both of the coast and the interior.  Of the foreigners thus confided in, “two youths, powerful in their cavalry and navy, named Sena and Gottika,"[2] proved unfaithful to their trust, and after causing the death of the king Suratissa (B.C. 237), retained the supreme power for upwards of twenty years, till overthrown in their turn and put to death by the adherents of the legitimate line.[3] Ten years, however, had barely elapsed when the attempt to establish a Tamil sovereign was renewed by Elala, “a Malabar of the illustrious Uju tribe, who invaded the island from the Chola[4] country, killed the reigning king Asela, and ruled the kingdom for forty years, administering justice impartially to friends and foes.”

[Footnote 1:  The term “Malabar” is used throughout the following pages in the comprehensive sense in which it is applied in the Singhalese chronicles to the continental invaders of Ceylon; but it must be observed that the adventurers in these expeditions, who are styled in the Mahawanso, “damilos" or Tamils, came not only from the south-western tract of the Dekkan, known in modern geography as “Malabar,” but also from all parts of the peninsula, as far north as Cuttack and Orissa.]

[Footnote 2:  Mahawanso, ch. xxi. p. 127.]

[Footnote 3:  Mahawanso, xxi.; Rajaratnacari, ch. ii.]

[Footnote 4:  Chola, or Solee, was the ancient name of Tanjore, and the country traversed by the river Caveri.]

[Sidenote:  B.C. 161.]

Such is the encomium which the Mahawanso passes on an infidel usurper, because Elala offered his protection to the priesthood; but the orthodox annalist closes his notice of his reign by the moral reflection that “even he who was an heretic, and doomed by his creed to perdition, obtained an exalted extent of supernatural power from having eschewed impiety and injustice."[1]

[Footnote 1:  Mahawanso, xxi. p. 129.  The other historical books, the Rajavali, and Rajaratnacari, give a totally different character of Elala, and represent him as the desecrator of monuments and the overthrower of temples.  The traditional estimation which has followed his memory is the best attestation of the superior accuracy of the Mahawanso.]

[Sidenote:  B.C. 161.]

But it was not the priests alone who were captivated by the generosity of Elala.  In the final struggle for the throne, in which the Malabars were worsted by the gallantry of Dutugaimunu, a prince of the excluded family, the deeds of bravery displayed by him were the admiration of his enemies.  The contest between the rival chiefs is the solitary tale of Ceylon chivalry, in which Elala is the Saladin and Dutugaimunu the Coeur-de-lion.  So genuine was the admiration of Elala’s bravery that his rival erected a monument in his honour, on the spot where he fell; its ruins remain to the present day, and the Singhalese still regard it with respect and veneration.  “On