But the question still remains, whether, at that very early period, the people of Ceylon had such a conception, however crude and erroneous, of the nature of electricity, and the relative powers of conducting and non-conducting bodies, as would induce them to place a mistaken reliance upon the contrivance described, as one calculated to ensure their personal safety; or whether, as religious devotees, they presented it as a costly offering to propitiate the mysterious power that controls the elements. The thing affixed was however so insignificant in value, compared with the stupendous edifice to be protected, that the latter supposition is scarcely tenable. The dagoba itself was an offering, on the construction of which the wealth of a kingdom had been lavished; besides which it enshrined the holiest of all conceivable objects—portions of the deified body of Gotama Buddha himself; and if these were not already secured, from the perils of lightning by their own sanctity, their safety could scarcely be enhanced by the addition of a diamond hoop.

The conjecture is, therefore, forced on us, that the Singhalese, in that remote era, had observed some physical facts, or learned their existence from others, which suggested the idea that it might be practicable, by some mechanical device, to ward off the danger of lightning. It is just possible that having ascertained that glass or precious stones acted as insulators of electricity, it may have occurred to them that one or both might be employed as preservative agents against lightning.

Modern science is enabled promptly to condemn this reasoning, and to pronounce that the expedient, so far from averting, would fearfully add to, the peril. But in the infancy of all inquiries the observation of effects generally precedes the comprehension of causes, and whilst it is obvious that nothing attained by the Singhalese in the third century anticipated the great discoveries relative to the electric nature of lightning, which were not announced till the seventeenth or eighteenth, we cannot but feel that the contrivance described in the Mahawanso was one likely to originate amongst an ill-informed people, who had witnessed certain phenomena the causes of which they were unable to trace, and from which they were incapable of deducing any accurate conclusions.[1]

[Footnote 1: I have been told that within a comparatively recent period it was customary in this country, from some motive not altogether apparent, to surmount the lightning conductors of the Admiralty and some other Government buildings with, a glass summit.]



CHAP. X.

SINGHALESE LITERATURE.

The literature of the ancient Singhalese derived its character from the hierarchic ascendency, which was fostered by their government, and exerted a preponderant influence over the temperament of the people. The Buddhist priesthood were the depositories of all learning and the dispensers of all knowledge:—by the obligation of their order the study of the classical Pali[1] was rendered compulsory upon them[2], and the books which have come down to us show that they were at the same time familiar with Sanskrit. They were employed by royal command in compiling the national annals[3], and kings at various periods not only encouraged their labours by endowments of lands[4], but conferred distinction on such pursuits by devoting their own attention to the cultivation of poetry[5], and the formation of libraries.[6]

[Footnote 1: Pali, which is the language of Buddist literature in Siam, Ava, as well as in Ceylon, is, according to Dr. MILL, "no other than the Magadha Pracrit, the classical form in ancient Behar of that very peculiar modification of Sanscrit speech which enters as largely into the drama of the Hindus, as did the Doric dialect into the Attic tragedy of Ancient Greece." In 1826 MM. BURNOUF and LASSEN published their learned "Essai sur le Pali," but the most ample light was thrown upon its structure and history by the subsequent investigations of TURNOUR, who, in the introduction to his version of the Mahawanso, has embodied a disquisition on the antiquity of Pali as compared with Sanskrit (p. xxii. &c.).]

[Footnote 2: Rajaratnacari, p, 106.]

[Footnote 3: Ibid., p. 43-74]

[Footnote 4: Ibid., p. 113]

[Footnote 5: Rajavali, p. 245; Mahawanso, ch. liv., lxxix.]

[Footnote 6: Rajavali, p. 244.]

The books of the Singhalese are formed to-day, as they have been for ages past, of olas or strips taken from the young leaves of the Talipat or the Palmyra palm, cut before they have acquired the dark shade and strong texture which belong to the full grown frond.[1] After undergoing a process (one stage of which consists in steeping them in hot water and sometimes in milk) to preserve their flexibility, they are submitted to pressure to render their surface uniformly smooth. They are then cut into stripes of two or three inches in breadth, and from one to three feet long. These are pierced with two holes, one near each end, through which a cord is passed, so as to secure them between two wooden covers, lacquered and ornamented with coloured devices. The leaves thus strung together and secured, form a book.

[Footnote 1: The leaves of the Palmyra, similarly prepared, are used for writings of an ordinary kind, but the most valuable books are written on the Talipat See ante, Vol. I. Pt I. ch. iii. p. 110.]

On these palm-leaves the custom is to write with an iron stile held nearly upright, and steadied by a nick cut to receive it in the thumb-nail of the left hand. The stile is sometimes richly ornamented, shaped like an arrow, and inlaid with gold, one blade of the feather serving as a knife to trim the leaf preparatory to writing. The case is sometimes made of carved ivory bound with hoops of filigreed silver.



The furrow made by the pressure of the steel is rendered visible by the application of charcoal ground with a fragrant oil[1], to the odour of which the natives ascribe the remarkable state of preservation in which their most sacred books are found, its aromatic properties securing the leaves from destruction by white ants and other insects.[2]

[Footnote 1: For this purpose a resin is used, called dumula by the natives, who dig it up from beneath the surface of lands from which the forest has disappeared.]

[Footnote 2: In Ceylon there are a few Buddhist books brought from Burmah, in which the text is inscribed on plates of silver. I have seen others on leaves of ivory, and some belonging to the Dalada Wihara, at Kandy, are engraved on gold. The earliest grants of lands, called sannas, were written on palm-leaves, but an inscription on a rock at Dambool, which is of the date 1200 A.D., records that King Prakrama Bahu I. made it a rule that "when permanent grants of land were to be made to those who performed meritorious services, such behests should not be evanescent like lines drawn on water by being inscribed on leaves to be destroyed by rats and white ants, but engraved on plates of copper, so as to endure to posterity."]

The wiharas and monasteries of the Buddhist priesthood are the only depositaries in Ceylon of the national literature, and in these are to be found quantities of ola books on an infinity of subjects, some of them, especially those relating to religion and ecclesiastical history, being of the remotest antiquity.

Works of the latter class are chiefly written in Pali. Treatises on astronomy, mathematics, and physics are almost exclusively in Sanskrit, whilst those on general literature, being comparatively recent, are composed in Elu, a dialect which differs from the colloquial Singhalese rather in style than in structure, having been liberally enriched by incorporation from Sanskrit and Pali.[1] But of the works which have come down to us, ancient as well as modern, so great is the preponderance of those in Pali and Sanskrit, that the Singhalese can scarcely be said to possess a literature in their national dialect; and in the books they do possess, so utter is the dearth of invention or originality, that almost all which are not either ballads or compilations, are translations from one or other of the two learned languages.

[Footnote 1: TURNOUR'S Introd. to the Mahawanso, p. xiii. A critical account of the Elu will be found in an able and learned essay on the language and literature of Ceylon by Mr. J. DE ALWIS, prefixed to his English. translation of the Sidath Sangara, a grammar of Singhalese, written in the fourteenth century. Colombo, 1852. Introd. p. xxvii. xxxvii.]

I. PALI.—Works in Pali are written, like those of Burmah and Siam, not in Nagari or any peculiar character, but in the vernacular alphabet. Of these, as might naturally be expected, the vast majority are on subjects connected with Buddhism, and next to them in point of number are grammars and grammatical commentaries.

The original of the great Pali grammar of Kachchayano is now lost, but its principles survive in numerous treatises, and text-books written at succeeding periods to replace it.[1] Such is the passion for versification, probably as an assistant to memory, that nearly every Singhalese work, ancient as well as modern, is composed in rhyme, and even the repulsive abstractions of Syntax have found an Alvarez and been enveloped in metrical disguise.

[Footnote 1: The Rev. R. SPENCE HARDY, to whom I am indebted for much valuable information on the subject of the literature current at the present day in Ceylon, published a list in the Journal of the Ceylon Branch of the Asiatic Society for 1848, in which he gave the titles of 467 works in Pali, Sanskrit, and Elu, collected by himself during his residence in Ceylon. Of these about 80 are in Sanskrit, 150 in Elu (or Singhalese), and the remainder in Pali, either with or without translations. Of the Pali book 26 are either grammars or treatises on grammar.

This catalogue of Mr. Hardy is, however, by no means to be regarded as perfect; not only because several are omitted, but because many are but excerpts from larger works. The titles are seldom descriptive of the contents, but in true Oriental taste are drawn from emblems and figures, such as "Light," "Gems," and "Flowers." The authors' names are rarely known, and the language or style seldom affords an indication of the age of the composition.]

Of the sacred writings in Pali, the most renowned are the Pitakattayan, literally "The Three Baskets," which embody the doctrines, discourses, and discipline of the Buddhists, and so voluminous is this collection that its contents extend to 592,000 stanzas; and the Atthakatha or commentaries, which are as old as the fifth century[1], contain 361,550 more. From their voluminousness, the Pittakas are seldom to be seen complete, but there are few of the superior temples in which one or more of the separate books may not be found.

[Footnote 1: They were translated into Pali from Singhalese by Buddhaghoso, A.D. 420.—Mahawanso, c. xxxvii, p. 252.]

The most popular portion of the Pittakas are the legendary tales, which profess to have been related by GOTAMO BUDDHA himself, in his Sutras or discourses, and were collected under the title of Pansiya-panas-jataka-pota, or the "Five hundred and fifty Births." The series is designed to commemorate events in his own career, during the states of existence through which he passed preparatory to his reception of the Buddhahood. In structure and contents it bears a striking resemblance to the Jewish Talmud, combining, with aphorisms and maxims, philological explanations of the divine text, stories illustrative of its doctrines, into which not only saints and heroes, but also animals and inanimate objects, are introduced, and not a few of the fables that pass as AEsop's are to be found in the Jatakas of Ceylon. There are translations into Singhalese of the greater part of its contents, and so attractive are its narratives that the natives will listen the livelong night to recitations from its pages.[1]

[Footnote 1: HARDY'S Buddhism, ch. v. p. 98.]

The other Pali works[1] embrace subjects in connection with cosmography and the Buddhist theories of the universe; the distinctions of caste, topographical narratives, a few disquisitions on medicine, and books which, like the Milindaprasna, or "Questions of Milinda,"[2] without being canonical give an orthodox summary of the national religion.

