The prosperity of Ceylon, though it may not have attained its acme, was sound and auspicious in the beginning of the fourth century, when the solar line became extinct.  Pihiti, the northern portion of the island, was that which most engaged the solicitude of the crown, from its containing the ancient capital, whence it obtained its designation of the Raja-ratta or country of the kings.  Here the labour bestowed on irrigation had made the food of the population abundant, and the sums expended on the adornment of the city, the multitude of its sacred structures, the splendour of its buildings, and the beauty of its lakes and gardens, rendered it no inappropriate representative of the wealth and fertility of the kingdom.

Anarajapoora had from time immemorial been a venerated locality in the eyes of the Buddhists; it had been honoured by the visit of Buddha in person, and it was already a place of importance when Wijayo effected his landing in the fifth century before the Christian era.  It became the capital a century after, and the King Pandukabhaya, who formed the ornamental lake which adjoined it, and planted gardens and parks for public festivities, built gates and four suburbs to the city; set apart ground for a public cemetery, and erected a gilded hall of audience, and a palace for his own residence.

The Mahawanso describes with particularity the offices of the Naggaraguttiko, who was the chief of the city guard, and the organisation of the low caste Chandalas, who were entrusted with the cleansing of the capital and the removal of the dead for interment.  For these and for the royal huntsmen villages were constructed in the environs, mingled with which were dwellings for the subjugated native tribes, and temples for the worship of foreign devotees.[1]

[Footnote 1:  Mahawanso, ch. x. p. 66.]

Seventy years later, when Mahindo arrived in Ceylon, the details of his reception disclose the increased magnificence of the capital, the richness of the royal parks, and the extent of the state establishments; and describe the chariots in which the king drove to Mihintala to welcome his exalted guest.[1]

[Footnote 1:  Ibid., ch. xiv., xv., xx.]

[Sidenote:  A.D. 302.]

Yet these were but preliminary to the grander constructions which gave the city its lasting renown; stupendous dagobas raised by successive monarchs, each eager to surpass the conceptions of his predecessors; temples in which were deposited statues of gold adorned with gems and native pearls; the decorated terraces of the Bo-tree, and the Brazen Palace, with its thousand chambers and its richly embellished halls.  The city was enclosed by a rampart upwards of twenty feet in height[1], which was afterwards replaced by a wall[2]; and, so late as the fourth century, the Chinese traveller Fa Hian describes the condition of the place in terms which fully corroborate the accounts of the Mahawanso.