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This place was a populous centre five hundred years before the Christian era, of which there seems to be little if any record preserved, even in the comprehensive pages of that national text-book, the Mahawanso. The native tribes of Ceylon cannot be said to form a progressive race, even under the advantages which modern civilization affords them. Their present condition is one of dormancy.
The island, under its Sanskrit name of Lanka, is also the subject of a mythical poem of the Hindus, and its conquest by Rama is the theme of the Ramayana, doubtless one of the most ancient epics in existence. The Mahawanso, though the oldest, is by no means the only Singhalese chronicle of a historic character.
A white elephant is mentioned in the Mahawanso as forming part of the retinue attached to the "Temple of the Tooth" at Anarajapoora, in the fifth century after Christ ; but it commanded no religious veneration, and like those in the stud of the kings of Siam, it was tended merely as an emblem of royalty ; the sovereign of Ceylon being addressed as the "Lord of Elephants."
The Singhalese who accompanied the party, said that they not only bit venomously, but crushed the limb of any intruder in their coils." Mahawanso, ch. i. p. 4. Still, sea-snakes, though well-known to the natives, are not abundant round Ceylon, as compared with their numbers in other places.
Sir J. E. Tennent gathers from various ancient sources, including the veritable Mahawanso, that Anuradhapura, between four and five centuries before Christ, contained the temples of various religions, "temples and palaces whose golden pinnacles glittered in the sky," besides spacious public gardens and free baths, together with almshouses and hospitals, in which animals as well as human beings were tenderly cared for.
It will also be remembered that Marshal Soult to his lasting disgrace be it recorded treated the ashes of Cervantes in a similar manner; a most petty and disgraceful meanness for a marshal of France to be guilty of. The Mahawanso, "Genealogy of the Great," a native chronicle, contains a history of the several dynasties which have controlled the island from B. C. 543 down to A. D. 1758.
The Portuguese, on their arrival in Ceylon in the sixteenth century, found the natives fully believing in the traditions of its former extent, and its partial submersion. This is duly recorded by the Portuguese writers of that period. The substance of this legend is also to be found in the Mahawanso, or native chronicles of the island.
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