[Footnote 1: A lucid account of the principal Pali works in connection with religion will be found in the Appendix to HARDY'S Manual of Buddhism, p. 509, and in HARDY'S Eastern Manichian, pp. 27, 315.]

[Footnote 2: The title of this popular work has given rise to a very curious conjecture of Turnour's. It professes to contain the dialectic controversies of Nagannoa, through whose instrumentality Buddhism was introduced into Kashmir, with Milinda, who was the Raja of an adjoining country, called Sagala, near the junction of the rivers Ravi and Chenab. These dicussions must have taken place about the year B.C. 44. Now Sagala is identical with Sangala, the people of which, according to Arrian, made a bold resistance to the advance of Alexander the Great beyond the Hydraotes; and it has been supposed by Sir Alexander Burnes to have occupied the site of Lahore. Its sovereign, therefore, who embraced the doctrines of Buddha, was probably an Asiatic Greek, and TURNOUR suggests that the "Yons" or "Yonicas" who, according to the Milinda-prasna, formed his body-guard, were either Greeks or the descendants of Greeks from Ionia.—Journ. Asiat. Soc. Beng. v. 523; HARDY'S Manual of Buddhism, p. 512; REINAUD, Memoire sur l'Inde, p. 65.]

But the chefs d'oeuvre of Pali literature are their chronicles, the Dipawanso, Mahawanso, and others; of these the most important by far is the Mahawanso and its tikas or commentaries. It stands at the head of the historical literature of the East; unrivalled by anything extant in Hindustan[1], the wildness of whose chronology it controls; and unsurpassed, if it be equalled, by the native annals of China or Kashmir. So conscious were the Singhalese kings of the value of this national monument, that its continuation was an object of royal solicitude to successive dynasties[2] from the third to the thirteenth century; and even in the decay of the monarchy the compilation was performed in A.D. 1696, by an unknown hand, and, finally, brought down to A.D. 1758 by order of one of the last of the Kandyan kings.

[Footnote 1: LASSEN, Indis. Alt., vol. ii. p. 13-15.]

[Footnote 2: COSMAS INDICO-PLEUSTES, EDRISI, ABOU-ZEYD, and almost all the travellers and geographers of the middle ages, have related, as a trait of the native rulers of Ceylon, their employment of annalists to record the history of the kingdom.—EDRISI, Clim. i. sec. 8, p. 3.]

Of the chronicles thus carefully constructed, which exhibit in their marvellously preserved leaves the study and elaboration of upwards of twelve hundred years, PRINSEP, supreme as an authority, declared that they served to "clear away the chief of difficulties in Indian genealogies, which seem to have been intentionally falsified by the Brahmans and thrown back into remote antiquity, in order to confound their Buddhist rivals."[1]

[Footnote 1: PRINSEP, in a private letter to Turnour, in 1836, speaking of the singular value of the Mahawanso in collating the chronology of India, says, "had your Buddhist chronicles been accessible to Sir W. Jones and Wilford, they would have been greedily seized to correct anomalies at every step."]

But they display in their mysterious rhymes few facts or revelations to repay the ordinary reader for the labour of their perusal. Written exclusively by the Buddhist priesthood, they present the meagre characteristics of the soulless system which it is their purpose to extol. No occurrence finds a record in their pages which does not tend to exalt the genius of Buddhism or commemorate the acts of its patrons: the reigns of the monarchs who erected temples for its worship, or consecrated shrines for its relics, are traced with tiresome precision; even where their accession was achieved by usurpation and murder, their lives are extolled for piety, provided they were characterised by liberality to the church; whilst those alone are stigmatised as impious and consigned to long continued torments, whose reigns are undistinguished by acts conducive to the exaltation of the national worship.[1]

[Footnote 1: Asoca, "who put to death one hundred brothers," to secure the throne to himself, is described in the Mahawanso, ch. v. p. 21, as a prince "of piety and supernatural wisdom." Even Malabar infidels, who assassinated the Buddhist kings, are extolled as "righteous sovereigns" (Mahawanso, ch. xxi. p. 127); but a Buddhist king who caused a priest to be put to death who was believed to be guilty of a serious crime, is consigned by the Rajavali to a hell with a copper roof "so hot that the waters of the sea are dried as they roil above it."—Rajavali, p. 192.]

The invasions which disturbed the tranquillity of the throne, and the schisms which rent the unity of the church, are described with painful elaboration; but we search in vain for any instructive notices of the people or of their pursuits, for any details of their social condition or illustration of their intellectual progress. Whilst the commerce of all nations was sweeping along the shores of Ceylon, and the ships of China and Arabia were making its ports their emporiums; the national chronicles, whose compilation was an object of solicitude to successive dynasties, are silent regarding these adventurous expeditions; and utterly indifferent to all that did not affect the progress of Buddhism or minister to the interests of the priesthood.[1]

[Footnote 1: It has been surmised that in the intercourse which subsisted between India and the western world by way of Alexandria and Persia, and which did not decline till the sixth or seventh century, the influences of Nestorian Christianity may have left their impress on the genius and literature of Buddhism; and in the legends of its historians one is struck by the many passages that suggest a similarity to events recorded in the Jewish Scriptures. The coincidence may also be accounted for by the close proximity of a Jewish race in Afghanistan (the descendants of those carried away into captivity by Shalmanasar) which eventually extended itself along the west coast of India, and became the progenitors of the Hebrew colony that still inhabits the south of the Dekkan near Cochin, and are known as the "Black Jews of Malabar." The influence of this immigration is perceptible in the sacred books, both of the Brahmans and Buddhists; the laws of Menu present some striking resemblances to the law of Moses, and it was probably from a knowledge of the contents of the Hebrew rolls still possessed by this remnant of the dispersion that the Buddhists borrowed the numerous incidents which we find reproduced in the historical books of Ceylon. Thus the aborigines, when subdued by their Bengal invaders, were forced, like the Israelites, by their masters "to make bricks" for the construction of their stupendous edifices (Mahawanso, ch. xxviii.). On the occasion of building the great dagoba, the Ruanwelle, at Anarajapoora, B.C. 161, the materials were all prepared at a distance, and brought ready to be deposited in their places (Mahawanso, xxvii.); as on the occasion of building the first temple at Jerusalem, "the stone was made ready before it was brought, so that there was neither hammer, nor axe, nor any tool of iron heard whilst it was building." The parting of the Red Sea to permit the march of the fugitive Hebrews has its counterpart in the exploit of the King Gaja Bahu, A.D. 109, who, when marching his army to the coast of India, in order to bring back the Singhalese from captivity in Sollee, "smote the waters of the sea till they parted, so that he and his army marched through without wetting the soles of their feet."—Rajaratnacari, p. 59. King Maha Sen (A.D. 275), seeking a relic, had the mantle of Buddha lowered down from heaven: and Buddha had, previously, in designating Kasyapa as his successor, transmitted to him his robe as Elijah let fall his mantle upon Elisha. (Rajavali, p. 238; HARDY'S Oriental Monachism, p. 119.) There is a resemblance too between the apotheosis of Dutugaimunu and the translation of Elijah when "in a chariot and horses of fire he went up into heaven" (2 Kings, ii. 11);—according to the Mahawanso, ch. xxii p. 199, when the Singhalese king was dying, a chariot was seen descending from the sky and his disembodied spirit "manifested itself standing in the car in which he drove thrice round the great shrine, and then bowing down to the attendant priesthood, he departed for tusita" (the Buddhists' heaven). The ceremonial and dogmatic coincidences are equally remarkable;—constant allusion is made to the practice of the kings to "wash the feet of the priests and anoint them with oil."—Mahawanso; ch. xxv.—xxx. In conformity with the denunciation that the sins of the fathers were to be visited on the children, the Jews inquired whether a "man's parents did commit sin that he was born blind?" (John, ix. 3) and in like manner, in the Rajavali, "the perjury of Wijayo (who had repudiated his wife after swearing fidelity to her) was visited on the person of the King Panduwaasa," his nephew, who was afflicted with insanity in consequence (Rajavali, pp. 174-178). The account in the Rajaratnacari of King Batiya Tissa (B.C. 20), who was enabled to enter the Ruanwelle dagoba by the secret passage known only to the priests, and to discover their wealth and treasures deposited within, has a close resemblance to the descent of Daniel and King Astyages into the temple of Bel, by the privy entrance under the table, whereby the priests entered and consumed the offerings made to the idol (Bel and the Dragon, Apocryp. ch. i.-xiii.; Rajaratnacari, p. 45). The inextinguishable fire which was for ever burning on the altar of God (Leviticus, ch. vi. 13) resembles the lamps which burned for 5000 years continually in honour of Buddha (Mahawanso, ch. lxxxi.; Rajaratnacari, p. 49); and these again had their imitators in the lamp of Minerva, which was never permitted to go out in the temple at Athens, and in the [Greek: luchnon asbeston], which was for ever burning in the temple of Ammon. The miracle of feeding the multitude by our Saviour upon a few loaves and fishes, is repeated in the Mahawanso, where a divinely endowed princess fed Pandukabhaya, B.C. 437, and five hundred of his followers with the repast which she was taking to her father and his reapers, the refreshment being "scarcely diminished in quantity as if one person only had eaten therefrom."—Mahawanso, ch. x. p. 62. The preparation of the high road for the procession of the sacred bo-tree after its landing (Mahawanso, ch. xix. p. 116), and the order to clear a road through the wilderness for the march of the king at the inauguration of Buddhism, recall the words of the prophet, "Prepare ye the way of the Lord, make straight a highway in the desert." (Isaiah, xl. 3.) And we are reminded of the prophecy of Isaiah as to the kingdom of peace, in which "the leopard shall lie down with the kid and the calf with the lion, and a young child shall lead them," by the Singhalese historians, in describing the religious repose of the kingdom of Asoca under the influence of the religion of Buddha, where "the elk and the wild hog were the guardians of the gardens and fields, and the tiger led forth the cattle to graze and reconducted them in safety to their pens."—Mahawanso, ch. v. p. 22. The narrative of the "judgment of Solomon," in the matter of the contested child (1 Kings, ch. iii.), has its parallel in a story in every respect similar in the Pansyiapanas-jataka.—ROBERT'S Orient. Illustr. p. 101.]

