Part 67 (1/2)

[Ill.u.s.tration: MAP OF ANCIENT INDIA.]]

[Footnote 3: BURNOUF conjectures that the point from which Wijayo set sail for Ceylon was the G.o.davery, where the name of Bandar-maha-lanka (the Port of the Great Lanka), still commemorates the event.--_Journ.

Asiat._ vol. xviii. p. 134. DE COUTO, recording the Singhalese tradition as collected by the Portuguese, he landed at Preature (Pereatorre), between Trincomalie and Jaffna-patam, and that the first city founded by him was Mantotte.--_Decade_ v. l. 1. c. 5.]

[Footnote 4: See a note at the end of this chapter, on the landing of Wijayo in Ceylon, as described in the _Mahawanso_.]

[Sidenote: B.C. 543.]

The people whom he mastered with so much facility are described in the sacred books as _Yakkhos_ or ”demons,”[1] and _Nagas_[2], or ”snakes;”

designations which the Buddhist historians are supposed to have employed in order to mark their contempt for the uncivilised aborigines[3], in the same manner that the aborigines in the Dekkan were denominated goblins and demons by the Hindus[4], from the fact that, like the Yakkhos of Ceylon, they too were demon wors.h.i.+ppers. The Nagas, another section of the same superst.i.tion, wors.h.i.+pped the cobra de capello as an emblem of the destroying power. These appear to have chiefly inhabited the northern and western coasts of Ceylon, and the Yakkhos the interior[5]; and, notwithstanding their alleged barbarism, both had organised some form of government, however rude.[6] The Yakkhos had a capital which they called Lankapura, and the Nagas a king, the possession of whose ”throne of gems”[7] was disputed by the rival sovereign of a neighbouring kingdom. So numerous were the followers of this gloomy idolatry of that time in Ceylon, that they gave the name of Nagadipo[8], _the_ _Island of Serpents_, to the portion of the country which they held, in the same manner that Rhodes and Cyprus severally acquired the ancient designation of _Ophiusa_, from the fact of their being the residence of the Ophites, who introduced serpent-wors.h.i.+p into Greece.[9]

[Footnote 1: _Mahawanso_, ch. vii.; FA HIAN, _Fo[)e]-kou[)e]-ki_, ch.

x.x.xvii.]

[Footnote 2: _Rajavali_, p. 169.]

[Footnote 3: REINAUD, Introd. to _Abouldfeda_, vol. i. sec. iii. p.

ccxvi. See also CLOUGH'S _Singhalese Dictionary_, vol. ii. p. 2.]

[Footnote 4: MOUNTSTUART ELPHINSTONE'S, _History of India_, b. iv. ch.

xi. p. 216.]

[Footnote 5: The first descent of Gotama Buddha in Ceylon was amongst the Yakkhos at Bintenne; in his second visit he converted the ”_Naga_ King of Kalany,” near Colombo, _Mahawanso_, ch. i. p. 5.]

[Footnote 6: FABER, _Origin of Idolatry_, b. ii ch. vii. p. 440.]

[Footnote 7: _Mahawanso_, ch. i.]

[Footnote 8: TURNOUR was unable to determine the position on the modern map of the ancient territory of Nagadipo.--Introd. p. x.x.xiv. CASIE CHITTY, in a paper in the _Journal of the Ceylon Asiatic Society_, 1848, p. 71, endeavours to identify it with Jaffna, The _Rajaratnacari_ places it at the present Kalany, on the river of that name near Colombo (vol.

ii. p. 22). The _Mahawanso_ in many pa.s.sages alludes to the existence of Naga kingdoms on the continent of India, showing that at that time serpent-wors.h.i.+p had not been entirely extinguished by Brahmanism in the Dekkan, and affording an additional ground for conjecture that the first inhabitants of Ceylon were a colony from the opposite coast of Calinga.]

[Footnote 9: BRYANT'S _a.n.a.lysis of Mythology_, chapter on Ophiolatria, vol. i p. 480, ”Euboea means _Oub-aia_, and signifies the serpent island.” (_Ib_.)

But STRABO affords us a still more striking ill.u.s.tration of the _Mahawanso_, in calling the serpent wors.h.i.+ppers of Ceylon ”Serpents,”

since he states that in Phrygia and on the h.e.l.lespont the people who were styled [Greek: ophiogeneis], or the Serpent races, actually retained a physical affinity with the snakes with whom they were popularly identified, [Greek: ”entautha mytheuousi tous Ophiogeneis syngenneian tina echein pros tous oseis.”]--STRABO, lib. xiii. c. 588.

PLINY alludes to the same fable (lib. vii.). And OVID, from the incident of Cadmus' having sown the dragon's teeth (that is, implanted Ophiolatria in Greece), calls the Athenians _Serpentigenae_.]

But whatever were the peculiarities of religion which distinguished the aborigines from their conquerors, the attention of Wijayo was not diverted from his projects of colonisation by any anxiety to make converts to his own religious belief. The earliest cares of himself and his followers were directed to implant civilisation, and two centuries were permitted to elapse before the first effort was made to supersede the popular wors.h.i.+p by the inculcation of a more intellectual faith.

NOTE.

DESCRIPTION IN THE MAHAWANSO OF THE LANDING OF WIJAYO.

The landing of Wijayo in Ceylon is related in the 7th chapter of the _Mahawanso_, and Mr. TURNOUR has noticed the strong similarity between this story and Homer's account of the landing of Ulysses in the island of Circe. The resemblance is so striking that it is difficult to conceive that the Singhalese historian of the 5th century was entirely ignorant of the works of the Father of Poetry. Wijayo and his followers, having made good their landing, are met by a ”devo” (a divine spirit), who blesses them and ties a sacred thread as a charm on the arm of each.