Ceylon; an Account of the Island Physical, Historical, and eBook

James Emerson Tennent
This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 892 pages of information about Ceylon; an Account of the Island Physical, Historical, and.

Ceylon; an Account of the Island Physical, Historical, and eBook

James Emerson Tennent
This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 892 pages of information about Ceylon; an Account of the Island Physical, Historical, and.
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.]

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Ceylon; an Account of the Island Physical, Historical, and from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.