II. SANSKRIT.—In Sanskrit or translations from it, the Singhalese have preserved their principal treatises on physical science, cosmography, materia medica, and surgery. From it, too, they have borrowed the limited knowledge of astronomy, possessed by the individuals who combined with astrology and the casting of nativities, the practice of palmistry and the interpretation of dreams. In Sanskrit, they have treatises on music and painting, on versification and philology; and their translations include a Singhalese version of those portions of the Ramayana, which commemorate the conquest of Lanka.

III. ELU AND SINGHALESE.—There is no more striking evidence of the intellectual inferiority of the modern, as compared with the ancient inhabitants of Ceylon, than is afforded by the popular literature of the latter, and the contrast it presents to the works of former ages. Descending from the gravity of religious disquisition and the dignity of history and science, the authors of later times have been content to limit their efforts to works of fiction and amusement, and to ballads and doggerel descriptions of places or passing events.

But, to the credit of the Singhalese, it must be said, that in their compositions, however satirical or familiar they may be, their verses are entirely free from the licentiousness which disfigures similar productions in India; and that if deficient in imagination and grace, they are equally exempt from grossness and indelicacy.

The Singhalese language is so flexible that it admits of every description of rhythm; of this the versifiers have availed themselves to exhibit every variety of stanza and measure, and every native, male or female, can recite numbers of their favourite ballads. Their graver productions consist of poems in honour, not of Buddha alone, but of deities taken from the Hindu Pantheon,—Patine, Siva, and Ganesa, panegyrics upon almsgiving, and couplets embodying aphorisms and morals.

A considerable number of the Sutras or Discourses of Buddha have been translated into the vernacular from Pali, but the most popular of all are the jatakas, the Singhalese versions of which are so extended, that one copy alone fills 2000 olas or palm leaves, each twenty-nine inches in length and containing nine lines in a page.

The other works in Singhalese are on subjects connected with history, such as the Rajavali and Rajaratnacai, on grammar and lexicography, on medicine, topography, and other analogous subjects. But in all their productions, though invested with the trappings of verse, there alike is an avoidance of what is practical and true, and an absence of all that is inventive and poetic. They contain nothing that appeals to the heart or the affections, and their efforts of imagination aspire not to please or to elevate, but to astonish and bewilder by exaggeration and fable. Their poverty of resources leads to endless repetitious of the same epithets and incidents; books are multiplied at the present day chiefly by extracts from works of established popularity, and the number of qualified writers is becoming annually less from the altered circumstances of the island and the decline of those institutions and prospects which formerly stimulated the ambition of the Buddhist priesthood, and inspired a love of study and learning.



CHAP. XI.

BUDDHISM AND DEMON-WORSHIP.[1]

It is difficult to attempt any condensed, and at the same time perspicuous, sketch of the national religion of Ceylon—a difficulty which arises not merely from the voluminous obscurity of its sacred history and records; but still more from confusion in the variety of forms under which Buddhism exhibits itself in various localities, and the divergences of opinion which prevail as to its tenets and belief. The antiquity of its worship is so extreme, that doubts still hang over its origin and its chronological relations to the religion of Brahma. Whether it took its rise in Hindustan, or in countries farther to the West, and whether Buddhism was the original doctrine of which Brahmanism became a corruption, or Brahmanism the original and Buddhism an effort to restore it to its pristine purity[2],—all these are questions which have yet to be adjusted by the results of Oriental research.[3] It is, however, established by a concurrence of historical proofs, that many centuries before the era of Christianity the doctrines of Buddha were enthusiastically cultivated in Baha, the Magadha, or country of the Magas, whose modern name is identified with the Wiharas or monasteries of Buddhism. Thence its teachers diffused themselves extensively throughout India and the countries to the eastward;—upwards of two thousand years ago it became the national religion of Ceylon and the Indian Archipelago; and its tenets have been adopted throughout the vast regions which extend from Siberia to Siam, and from the Bay of Bengal to the western shores of the Pacific.[4]

[Footnote 1: The details of the following chapter have been principally taken from SIR J. EMERSON TENNENT'S Christianity in Ceylon, ch. v.]

[Footnote 2: Those early writers on the religions of India who drew their information exclusively from Brahmanical sources, incline to favour the pretensions of that system as the most ancient of the two. Klaproth, a profound authority, was of this opinion; but in later times the translations of the Pali records and other sacred volumes of Buddhism in Western India, Ceylon, and Nepal, have inclined the preponderance of opinion, if not in favour of the superior antiquity of Buddhism, at least in support of its contemporaneous development. A summary of the arguments in favour of the superior antiquity of Buddhism will be found in the "Notes," &c., by Colonel SYKES, in the 12th volume of the Asiatic Journal—and in the Essai sur l'Origine des Principaux Peuples Anciens, par F.L.M. MAUPIED, chap. viii. The arguments on the side of those who look on Brahmanism as the original, are given by MOUNTSTUART ELPHINSTONE in his History of India, vol. i. b. ii. c. 4. An able disquisition will be found in MAX MUELLER's History of Sanskrit Literature, pp. 33, 260, &c. Mr. GOGERLY, the most accomplished student of Buddhism in Ceylon, says its sacred books expressly demonstrate that its doctrines had been preached by the twenty-four Buddhas who had lived prior to Gotama, in periods incredibly remote; but that they had entirely disappeared at the time of Gotama's birth, so that he re-discovered the whole, and revived an extinguished or nearly extinct school of philosophy.—Notes on Buddhism by the Rev. Mr. GOGERLY, Appendix to LEE'S Translation of Ribeyro, p. 265.]

[Footnote 3: The celebrated temple of Somnauth was originally a Buddhist foundation, and in the worship of Jaggernath, to whose orgies all ranks are admitted without distinction of caste, there may still be traced an influence of Buddhism, if not a direct Buddhistical origin. Colonel Sykes is of opinion that the sacred tooth of Buddha was at one time deposited and worshipped in the great Temple of Calinga, now dedicated to Jaggernath, by the Princes of Orissa, who in the fourth century professed the Buddhist religion. (Colonel SYKES, Notes, &c., Asiatic Journal, vol. xii. pp. 275; 317, 420.)]

[Footnote 4: FA HIAN declares that in the whole of India, including Affghanistan and Bokhara, he found in the fourth century a Buddhist people and dynasty, with traditions of its endurance for the preceding thousand years. "As to Hindostan itself, he says, from the time of leaving the deserts (of Jaysulmeer and Bikaneer) and the river (Jumna) to the west, all the kings of the different kingdoms in India are firmly attached to the law of Buddha, and when they do honour to the ecclesiastics they take off their diadems."—See also MAUPIED, Essai sur l'Origine des Principaux Peuples Anciens, chap. ix. p. 209.]

Looking to its influence at the present day over at least three hundred and fifty millions of human beings—exceeding one-third of the human race—it is no exaggeration to say that the religion of Buddha is the most widely diffused that now exists, or that has ever existed since the creation of mankind.[1]

[Footnote 1: See ante, p. 326. So ample are the materials offered by Buddhism for antiquarian research, that its doctrines have been sought to be identified at once with the Asiatic philosophy and with the myths of the Scandinavians. Buddha has been at one time conjectured to be the Woden of the Scythians; at another the prophet Daniel, whom Nebuchadnezzar had created master of the astrologers, or chief priest of the Magi, as the title is rendered in the Septuagint—[Greek: Archonta Magoi]. An antiquarian of Wales, in devising a pedigree for the Oymri, has imported ancestors for the ancient Britons from Ceylon; and a writer in the Asiatic Researches, in 1807, as a preamble to the proof that the binomial theorem was familiar to the Hindus, has traced Western civilisation to an irruption of philosophers from India, identified the Druids with the Brahmans, and declared Stonehenge to be "one of the temples of Boodh." (Asiat. Res., vol. ii. p. 448.) A still more recent investigator, M. MAUPIED, has collected, in his Essai sur l'Origine des Peoples Anciens, what he considers to be the evidence that Buddhism may be indebted for its appearance in India to the captivity of the Jews by Salmanasar, 729 B.C.; to their dispersion by Assar-Addon at a still more recent period; to their captivity in Babylon, 606 B.C.: their diffusion over Media and the East, Persia, Bactria, Thibet, and China, and the communication of their sacred book to the nations amongst whom they thus became sojourners. He ventures even to suggest a possible identity between the names Jehovah and Buddha: "Les voyelles du mot Buddha sont les memes que celles du mot Jehovah, qu'on prononce aussi Jouva; mais d'ailleurs le nom de Boudda a bien pu etre tire du mot Jeoudda Juda, le dieu de Joudda Boudda."—Chap. ix. p. 235. To account for the purer morals of Buddhism, MAUPIED has recourse to the conjecture that they may have been influenced by the preaching of St. Thomas at Ceylon, and Bartholomew on the continent of India. "Or il nous semble logique de conclure de teus ces faits que le Bouddhisme, dans ses doctrines essentielles, est d'origine Juire et Chretienne; consequence inattendue pour la plus de nos lecteurs sans doute."—MAUPIED, ch. ix. p. 257; ch. x. p. 263.]

From the earliest period of Indian tradition, the struggle between the religion of Buddha and that of Brahma was carried on with a fanaticism and perseverance which resulted in the ascendancy of the Brahmans, perhaps about the commencement of the Christian era, and the eventual expulsion some centuries later of the worship of their rivals from Hindustan; but at what precise time the latter catastrophe was consummated has not been recorded in the annals of either sect.[1]

[Footnote 1: The final overthrow of Buddhism in Bahar and its expulsion from Hindustan took place probably between the seventh and twelfth centuries of the Christian era. Colonel SYKES, however, extends the period to the thirteenth or fourteenth (Asiatic Journal, vol. iv. p. 334).]

That Buddhism thus dispersed over eastern and central Asia became an active agent in the promotion of whatever civilisation afterwards enlightened the races by whom its doctrines were embraced, seems to rest upon evidence which admits of no reasonable doubt. The introduction of Buddhism into China is ascertained to have been contemporary with, the early development of the arts amongst this remarkable people, at a period coeval, if not anterior, to the era of Christianity.[1] Buddhism exerted a salutary influence over the tribes of Thibet; through them it became instrumental in humanising the Moguls; and it more or less led to the cessation of the devastating incursions by which the hordes of the East were precipitated over the Western Empire in the early ages of Christianity.

