It was crowded, he says, with nobles, magistrates, and foreign merchants; the houses were handsome, and the public buildings richly adorned.  The streets and highways were broad and level, and halls for preaching and reading bana were erected in all the thoroughfares.  He was assured that the island contained not less than from fifty to sixty thousand ecclesiastics, who all ate in common; and of whom from five to six thousand were supported by the bounty of the king.

[Footnote 1:  By WASABHA, A.D. 66. Mahawanso, ch. xxxv. p. 222.]

[Footnote 2:  TURNOUR, in his Epitome of the History of Ceylon, says that Anarajapoora was enclosed by a rampart seven cubits high, B.C. 41, and that A.D. 66 King Wasabha built a wall round the city sixteen gows in circumference.  As he estimates the gow at four English miles, this would give an area equal to about 300 square miles.  A space so prodigious for the capital seems to be disproportionate to the extent of the kingdom, and far too extended for the wants of the population.  TURNOUR does not furnish the authority on which he gives the dimensions, nor have I been able to discover it in the Rajavali nor in the Rajaratnacari.  The Mahawanso alludes to the fact of Anarajapoora having been fortified by Wasabha, but, instead of a wall, the work which it describes this king to have undertaken, was the raising of the height of the rampart from seven cubits to eighteen (Mahawanso, ch. xxxv. p. 222).  Major Forbes, in his account of the ruins of the ancient city, repeats the story of their former extent, in which he no doubt considered that the high authority of Turnour in matters of antiquity was sustained by a statement made by Lieutenant Skinner, who had surveyed the ruins in 1822, to the effect that he had discovered near Alia-parte the remains of masonry, which he concluded to be a portion of the ancient city wall running north and south and forming the west face; and, as Alia-parte is seven miles from Anarajapoora, he regarded this discovery as confirming the account given of its original dimensions.  Lieutenant, now Major, Skinner has recently informed me that, on mature reflection, he has reason to fear that his first inference was precipitate.  In a letter of the 8th of May, 1856, he says:—­“It was in 1833 I first visited Anarajapoora, when I made my survey of its ruins.  The supposed foundation of the western face of the city wall was pointed out near the village of Alia-parte by the people, and I hastily adopted it.  I had not at the time leisure to follow up this search and determine how far it extended, but from subsequent visits to the place I have been led to doubt the accuracy of this tradition, though on most other points I found the natives tolerably accurate in their knowledge of the history of the ancient capital.  I have since sought for traces of the other faces of the supposed wall, at the distances from the centre of the city at which it was said to have existed, but without success.”  The ruins which Major Skinner saw at Alia-parte are most probably those of one of the numerous forts which the Singhalese kings erected at a much later period, to keep the Malabars in check.]