a refuge to the royal family when driven from the northern capital, and furnished a force to assist in their return and restoration.  Walagam-bahu, after many years’ concealment there, was at last enabled to resume the offensive, and succeeded in driving out the infidels, and recovering possession of the sacred city, an event which he commemorated in the usual manner by the erection of dagobas, tanks, and wiharas.

[Footnote 1:  Mahawanso, ch. vii.]

[Illustration:  THE ALU WIHARA NEAR MATELLE.]

[Sidenote:  B.C. 89.]

But the achievement by which most of all he entitled himself to the gratitude of the Singhalese annalists, was the reduction to writing of the doctrines and discourses of Buddha, which had been orally delivered by Mahindo, and previously preserved by tradition alone.  These sacred volumes, which may be termed the Buddhist Scriptures, contain the Pittakataya, and its commentaries the Atthakatha, and were compiled by a company of priests in a cave to the north of Matelle, known as the Aloo-wihara.[1] This, and other caverns in which the king had sought concealment during his adversity, he caused to be converted into rock temples after his restoration to power.  Amongst the rest, Dambool, which is the most remarkable of the cave temples of Ceylon from its vastness, its elaborate ornaments, and the romantic beauty of its situation and the scenery surrounding it.

[Footnote 1:  Rajaratnacari, ch. i. p. 43.  Abouzeyd states that at that time public writers were employed in recording the traditions of the island:  “Le Royaume de Serendyb a une loi et des docteurs qui s’assemblent de temps en temps comme se reunissent chez nous les personnes qui recreillent les traditions du prophete, et les Indiens se rendent aupres des docteurs, et ecrivent sous leurs dictee, la vie de leurs prophetes et les preceptes de leur loi.”—­REINAUD, Relation, &c., tom. i. p. 127.]

[Sidenote:  B.C. 62.]

[Sidenote:  B.C. 50.]

The history of the Buddhist religion in Ceylon is not, however, a tale of uniform prosperity.  The first of its domestic enemies was Naga, the grandson of the pious Walagam-bahu, whom the native, historians stigmatise by the prefix of “chora” or the “marauder.”  His story is thus briefly but emphatically told in the Mahawanso:  “During the reign of his father Mahachula, Chora Naga wandered through the island leading the life of a robber; returning on the demise of the king he assumed the monarchy; and in the places which had denied him an asylum during his marauding career, he impiously destroyed the wiharas.[1] After a reign of twelve years he was poisoned by his queen Anula, and regenerated in the Lokantariko hell."[2]

[Footnote 1:  Mahawanso, ch. xxxiii.; Rajarali, p. 224; TURNOUR’S Epitome, p. 19; Rajaratnacari, ch. i. p. 43, 44.]

[Footnote 2:  Mahawanso, ch. xxxiv. p. 209.]