[Footnote 1: MAX MUELLER, Hist. Sanskrit Literature, p. 264.]

The Singhalese, and the nations of further Asia, are indebted to Buddhism for an alphabet and a literature[1]; and whatever of authentic history we possess in relation to these countries we owe to the influence of their generic religion. Nor are its effects limited to these objects: much of what is vigorous in the character of its northern converts may be traced to the operation of its principles, in the development of their peculiar idiosyncrasy, which, unlike that of the unwarlike Singhalese, rejected sloth and effeminacy to aim at conquest and power. Looking to the self-reliance which Buddhism inculcates, the exaltation of intellect which it proclaims, and the perfection of virtue and wisdom to which it points as within the reach of every created being, it may readily be imagined, that it must have wielded a spell of unusual potency, and one well calculated to awaken boldness and energy in those already animated by schemes of ambition. In Ceylon, on the contrary, owing more or less to insulation and seclusion, Buddhism has survived for upwards of 2000 years as unchanged in all its leading characteristics as the genius of the people has remained torpid and inanimate under its influence. In this respect the Singhalese are the living mummies of past ages; and realise in their immovable characteristics the Eastern fable of the city whose inhabitants were perpetuated in marble. If change has in any degree supervened, it has been from the corruption of the practice, not from any abandonment of the principles, of Buddhism; and in arts, literature, and civilisation, the records of their own history, and the ruins of their monuments, attest their deterioration in common with that of every other nation which has not at some time been brought under the ennobling influences of Christianity.

[Footnote 1: See BURNOUF et LASSEN, Essai sur le Pali, ou Langue Sacree de la Presqu'ile au-dela du Gange, ch. i., &c.]

In alluding to the doctrines of Buddhism, as it exists at the present day, my observations are to be understood as applying to the aspect under which it presents itself in Ceylon, irrespective of the numerous forms in which it has been cultivated elsewhere. Even before the decease of the last Buddha, schisms had arisen amongst his followers in India. Eighteen heresies are deplored in the Mahawanso within two centuries from his death; and four distinct sects, each rejoicing in the name of Buddhists, are still to be traced amongst the remnants of his worshippers in Hindustan.[1] In its migrations to other countries since its dispersion by the Brahmans, Buddhism has assumed and exhibited itself in a variety of shapes. At the present day its doctrines, as cherished among the Jainas of Guzerat and Rajpootana[2], differ widely from its mysteries, as administered by the Lama of Thibet; and both are equally distinct from the metaphysical abstractions propounded by the monks of Nepal. Its observances in Japan have undergone a still more striking alteration from their vicinity to the Syntoos; and in China they have been similarly modified in their contact with the rationalism of Lao-tsen and the social demonology of the Confucians.[3] But in each and all the distinction is in degree rather than essence; and the general concurrence is unbroken in all the grand essentials of the system.

[Footnote 1: Colebrooke's Essays on the Philosophy of the Hindoos, sect. v. part 5, p. 401.]

[Footnote 2: An account of the religion of the Jains or Jainas, will be found in MOUNTSTUART ELPHINSTONE'S History of India, vol. i. b. ii. ch. 4. They arose in the sixth or seventh century, were at their height in the eleventh, and declined in the twelfth. See also MAX MUELLER, Hist. Sanskrit Literature, p. 261, &c.]

[Footnote 3: Details of Buddhism in China and Chin-India will be found in the erudite commentaries of KLAPROTH, REMUSAT, and LANDRESSE.]

Whilst Brahmanism, without denying the existence, practically ignores the influence and power of a creating and controlling intelligence, Buddhism, exulting in the idea of the infinite perfectibility of man, and the achievement of the highest attainable happiness by the unfaltering practice of every conceivable virtue, exalts the individuals thus pre-eminently wise into absolute supremacy over all existing beings, and attempts the daring experiment of an atheistic morality.[1] Even Buddha himself is not worshipped as a deity, or as a still existent and active agent of benevolence and power. He is merely reverenced as a glorified remembrance, the effulgence of whose purity serves as a guide and incentive to the future struggles and aspirations of mankind. The sole superiority which his doctrines admit is that of goodness and wisdom; and Buddha having attained to this perfection by the immaculate purity of his actions, the absolute subjugation of passion, and the unerring accuracy of his unlimited knowledge, became entitled to the homage of all, and was required to render it to none.

[Footnote 1: M. REMUSAT announces, as the result of his researches, that neither the Chinese; the Tartars, nor Monguls have any word in their dialects expressive of our idea of a God.—Foĕ Kouĕ Ki, p. 138; and M. BARTHELEMY SAINT-HILLAIRE adds, that "il n'y a pas trace de l'idee de Dieu dans le Bouddhisme entier, ni au debut ni au terme."—Le Bouddha, &c., Introd. p. iv. Colonel SYKES, in the xiith vol. of the Asiatic Journal, pp. 263 and 376, denies that Buddhism is atheistic; and adduces, in support of his views, allusions made by FA HIAN. But the passages to which he refers present no direct contradiction to those metaphysical subtleties by which the Buddhistical writers have carefully avoided whilst they closely approach the admission of belief in a deity. I am not prepared to deny that the faith in a supreme being may not have characterised Buddhism in its origin, as the belief in a Great First Cause in the person of Brahma is still acknowledged by the Hindus, although honoured by no share of their adoration. But it admits of little doubt that neither in the discourses of its priesthood at the present day nor in the practice of its followers in Ceylon is the name or the existence of an omnipotent First Cause recognised in any portion of their worship. MAUPIED has correctly described Buddhism both in Ceylon and China as a system of refined atheism (Essai sur l'Origine des Peuples Anciens, ch. x. p. 277), and MOUNTSTUART ELPHINSTONE gives the weight of his high authority in the statement that "The most ancient of Baudha sects entirely denies the being of a God; and some of those which admit the existence of God still refuse to acknowledge him as the creator and ruler of the world.... The theistical sect seems to prevail in Nepaul, and the atheistical to subsist in perfection in Ceylon."—History of India, vol. i. pt. ii. ch. 4. An able writer in the fourth volume of the Calcutta Review has also controverted the assertion of its atheistic complexion; but whatever truth may be developed in his views, their application is confined to Buddhism in Hindustan and Nepal, and is utterly at variance with the practice and received dogmas in Ceylon.]

Externally coinciding with Hinduism, so far as the avatar of Buddha may be regarded as a pendant for the incarnation of Brahma, the worship of the former is essentially distinguished from the religion of the latter in one important particular. It does not regard Buddha as an actual emanation or manifestation of the divinity, but as a guide and example to teach an enthusiastic self-reliance by means of which mankind, of themselves and by their own unassisted exertions, are to attain to perfect virtue here and to supreme happiness hereafter. Both systems inculcate the mysterious doctrine of the metempsychosis; but whilst the result of successive embodiments is to bring the soul of the Hindu nearer and nearer to the final beatitude of absorption into the essence of Brahma, the end and aim of the Buddhistical transmigration is to lead the purified spirit to Nirwana[1], a condition between which and utter annihilation there exists but the dim distinction of a name. Nirwana is the exhaustion but not the destruction of existence, the close but not the extinction of being.

[Footnote 1: "Nirwana" is Sanskrit, ni (r euphon. causa) wana desire. The Singhalese name "Nirwana" is also derived from newanawa, to extinguish. See J. BARTHELEMY SAINT-HILAIRE, Le Bouddha, 133, 177, &c.]

In deliberate consistency with this principle of human elevation, the doctrines of Buddha recognise the full eligibility of every individual born into the world for the attainment of the highest degrees of intellectual perfection and ultimate bliss; and herein consists its most striking departure from the Brahmanical system in denying the superiority of the "twice born" over the rest of mankind; in repudiating a sacerdotal supremacy of race, and in claiming for the pure and the wise that supremacy and exaltation which the self-glorified Brahmans would monopolise for themselves.

Hence the supremacy of "caste" is utterly disclaimed in the sacred books which contain the tenets of Buddha; and although in process of time his followers have departed from that portion of his precepts, still distinction of birth is nowhere authoritatively recognised as a qualification for the priesthood. Buddha being in fact a deification of human intellect, the philanthropy of the system extends its participation and advantages to the whole family of mankind, the humblest member of which is sustained by the assurance that by virtue and endurance he may attain an equality though not an identification with the supreme intelligence. Wisdom thus exalted as the sole object of pursuit and veneration, the Buddhists, with characteristic liberality, admit that the teaching of virtue is not necessarily confined to their own professors; especially when the ceremonial of others does not involve the taking of life. Hence in a great degree arises the indifference of the Singhalese as to the comparative claims of Christianity and Buddhism, and hence the facility with which, both under the Portuguese, the Dutch, and the British Government, they have combined the secret worship of the one with the ostensible profession of the other. They in fact admit Christ to have been a teacher, second only to Buddha, but inferior, inasmuch as the latter, who was perfect in wisdom, has attained to the bliss of Nirwana.[1]

[Footnote 1: Sir JOHN DAVIS in his account of the Chinese, states that the Buddhists there worship the "Queen of Heaven," a personage evidently borrowed from the Roman Catholics, and that the name of "Jesus" appears in the list of their divinities. (Chap. xiv.)

A curious illustration of the prevalence of this disposition to conform to two religions was related to me in Ceylon. A Singhalese chief came a short time since to the principal of a government seminary at Colombo, desirous to place his son as a pupil of the institution, and agreed, without an instant's hesitation, that the boy should conform to the discipline of the school, which requires the reading of the Scriptures and attendance at the hours of worship and prayer; accounting for his ready acquiescence by an assurance that he entertained an equal respect for the doctrines of Buddhism and Christianity. "But how can you," said the principal, "with your superior education and intelligence, reconcile yourself thus to halt between two opinions, and submit to the inconsistency of professing an equal belief in two conflicting religions?" "Do you see," replied the subtle chief, laying his hand on the arm of the other, and directing his attention to a canoe, with a large spar as an outrigger lashed alongside, in which a fisherman was just pushing off upon the lake, "do you see the style of these boats, in which our fishermen always put to sea, and that that spar is almost equivalent to a second canoe, which keeps the first from upsetting? It is precisely so with myself: I add on your religion to steady my own, because I consider Christianity a very safe outrigger to Buddhism."]

