ANTIQUITIES. The buried cities and ruins of massive monuments in Ceylon make its anti quities a subject of importance to the student of art, arelmology, and history. These vestiges of early civilization are directly connected with Buddhism as the national faith of the island. In all Buddhist countries the sacred buildings present, with certain modifications, the same gen eral character (see articles Buimuism ; BCIBI A, etc.), and in Ceylon we find the usual three classes represented by temples (pansalas), mon (riliaras), and relic shrines (dagabas). The latter. front du, d/i(ita, relic, and !Juba, garbha, receptacle, denotes a casket, and then a large structure erected to contain some sacred relic of Buddha. The form of these is bell-slmped. on a square base. They answer in general to the pagodas of Burma and the topes of Afghanistan. The most famous of the dagabas in Ceylon is the Dalada ..\laligava, the Temple of the Tooth. at Kandy, containing a tooth of Gantama Buddha brou.!dit from India to Ceylon about A.D. 300. The original relic was destroyed by the Portu guese, but its substitute,. a piece of discolored ivory resembling a crocodile's tooth, is jealously guarded in a sacred shrine and shown only to royal personages or on the rarest occasions. The labor which must have been bestowed upon some of these shrines and edifices in the early ages of the Singhalese monarchy is astonishing. Some of the ruined structures in the half-buried cities of the north of the island almost rival the pyra mids of Egypt or other monuments of antiquity in their desolate grandeur. The a•ehitectural remains of 2000 years ago. as seen at Anurad hapura, Polonnaruwa, Dambulla, Nalarewa. la hintale. and Sigiri are of the greatest interest alike to the traveler and to the antiquarian. The rock-hewn temple of Cal-vihaira at Polonnarnwa, the capital of aneient Ceylon, is much the same to-day as it was when described in the .I/uhli nonsa„ The massive pile of the Rankot Dagalia and the Jetavanarama Temple. in the sauce re gion,with the colossal statues of Buddha here and elsewhere. well repay a visit after Anuradha pura, with its famous Bo-tree alluded to above. Among the antiquities of Ceylon the ruined tanks must also be mentioned, as they are wonderful monuments: 30 enormous reservoirs and about 700 smaller tanks still exist, though for the most part in ruins. Something has been done toward restoring these magnificent works of ir rigation.
II smity. There are abundant allusions to Ceylon in ancient writers. and the island appears in early Sanskrit works under the name of Lulu; hut no direct ledge concerning its history was accessible in Europe until about the year 1626. The opening up of the records of Ceylon's early history was due to the labors of George Tumour (1794-1843), who devoted him self to a study of the Pali chronicles. and com posed an Epitome of the History of Ceylon from the year u.c. 543 to A.D. 1798. His records give the reigns of 105 kings who reigned (hiring, this period of •341 years. He based his work chiefly on the most famous of the Singhalese books. the .1lallucansa, a metrical chronicle, ill the Pali language. Which gives an account of the island during the above twenty-three centuries. The story begins with the invasion of Vijoya. or \Vijay° (n.c. 543). son of a petty Indian :-.OVe re igm in the country watered by the Ganges. lie subdued the Yakkhas, the aboriginal in habitants; married a of one of the na tive chiefs, xvlioin he subsequently repudiated for an Indian princess; and founded a dynasty that hold undivided sovereignty in Ceylon for nearly eight centuries. He bestowed on his kingdom his patrimonial name of Sihala. or Shillala— whence 'Sinhalese (Singhalese), Ceylon—and promoted the settlement of colonists from the mainland. In the reign of the great King Tissa, called Devanampiyatissa. or Devenipiatissa B.C. 307 ) MAIM ISM was established as the national religion, and his reign was further remarkable by the planting of the sacred Bo-tree (tic. 288) :
and DO• commenced the erection of those stupen dous buildings already noticed. The next impor tant epoch in Singhalese history is the usurpation of the Malabars (u.c. 237), foreign mercenaries from the Coromandel coast, to whom the native sovereigns had intrusted the defense of the island. Several _Malabar invasions are chron icled in the history of Ceylon, and these foreign ers long contended with the native princes for supreme authority. Passing on to A.D. 1071, a native dynasty was then reestablished in the person of Vijaya Balm. and his recovery of the throne delivered the country from the domina tion of the Malabars or Tamils for a time, and prepared the way for the restoration of the royal race nearly a century later in the person of the illustrious Parakrama Balm. Parakra ma's reign commenced in A.D. 1153, and it was one of the most renowned eras in the history of Ceylon. He devoted himself to religion and agri culture. and besides many notable religions edi lives; he caused no fewer than 1470 tanks to lie constructed, subsequently blown as the 'seas of l'arskr:uma.' Thirty years after the death of this monarch, the Malabars landed with a large army and speedily conquered the whole island. In 1•35 a native dynasty recovered a part of the kingdom. During the reign of Dharnm l'arakrama IX. the Portuguese first visited Ceylon (1505) ; but it in 151 7 that they first formed a permanent settlement at Colombo for trailing purposes. Their encroachments soon aroused the opposition of the patriotic Kandyans, and it is a remarkable fact that, although they were even ignorant of the use of gunpowder when the Portuguese came, in 1505, they ultimately Pxcelled their enemies as nuisketeers. and were finally able to bring 20M00 stand of arms to bear against them. 'Amity. commerce. and religion,' the Portuguese motto: but their rule in Ceylon is a sad story of rapacity, bigotry, and cruelty. They were at last driven from the island by the Dutch in 105S, after a contest of twenty years, when, as Sir .1. E. Tenncnt re marks, "the fanatical zeal of the R0111:111 Catholic sovereign for the propagation of the faith was replaced by the earnest toil of the Dutch traders to intrench their trading monopolies: and the almost chivalrous energy with which the soldiers of Portugal resisted the attacks I if the native princes was exchanged for the subdued humble ness with which the merchant:: of Holland en dured the insults and outrages perpetrated by the tyrants of Kandy upon their envoys and But the purely military tenure of the Dutch was destined to give place to the coloni zation of the British. It. was during the European war succeeding the French Revolution that the English gained possession of the island. On August 1. 1795, au expedition under Col. James Stuart landed at. Trincomalee, which was speedily captured, and finally the garrison of Colombo surrendered, on February 10, 1790. By this capitulation all the Dutch settlements and strongholds in Ceylon were ceded to the though the island was not formally annexed to the British crown till the Peace of Amiens, March 27, 1502. The native sovereigns. how ever, continued in the possession of their moun tain territory; but at length the Kandyan king. Vikrama Baja Sinha, after perpetrating the most frightful atrocities on his own people, seized and murdered certain native merchants, British subjeets, trading to Kandy. War followed; in January, 1S15, Kandy was taken, and the tyrant was sent a captive to the fortress of Vel lore. On March 2, 1815, a treaty was concluded with the native chiefs. by which the King was for mally deposed and his territories annexed to the British crown. Since then the island has made rapid strides in material prosperity; many im po•tant public works have been completed, and others are still in progress.