed in Ceylon. The Mahavam?sa says no more about this schism, but the Nikaya-Sangrahawa[43] says that the monks of the Abhayagiri monastery now embraced the doctrines of the Vajjiputta school (one of the seventeen branches of the Mahasanghikas) which was known in Ceylon as the Dhammaruci school from an eminent teacher of that name. Many pious kings followed who built or repaired sacred edifices and Buddhism evidently flourished,

arsay) that the monks of the Mahavihara were Hinayanists but that both vehicles were studied at the Abhayagiri. I-Ching on the contrary says expressly that all the Sinhalese belonged to the ryasthavira Nikaya. Fa-Hsien describes the Buddhism of Ceylon as he saw it about 412 A.D., but does not apply to it the terms Hina or Mahayana. He evidently regarded the Abhayagiri as the principal religious centre and says it had 5000 monks as against 3000 in the Mahavihara, but though he dwells on the gorgeous ceremonial, the veneration of the sacred tooth, the representations of

s rebuilt. The triumph however was not complete for Mahasena built a new monastery called Jetavana on ground belonging to the Mahavihara and asked the monks to abandon this portion of their territory. They refused and according to the Mahavamsa ultimately succeeded in proving their rights before a court of law. But the Jetavana remained as the headquarters of a sect known as Sagaliyas. They appear to have been moderately orthodox, but to have had their own text

n?n?a.[52] Judged by the standard of the Mahavihara, he was fairly satisfactory. He rebuilt the Lohapasada and caused a golden image of Mahinda to be made and carried in procession. This veneration of the founder of a local church reminds one of the respect shown to the images of half-deified abbots in Tibet, China an