As regards the structure of the universe, the theories of the Buddhists, though in a great degree borrowed from the Brahmans, occupy a much less prominent position in their mythology, and are less intimately identified with their system of religion. Their attention has been directed less to physical than to metaphysical disquisitions, and their views of cosmogony have as little of truth as of imagination in their details. The basis of the system is a declaration of the eternity of matter, and its submission at remote intervals to decay and re-formation; but this and the organisation of animal life are but the results of spontaneity and procession, not the products of will and design on the part of an all powerful Creator.

Buddhism adopts something approaching to the mundane theory of the Brahmans, in the multiplicity and superposition of worlds and the division of the earth into concentric continents, each separated by oceans of various fabulous liquids. Its notions of geography are at once fanciful and crude; and again borrowing from the Shastras its chronology, extends over boundless portions of time, but invests with the authority of history only those occurrences which have taken place since the birth of Gotama Buddha.

The Buddhists believe in the existence of lokas, or heavens, each differing in glory, and serving as the temporary residences of demigods and divinities, as well as of men whose etherialisation is but inchoate, and who have yet to visit the earth in farther births and acquire in future transmigrations their complete attainment of Nirwana. They believe likewise in the existence of hells which are the abodes of demons or tormentors, and in which the wicked undergo a purgatorial imprisonment preparatory to an extended probation upon earth. Here their torments are in proportion to their crimes, and although not eternal, their duration extends almost to the infinitude of eternity; those who have been guilty of the deadly sins of parricide, sacrilege, and defiance of the faith being doomed to the endurance of excruciating deaths, followed by instant revival and a repetition of their tortures without mitigation and apparently without end.[1]

[Footnote 1: DAVY'S Account of the Interior of Ceylon, p. 204.]

It is one of the extraordinary anomalies of the system, that combined with these principles of self-reliance and perfectibility, Buddhism has incorporated to a certain extent the doctrine of fate or "necessity," under which it demonstrates that adverse events are the general results of akusala or moral demerit in some previous stage of existence. This belief, which lies at the very foundation of their religion, the Buddhists have so adapted to the rest of the structure as to avoid the inconsistency of making this directing power inherent in any Supreme Being, by assigning it as one of the attributes of matter and a law of its perpetual mutations.

Like all the leading doctrines of Buddhism, however, its theories on this subject are propounded with the usual admixture of modification and casuistry; only a portion of men's conduct is presumed to be exclusively controllable by fate—neither moral delinquency nor virtuous actions are declared to be altogether the products of an inevitable necessity; and whilst both the sufferings and the enjoyments of mortals are represented as the general consequences of merit in a previous stage of existence, even this fundamental principle is not without its exception, inasmuch as the vicissitudes are admitted to be partially the results of man's actions in this life, or of the influence of others from which his own deserts are insufficient to protect him. The main article, however, which admits neither of modification nor evasion, is that neither in heaven nor on earth can man escape from the consequences of his acts; that morals are in their essence productive causes, without the aid or intervention of any higher authority; and hence forgiveness or atonement are ideas utterly unknown in the despotic dogmas of Buddha.

Allusion has already been made to the subtleties entertained by the priesthood, in connexion with the doctrine of the metempsychosis, as developed in their sacred books; but the exposition would be tedious to show the distinctions between their theories, and the opinions of transmigration entertained by the mass of the Singhalese Buddhists. The rewards of virtue and the punishment of vice are supposed to be equally attainable in this world; and according to the amount of either, which characterizes the conduct of an individual in one stage of being, will be the elevation or degradation into which he will be hereafter born.

Thus punishment and reward become equally fixed and inevitable: but retribution may be deferred by the intermediate exhibition of virtue, and an offering or prostration to Buddha, or an aspiration in favour of faith in his name, will suffice to ward off punishment for a time, and even produce happiness in an intermediate birth; hence the most flagitious offender, by an act of reverence in dying, may postpone indefinitely the evil consequence of his crimes, and hence the indifference and apparent apathy which is a remarkable characteristic of the Singhalese who suffer death for their offences[1].

[Footnote 1:

Et vos barbaricos ritus, moremque sinistrum Sacrorum Druidae positis repetistis ab armis. Solis nosse deos, et coeli numina vobis Aut solis nesclre datum: nemora alta remoti Incolitis lucis: vobis auctoribus umbrae Non tacitas Erebi sedes Ditisque profundi Pallida regna petunt: regit idem spiritus arius Orbe alio: longae (si canitis cognita) vitae Mors media, st. Certe populi quos despicit Arcios Felices errore suo, quos ille timorum Maximus haud urget leti metus, etc.

LUCAN, l. i. 450 ct seq.]

To mankind in general Buddha came only as an adviser and a friend; but, as regards his own priesthood, he assumes all the authority of a lawgiver and chief. Spurning the desires and vanities of the world, he has taught them to aspire to no other reward for their labours than the veneration of the human race, as teachers of knowledge and examples of benevolence. Taking the abstract idea of perfect intelligence and immaculate virtue for a divinity, Buddhism accords honour to all in proportion to their approaches towards absolute wisdom, and as the realisation of this perfection is regarded as almost hopeless in a life devoted to secular cares, the priests of Buddha, on assuming their robe and tonsure, forswear all earthly occupations; subsist on alms, not in money, but in food; devote themselves to meditation and self-denial; and, being thus proclaimed and recognised as the most successful aspirants to Nirwana, they claim the homage of ordinary mortals, acknowledge no superior upon earth, and withhold even the tribute of a salutation from all except the members of their own religious order.

To mankind in general the injunctions of Buddha prescribe a code of morality second only to that of Christianity, and superior to every heathen system that the world has seen.[1] It forbids the taking of life from even the humblest created animal, and prohibits intemperance and incontinence, dishonesty and falsehood—vices which are referable to those formidable assailants, raga or concupiscence, doso or malignity, and moha, ignorance or folly.[2] These, again, involve all their minor modifications—hypocrisy and anger, unkindness and pride, ungenerous suspicion, covetousness, evil wishes to others, the betrayal of secrets, and the propagation of slander. Whilst all such offences are forbidden, every excellence is simultaneously enjoined—the forgiveness of injuries, the practice of charity, a reverence for virtue, and the cherishing of the learned; submission to discipline, veneration for parents, the care for one's family, a sinless vocation, contentment and gratitude, subjection to reproof, moderation in prosperity, submission under affliction, and cheerfulness at all times. "Those," said Buddha, "who practise all these virtues, and are not overcome by evil, will enjoy the perfection of happiness, and attain to supreme renown."[3]

[Footnote 1: "Je n'hesite pas a ajouter que, sauf le Christ tout seul, il n'est point, parmi les fondateurs de religion de figure, plus pure ni plus touchante que celle de Bouddha. Sa vie n'a point de tache."—Le Bouddha, par J. BARTHELEMY SAINT-HILAIRE, Introd. p. v.]

[Footnote 2: The Rev. Mr. GOGERLY's Notes on Buddhism. LEE's Ribeyro, p. 267.]

[Footnote 3: Discourse of Buddha entitled Mangala.]

Buddhism, it may be perceived from this sketch, is, properly speaking, less a form of religion than a school of philosophy; and its worship, according to the institutes of its founders, consists of an appeal to the reason, rather than an attempt on the imagination through the instrumentality of rites and parade. "Salvation is made dependent, not upon the practice of idle ceremonies, the repeating of prayers or of hymns, or invocations to pretended gods, but upon moral qualifications, which constitute individual and social happiness here, and ensure it hereafter."[1] In later times, and in the failure of Buddhism by unassisted arguments to ensure the observance of its precepts and the practice of its morals, the experiment has been made to arouse the attention and excite the enthusiasm of its followers by the adoption of ceremonies and processions; but these are declared to be only the innovations of priestcraft, and the Singhalese, whilst they unite in their celebration, are impatient to explain that such practices are less religious than secular, and that the Perrehera in particular, the chief of their annual festivals, was introduced, not in honour of Buddha, but as a tribute to the Kandyan kings as the patrons and defenders of the faith.[2]

[Footnote 1: Colonel SYKES, Asiat. Journ., vol. xii. p. 266.]

[Footnote 2: FA HIAN describes the procession of Buddhists which he witnessed in the kingdom of Khotan, and it is not a little remarkable, that along with the image of Buddha were associated those of the Brahmanical deities Indra and Brahma, the Lha of the Thibetans and the Toeyri of the Moguls.]

In its formula, whatever alterations Buddhism may have undergone in Ceylon are altogether external, and clearly referable to its anomalous association with the worship of its ancient rivals the Brahmans. These changes, however, are the result of proximity and association rather than of incorporation or adoption; and even now the process of expurgation is in progress with a view to the restoration of the pristine purity of the faith by a formal separation from the observances of Hinduism. The schismatic kings and the Malabar sovereigns introduced the worship of Vishnu and Shiva into the same temples with that of Buddha.[1] The innovation has been perpetuated; and to the present day the statues of these conflicting divinities are to be found within the same buildings: the Dewales of Hinduism are erected within the same inclosure as the Wiharas of the Buddhists; and the Kappoorales of the one religion officiate at their altars, almost beneath the same roof with the priests and neophytes of the other. But beyond this parade of their emblems, the worship of the Hindu deities throughout the Singhalese districts is entirely devoid of the obscenities and cruelty by which it is characterised on the continent of India; and it would almost appear as if these had been discontinued by the Brahmans in compliment to the superior purity of the worship with which their own had become thus fortuitously associated. The exclusive prejudices of caste were at the same remote period partially engrafted on the simpler and more generous discipline of Buddha; and it is only recently that any vigorous exertions have been attempted for their disseverance.

[Footnote 1: See ante, Vol. I. Part III. ch. viii. p. 378.]

On comparing this system with other prevailing religions which divide with it the worship of the East, Buddhism at once vindicates its own superiority, not only by the purity of its code of morals, but by its freedom from the fanatical intolerance of the Mahometans and its abhorrent rejection of the revolting rites of the Brahmanical faith. But mild and benevolent as are its aspects and design, its theories have failed to realise in practice the reign of virtue which they proclaim. Beautiful as is the body of its doctrines, it wants the vivifying energy and soul which are essential to ensure its ascendancy and power. Its cold philosophy and thin abstractions, however calculated to exercise the faculties of anchorets and ascetics, have proved insufficient of themselves to arrest man in his career of passion and pursuit; and the bold experiment of influencing the heart and regulating the conduct of mankind by the external decencies and the mutual dependencies of morality, unsustained by higher hopes and by a faith that penetrates eternity, has proved in this instance an unredeemed and hopeless failure. The inculcation of the social virtues as the consummation of happiness here and hereafter, suggests an object sufficiently attractive for the bulk of mankind; but Buddhism presents along with it no adequate knowledge of the means which are indispensable for its attainment. In confiding all to the mere strength of the human intellect and the enthusiastic self-reliance and determination of the human heart, it makes no provision for defence against those powerful temptations before which ordinary resolution must give way; and affords no consoling support under those overwhelming afflictions by which the spirit is prostrated and subdued, when unaided by the influence of a purer faith and unsustained by its confidence in a diviner power. From the contemplation of the Buddhist all the awful and unending realities of a future life are withdrawn—his hopes and his fears are at once mean and circumscribed; the rewards held in prospect by his creed are insufficient to incite him to virtue; and its punishments too remote to deter him from vice. Thus, insufficient for time, and rejecting eternity, the utmost triumph of his religion is to live without fear and to die without hope.

Both socially and in its effects upon individuals, the result of the system in Ceylon has been apathy almost approaching to infidelity. Even as regards the tenets of their creed, the mass of the population exhibit the profoundest ignorance and manifest the most irreverent indifference. In their daily intercourse and acts, morality and virtue, so far from being apparent as the rule, are barely discernible as the exception. Neither hopes nor apprehensions have proved a sufficient restraint on the habitual violation of all those precepts of charity and honesty, of purity and truth, which form the very essence of their doctrine; and in proportion as its tenets have been slighted by the people, its priesthood are disregarded, and its temples neglected.

No national system of religion, no prevailing superstition that has ever fallen under my observation presents so dull a level, and is so pre-eminently deficient in popular influences, as Buddhism amongst the Singhalese. It has its multitude of followers, but it is a misnomer to describe them as its votaries, for the term implies a warmth and fervour unknown to a native of Ceylon. He believes, or he thinks he believes, because he is of the same faith with his ancestors; but he looks on the religious doctrines of the various sects which surround him with a stolid indifference which is the surest indication of the little importance which he attaches to his own. The fervid earnestness of Christianity, even in its most degenerate forms, the fanatical enthusiasm of Islam, the proud exclusiveness of Brahma, and even the zealous warmth of other Northern faiths, are all emotions utterly foreign and unknown to the followers of Buddhism in Ceylon.

Yet, strange to tell, under all the icy coldness of this barren system, there burn below the unextinguished fires of another and a darker superstition, whose flames overtop the icy summits of the Buddhist philosophy, and excite a deeper and more reverential awe in the imagination of the Singhalese. As the Hindus in process of time superadded to their exalted conceptions of Brahma, and the benevolent attributes of Vishnu, those dismal dreams and apprehensions which embody themselves in the horrid worship of Shiva, and in invocations to propitiate the destroyer; so the followers of Buddha, unsatisfied with the vain pretensions of unattainable perfection, struck down by their internal consciousness of sin and insufficiency, and seeing around them, instead of the reign of universal happiness and the apotheosis of intellect and wisdom, nothing but the ravages of crime and the sufferings produced by ignorance, have turned with instinctive terror to propitiate the powers of evil, by whom alone such miseries are supposed to be inflicted, and to worship the demons and tormentors to whom their superstition is contented to attribute a circumscribed portion of power over the earth.

DEMON WORSHIP prevailed amongst the Singhalese before the introduction of Buddhism by Mahindo. Some principle akin to it seems to be an aboriginal impulse of uncivilised man in his first and rudest conceptions of religion, engendered, perhaps, by the spectacle of cruelty and pain, the visitations of suffering and death, and the contemplation of the awful phenomena of nature—storms, torrents, volcanoes, earthquakes, and destruction. The conciliation of the powers which inflict such calamities, seems to precede, when it does not supplant, the adoration of the benevolent influence to which belong the creation, the preservation, and the bestowal of happiness on mankind; and in the mind of the native of Ceylon this ancient superstition has maintained its ascendancy, notwithstanding the introduction and ostensible prevalence of Buddhism; for the latter, whilst it admits the existence of evil spirits, has emphatically prohibited their invocation, on the ground that any malignant influence they may exert over man is merely the consequence of his vices, whilst the cultivators of virtue may successfully bid them defiance. The demons here denounced are distinct from a class of demigods, who, under the name of Yakshyos, are supposed to inhabit the waters, and dwell on the sides of Mount Meru, and are distinguished not only for gentleness and benevolence but even by a veneration for Buddha, who, in one of his earlier transmigrations, was himself born under the form of a Yakshyo, and, attended by similar companions, traversed the world teaching righteousness. One section of these demigods, however, the Rakshyos, are fierce and malignant, and in these respects resemble the Yakkas or demons so much dreaded by the Singhalese, and who, like the Ghouls of the Mahometans, are believed to infest the vicinity of graveyards, or, like the dryads and hamadryads of the ancients, to frequent favourite forests and groves, and to inhabit particular trees, whence they sally out to seize on the passer by.[1] The Buddhist priests connive at demon worship because their efforts are ineffectual to suppress it, and the most orthodox Singhalese, whilst they confess its impropriety, are still driven to resort to it in all their fears and afflictions.

[Footnote 1: Travellers from Point de Galle to Colombo, in driving through the long succession of gardens and plantations of coco-nuts which the road traverses throughout its entire extent, will not fail to observe fruit-trees of different kinds, round the stem of which a band of leaves has been fastened by the owner. This is to denote that the tree has been devoted to a demon; and sometimes to Vishnu or the Kattregam dewol. Occasionally these dedications are made to the temples of Buddha, and even to the Roman Catholic altars, as to that of St. Anne of Calpentyn. This ceremony is called Gok-band-ema, "the tying of the tender leaf," and its operation is to protect the fruit from pillage till ripe enough to be plucked and sent as an offering to the divinity to whom it has thus been consecrated. There is reason to fear, however, that on these occasions the devil is, to some extent, defrauded of his due, as the custom is, after applying a few only of the finest as an offering to the evil one, to appropriate the remainder to the use of the owner. When coco-nut palms are so preserved, the fruit is sometimes converted into oil and burned before the shrine of the demon. The superstition extends throughout other parts of Ceylon; and so long as the wreath continues to hang upon the tree, it is presumed that no thief would venture to plunder the garden.]

Independent of the malignant spirits or Yakkas, who are the authors of indefinite evil, the Singhalese have a demon or Sanne for each form of disease, who is supposed to be its direct agent and inflictor, and who is accordingly invoked for its removal; and others, who delight in the miseries of mankind, are to be propitiated before the arrival of any event over which their pernicious influence might otherwise prevail. Hence, on every domestic occurrence, as well as in every domestic calamity, the services of the Kattadias or devil-priests are to be sought, and their ceremonies performed, generally with observances so barbarous as to be the most revolting evidence still extant of the uncivilised habits of the Singhalese. Especially in cases of sickness and danger, the assistance of the devil-dancer is implicitly relied on: an altar, decorated with garlands, is erected within sight of the patient, and on this an animal, frequently a cock, is to be sacrificed for his recovery. The dying man is instructed to touch and dedicate to the evil spirit the wild flowers, the rice, and the flesh, which have been prepared as the pidaneys or offerings to be made at sunset, at midnight, and the morning; and in the intervals the dancers perform their incantations, habited in masks and disguises to represent the demon which they personate, as the immediate author of the patient's suffering. In the frenzy of these orgies, the Kattadia having feigned the access of inspiration from the spirit he invokes, is consulted by the friends of the afflicted, and declares the nature of his disease, and the probability of its favourable or fatal termination. At sunrise, the ceremony closes by an exorcism chanted to disperse the demons who have been attracted by the rite; the devil-dancers withdraw with the offerings, and sing, as they retire, the concluding song of the ceremony, "that the sacrifice may be acceptable and the life of the sufferer extended."

In addition to this Yakka worship, which is essentially indigenous in Ceylon, the natives practise the invocation of a distinct class of demons, their conceptions of which are evidently borrowed from the debased ceremonies of Hinduism, though in their adoption they have rejected the grosser incidents of its ritual, and replaced them with others less cruel, but by no means less revolting. The Capuas, who perform ceremonies in honour of these strange gods, are of a higher rank than the Kattadias, who conduct the incantations to the Yakkas, and they are more or less connected with the Dewales and temples of Hinduism. The spirits in whose honour these ceremonies are performed, are all foreign to Ceylon. Some, such as Kattregam and Pattine, are borrowed from the mythology of the Brahmans; some are the genii of fire and other elements of the universe, and others are deified heroes; but the majority are dreaded as the inflictors of pestilence and famine, and propitiated by rites to avert the visitations of their malignity.

The ascendancy of these superstitions, and the anomaly of their association with the religion of Buddha, which has taken for its deity the perfection of wisdom and benevolence, present one of the most signal difficulties with which Christianity has had, at all times, to contend in the effort to extend its influences throughout Ceylon. The Portuguese priesthood discovered that, however the Singhalese might be induced to profess the worship of Christ, they adhered with timid tenacity to their ancient demonology. The Dutch clergy, in their reiterated lamentations over the failure of their efforts for conversion, have repeatedly recorded the fact, that however readily the native population might be brought to abjure their belief in the doctrines of Buddha, no arguments or expedients had proved effectual to overcome their terror of the demons, or check their propensity to resort on every emergency to the ceremonies of the Capuas, the dismal rites of the devil-dancers.[1] The Wesleyans, the Baptists, and other missionaries, who in later times have made the hamlets and secluded districts of Ceylon the scene of their unwearied labours, have found, with equal disappointment, that to the present hour the villagers and the peasantry are as powerfully attracted as ever by this strong superstition, bearing on their person the charms calculated to protect them from the evil eye of the demon, consulting the astrologers and the Capuas on every domestic emergency, solemnizing their marriages under their auspices, and requiring their presence at the birth of their children, who, together with their mother, are not unfrequently dedicated to the evil spirits, whom they dread.[2]

[Footnote 1: HOUGH, Hist. Christ. in India, vol. iv. b. xii. ch. v.]

[Footnote 2: HARVARD'S History of the Wesleyan Mission in Ceylon, Introd., p. iii.]

As regards Buddhism itself, whilst there is that in the tenets and genius of Brahmanism which proclaims an active resistance to any other form of religion, Christianity in the southern expanse of Ceylon has to encounter an obstacle still more embarrassing in the habitual apathy and listless indifference of the Buddhists. Brahmanism in its constitution and spirit is essentially exclusive and fanatical, jealous of all conflicting faiths, and strongly disposed to persecution. Buddhism, on the other hand, in the strength of its self-righteousness, extends a latitudinarian liberality to every other belief, and exhibits a Laodicean indifference towards its own. Whilst Brahmanism is a science confided only to an initiated priesthood; and the Vedas and the Shastras in which its precepts are embodied are kept with jealousy from the profane eye of the people, Buddhism, rejoicing in its universality, aspires to be the religion of the multitude, throws open its sacred pages without restriction, and encourages their perusal as a meritorious act of devotion. The despotic ministers of Brahma affect to be versed only in arcana and mystery, and to issue their dicta from oracular authority; but the priesthood of Buddha assume no higher functions than those of teachers of ethics, and claim no loftier title than that of "the clergy of reason."[1]

[Footnote 1: The sect of the Lao Tsen, or "Doctors of Reason," whom LANDRESSE regards as a development of Buddhism, prevailed in Thibet and the countries lying between China and India in the fifth and sixth centuries; and FA HIAN always refers to them as the "Clergy of Reason."—Foĕ Kouĕ Ki, chap. xxxviii.]

In the character of the Singhalese people there is to be traced much of the genius of their religion. The same passiveness and love of ease which restrain from active exertion in the labours of life, find a counterpart in the adjustment by which virtue is limited to abstinence, and worship to contemplation; with only so much of actual ceremonial as may render visible to the eye what would be otherwise inaccessible to the mind. The same love of repose which renders sleep and insensibility the richest blessings of this life, anticipates torpor, akin to extinction, as the supremest felicity of the next. In common with all other nations they deem some form of religious worship indispensable, but, contrary to the usage of most, they are singularly indifferent as to what that particular form is to be; leaving it passively to be determined by the conjunction of circumstances, the accident of locality, and the influence of friends or worldly prospects of gain. Still, in the hands of the Christian missionary, they are by no means the plastic substance which such a description would suggest—capable of being moulded into any form, or retaining permanently any casual impression—but rather a yielding fluid which adapts its shape to that of the vessel into which it may happen to be poured, without any change in its quality or any modification of its character.

From this unexcitable temperament of the people, combined with the exalted morals which form the articles of their belief, result phenomena which for upwards of three hundred years have more or less baffled the exertions of all who have laboured for the overthrow of their national superstition and the elevation of Christianity in its stead. The precepts of the latter, when offered to the natives apart from the divinity of their origin, present something in appearance so nearly akin to their own tenets that they were slow to discern the superiority. If Christianity requires purity and truth, temperance, honesty and benevolence, these are already discovered to be enjoined with at least equal impressiveness in the precepts of Buddha. The Scripture commandment forbidding murder is supposed to be analogous to the Buddhist prohibition to kill[1]; and where the law and the Gospel alike enforce the love of one's neighbour as the love of one's self, Buddhism insists upon charity as the basis of worship, and calls on its own followers "to appease anger by gentleness, and overcome evil by good."[2]

[Footnote 1: The order of Buddha not to take away life is imperative and unqualified as regards the priesthood; but to mankind in general it forms one of his "Sikshupada," or advices, and admits of modification under certain contingencies. A priest who should take away the life of an animal, or even an insect, under any circumstances, would be guilty of the offence denominated Pachittvya, and subject to penal discipline; but to take away human life, to be accessory to murder, or to encourage to suicide, amounts to the sin of Parajika, and is visited with permanent expulsion from the order. As regards the laity, the use of animal food is not forbidden, provided the individual has not himself been an agent in depriving it of life. The doctrine of prohibition, however, although thus regulated, like many others of the Buddhists, by subtleties and sophistry, has proved an obstacle in the way of the Missionaries; and, coupled with the permission in the Scriptures "to slay and eat," it has not failed to operate prejudicially to the spread of Christianity.]

[Footnote 2: From the Singhalese book, the "Dharmma Padan," or Footsteps of Religion, portions of which are translated in "The Friend," Colombo, 1840.]

Thus the outward concurrence of Christianity in those points on which it agrees with their own religion, has proved more embarrassing to the natives than their perplexity as to others in which it essentially differs; till at last, too timid to doubt and too feeble to inquire, they cling with helpless tenacity to their own superstition, and yet subscribe to the new faith simply by adding it on to the old.

Combined with this state of irresolution a serious obstacle to the acceptance of reformed Christianity by the Singhalese Buddhists has arisen from the differences and disagreements between the various churches by whose ministers it has been successively offered to them. In the persecution of the Roman Catholics by the Dutch, the subsequent supercession of the Church of Holland by that of England, the rivalries more or less apparent between the Episcopalians and Presbyterians, and the peculiarities which separate the Baptists from the Wesleyan Methodists—all of whom have their missions and representatives in Ceylon—the Singhalese can discover little more than that they are offered something still doubtful and unsettled, in exchange for which they are pressed to surrender their own ancient superstition. Conscious of their inability to decide on what has baffled the wisest of their European teachers to reconcile, they hesitate to exchange for an apparent uncertainty that which has been unhesitatingly believed by generations of their ancestors, and which comes recommended to them by all the authority of antiquity; and even when truth has been so far successful as to shake their confidence in their national faith, the choice of sects which has been offered to them leads to utter bewilderment as to the peculiar form of Christianity with which they may most confidingly replace it.[1]

[Footnote 1: A narrative of the efforts made by the Portuguese to introduce Christianity, and by the Dutch to establish the reformed Religion, will be found in Sir J. EMERSON TENNENT'S Christianity in Ceylon; together with an exposition of the systems adopted by the European and American missions, and their influence on the Hindu and Buddhist races, respectively.

Those who seek to pursue the study of Buddhism, its tenets and economies, as it exhibits itself in Ceylon, will find ample details in the two profound works published by Mr. R. SPENCE HARDY: Eastern Monachism, Lond. 1850, and A Manual of Buddhism, in its Modern Development, Lond. 1853.]



PART V.

* * * * *

MEDIAEVAL HISTORY.



CHAPTER I.

CEYLON AS KNOWN TO THE GREEKS AND ROMANS.

Although mysterious rumours of the wealth and wonders of India had reached the Western nations in the heroic ages, and although travellers at a later period returning from Persia and the East had spread romantic reports of its vastness and magnificence, it is doubtful whether Ceylon had been heard of in Europe[1] even by name till the companions of Alexander the Great, returning from his Indian expedition, brought back accounts of what they had been told of its elephants and ivory, its tortoises and marine monsters.[2]

[Footnote 1: Nothing is more strikingly suggestive of the extended renown of Ceylon and of the different countries which maintained an intercourse with the island, than the number and dissimilarity of the names by which it has been known at various periods throughout Europe and Asia. So remarkable is this peculiarity, that LASSEN has made "the names of Taprobane" the subject of several learned disquisitions (De Taprobane Insula veter. cogn. Dissert. sec. 2, p. 5; Indische Alterthumskunde, vol. i. p. 200, note viii. p. 212, &c.); and BURNOUF has devoted two elaborate essays to their elucidation, Journ. Asiat. 1826, vol. viii. p. 129. Ibid., 1857, vol. xxxiii. p. 1.

In the literature of the Brahmans, Lanka, from having been the scene of the exploits of Rama, is as renowned as Ilion in the great epic of the Greeks. "Taprobane," the name by which the island was first known to the Macedonians, is derivable from the Pali "Tamba panni." The origin of the epithet will be found in the Mahawanso, ch. vii. p. 56. and it is further noticed in the present work, Vol. I. P. 1. ch. i. p. 17, and P. III. ch. ii. p. 330.—It has likewise been referred to the Sanskrit "Tambrapani;" which, according to LASSEN, means "the great pond," or "the pond covered with the red lotus," and was probably associated with the gigantic tanks for which Ceylon is so remarkable. In later times Taprobane was exchanged for Simundu, Palai-simundu, and Salike, under which names it is described by PTOLEMY, the author of the Periplus, and by MARCIANUS of Heraclaea. Palai-simundu, LASSEN conjectures to be derived from the Sanskrit Pali-simanta, "the head of the sacred law," from Ceylon having become the great centre of the Buddhist faith (De Taprob., p. 16; Indische Alter. vol. i. p. 200); and Salike he regards merely as a seaman's corruption of "Sinhala or Sihala," the name chosen by the Singhalese themselves, and signifying "the dwelling place of lions." BURNOUF suggests whether it may not be Sri-Lanka, or "Lanka the Blessed."

Sinhala, with the suffix of "diva," or "dwipa" (island), was subsequently converted into "Silan-dwipa" and "Seren-diva," whence the "Serendib" of the Arabian navigators and their romances; and this in later times was contracted into Zeilan by the Portuguese, Ceylan by the Dutch, and Ceylon by the English. VINCENT, in his Commentary on the Periplus of the Erythraean Sea, vol. ii. p. 493, has enumerated a variety of other names borne by the island; and to all these might be further added those assigned to it in China, in Siam, in Hindustan, Kashmir, Persia, and other countries of the East. The learned ingenuity of BOCHART applied a Hebrew root to expound the origin of Taprobane (Geogr. Sac. lib. ii. ch. xxviii.); but the later researches of TURNOUR, BURNOUF, and LASSEN have traced it with certainty to its Pali and Sanskrit origin.]

[Footnote 2: GOSSELIN, in his Recherches sur la Geographie des Anciens, tom. iii. p. 291, says that Onesicritus, the pilot of Alexander's fleet, "avoit visite la Taprobane pendant un nouveau voyage qu'il eut ordre de faire." If so, he was the first European on record who had seen the island; but I have searched unsuccessfully for any authority to sustain this statement of GOSSELIN.]

So vague and uncertain was the information thus obtained, that STRABO, writing upwards of two centuries later, manifests irresolution in stating that Taprobane was an island[1]; and POMPONIUS MELA, who wrote early in the first century of the Christian era, quotes as probable the conjecture of HIPPARCHUS, that it was not in reality an island, but the commencement of a south-eastern continent[2]; an opinion which PLINY records as an error that had prevailed previous to his own time, but which he had been enabled to correct by the information received from the ambassador who had been sent from Ceylon to the Emperor Claudius.[3]

[Footnote 1: STRABO, l. ii. c.i.s. 14, c.v.s. 14, [Greek: einai phasi neson]; l. xv. c.i.s. 14. OVID was more confident, and sung of—

". . . . Syene Aut ubi Taprobanen Indica cingit aqua." Epst. ex Ponto, l. 80]

[Footnote 2: "Taprobanen aut grandis admodum insula aut prima pars orbis alterius Hipparcho dicitur."—P. MELA, iii. 7. "Dubitare poterant juniores num revera insula esset quam illi pro veterum Taprobane habebant, si nemo eousque repertus esset qui eam circumnavigasset: sic enim de nostra quoque Brittania dubitatum est essetne insula antequam illam circumnavigasset Agricola."—Dissertatio de AEtate et Amtore Peripli Maris Erythraei; HUDSON, Geographiae Veter. Scrip. Grac. Min.., vol. i. p. 97.]

[Footnote 3: PLINY, 1. vi. c. 24.]

In the treatise De Mundo, which is ascribed to ARISTOTLE[1], Taprobane is mentioned incidentally as of less size than Britain; and this is probably the earliest historical notice of Ceylon that has come down to us[2] as the memoirs of Alexander's Indian officers, on whose authority Aristotle (if he be the author of the treatise "De Mundo") must have written, survive only in fragments, preserved by the later historians and geographers.

[Footnote 1: I have elsewhere disposed of the alleged allusions of Sanchoniathon to an island which was obviously meant for Ceylon. (See Note (A) end of this chapter.) The authenticity of the treatise De Mundo, as a production of ARISTOTLE, is somewhat doubtful (SCHOELL, Literat. Grecque, liv. iv. c. xl.); and it might add to the suspicion of its being a modern composition, that Aristotle should do no more than mention the name and size of a country of which Onesicritus and Nearchus had just brought home accounts so surprising; and that he should speak of it with confidence as an island; although the question of its insularity remained somewhat uncertain at a much later period.]

[Footnote 2: Fabricius, in the supplemental volume of his Codex Pseudepigraphi veteris Testamenti, Hamb., A.D. 1723, says: "Samarita, Genesis, viii. 4, tradit Noae arcam requievisse super montem [Greek: tes] Serendib sive Zeylan."—P. 30; and it was possibly upon this authority that it has been stated in Kitto's Cyclopoedia of Biblical Literature, vol. i. p. 199, as "a curious circumstance that in Genesis, viii. 4, the Samaritan Pentateuch has Sarandib, the Arabic name of Ceylon," instead of Ararat, as the resting place of the ark. Were this true, it would give a triumph to speculation, and serve by a single but irresistible proof to dissipate doubt, if there were any, as to the early intercourse between the Hebrews and that island as the country from which Solomon drew his triennial supplies of ivory, apes, and peacocks (1 Kings, x. 22). Assuming the correctness of the opinion that the Samaritan Pentateuch is as old as the separation of the tribes in the reign of Rehoboam, B. C. 975-958, this would not only furnish a notice of Ceylon far anterior to any existing authority; but would assign an antiquity irreconcilable with historical evidence as to its comparatively modern name of "Serendib." The interest of the discovery would still be extraordinary, even if the Samaritan Pentateuch be referred to the later date assigned to it by Frankel, who adduces evidence to show that its writer had made use of the Septuagint. The author of the article in the Biblical Cyclopoedia is however in error. Every copy of the Samaritan Pentateuch, both those printed in the Paris Polyglot and in that of Walton, as well as the five MSS. in the Bodleian Library at Oxford, which contain the eighth chapter of Genesis, together with several collations of the Hebrew and Samaritan text, make no mention of Sarandib, but all exhibit the word "Ararat" in its proper place in the eighth chapter of Genesis. "Ararat" is also found correctly in BLAYNET'S Pentat, Hebroeo-Samarit., Oxford, 1790.

But there is another work in which "Sarandib" does appear in the verse alluded to. PIETRO DELLA VALLE, in that most interesting letter in which he describes the manner in which he obtained at Damascus, in A.D. 1616, a manuscript of the Pentateuch on parchment in the Hebrew language, but written in Samaritan characters; relates that along with it he procured another on paper, in which not only the letters, but the language, was Samaritan—"che non solo e seritto con lettere Samaritane, ma in lingua anche propria de' Samaritani, che e un misto della Ebraica e della Caldea."—Viaggi, &c., Lett. da Aleppo, 15. di Giugno A.D. 1616.

The first of these two manuscripts is the Samaritan Pentateuch, the second is the "Samaritan version" of it. The author and age of the second are alike unknown; but it cannot, in the opinion of Frankel, date earlier than the second century, or a still later period. (DAVISON'S Biblical Criticism, vol. i, ch. xv. p. 242.) Like all ancient targums, it bears in some particulars the character of a paraphrase; and amongst other departures from the literal text of the original Hebrew, the translator, following the example of Onkelos and others, has substituted modern geographical names for some of the more ancient, such as Gerizim for Mount Ebal (Deut. xxvii. 4), Paneas for Dan, and Ascalon for Gerar; and in the 4th verse of the viiith chapter of Genesis he has made the ark to rest "upon the mountains of Sarandib." Onkelos in the same passage has Kardu in place of Ararat. See WALTON'S Polyglot, vol. i. p. 31; BASTOW, Bibl. Dict. 1847, vol. i. p. 71.

According to the Mahawanso, the epithet of Sihale-dwipa, the island of lions, was conferred upon Ceylon by the followers of Wijayo, B.C. 543 (Mahawanso, ch. vii. p. 51), and from this was formed, by the Arabian seamen, the names Silan-dip and Seran-dib. The occurrence of the latter word, therefore, in the "Samaritan Pentateuch," if its antiquity be referable to the reign of Rehoboam, would be inexplicable; whereas no anachronism is involved by its appearance in the "Samaritan version," which was not written till many centuries after the Wijayan conquest.

There is another manuscript, written on bombycine, in the Bodleian Library, No. 345, described as an Arabic version of the Pentateuch, written between the years 884 and 885 of the Hejira, A.D. 1479 and 1480, and ascribed to Aba Said, son of Abul Hassan, "in eo continetur versio Arabica Pentateuchi quae ex textu Hebraeico-Samaritano non ex versione ilia quae dialecto quadam peculieri Samaritanis quondam vernacula Scripta est."—Cat. Orient. MSS. vol. I. p. 2. In this manuscript, also, the word Sarendip instead of Ararat, occurs in the passage in Genesis descriptive of the resting of the ark.]

From their compilations, however, it appears that the information concerning Ceylon collected by the Macedonian explorers of India, was both meagre and erroneous. ONESICRITUS, as he is quoted by Strabo and Pliny, propagated exaggerated statements as to the dimensions of the island[1] and the number of herbivorous cetacea[2] found in its seas; the elephants he described as far surpassing those of continental India both in courage and in size.[3]

[Footnote 1: These early errors as to the and position of Ceylon will be found explained elsewhere. See Vol. I. P. 1. ch. i. p. 81.]

[Footnote 2: STRABO, xv. p. 691. The animal referred to by the informants of Onesicritus was the dugong, whose form and attitudes gave rise to the fabled mermaid. See AElian, lib. xvi. ch. xviii., who says it has the face of a woman and spines that resemble hair.]

[Footnote 3: PLINY, lib. vi. ch. 24.]

MEGASTHENES, twenty years after the death of Alexander the Great, was accredited as an ambassador from Seleucus Nicator to the court of Sandracottus, or Chandra-Gupta, the King of the Prasii, from whose country Ceylon had been colonised two centuries before by the expedition under Wijayo.[1] It was, perhaps, from the latter circumstance and the communication subsequently maintained between the insular colony and the mother country, that Megasthenes, who never visited any part of India south of the Ganges, and who was, probably, the first European who ever beheld that renowned river[1], was nevertheless enabled to collect many particulars relative to the interior of Ceylon. He described it as being divided by a river (the Mahawelli-ganga?) into two sections, one infested by wild beasts and elephants, the other producing gold and gems, and inhabited by a people whom he called Palaeogoni[2], a hellenized form of Pali-Putra, "the sons of the Pali," the first Prasian colonists.

[Footnote 1: See Vol. I. P. III. ch. iii. p. 336.]

[Footnote 2: ROBEBTSON'S Ancient India, sec. ii.]

[Footnote 3: SCHWANBECK'S Megasthenes, Fragm. xviii.; SOLINUS POLYHISTOR, lii. 3; PLINY, lvi. ch. 24. AELIAN, in compiling his Natura Animalium, has introduced the story told by MEGASTHENES, and quoted by STRABO, of cetaceous animals in the seas of Ceylon with heads resembling oxen and lions; and this justifies the conjecture that other portions of the same work referring to the island may have been simultaneously borrowed from the same source. SCHWANBECK, apparently on this ground, has included among the Fragmenta incerta those passages from AELIAN, lib, xvi. ch. 17, 18, in which he says, and truly, that in Taprobane there were no cities, but from five to seven hundred villages built of wood, thatched with reeds, and occasionally covered with the shells of large tortoises. The sea coast then as now was densely covered with palm-trees (evidently coco-nut and Palmyra), and the forests contained elephants so superior to those of India that they were shipped in large vessels and sold to the King of Calinga (Northern Circars). The island, he says, is so large that "those in the maritime districts never hunted in the interior, and those in the interior had never seen the sea."]