nctly traceable to
the presence and influence of the Malabars.

[Sidenote: A.D. 840.]

The Singhalese, either paralysed by dread, made feeble efforts to rid
themselves of the invaders; or fascinated by their military pomp,
endeavoured to conciliate them by alliances. Thus, when the king of
Pandya over-ran the north of Ceylon, A.D. 840, plundered the capital and
despoiled its temples, the unhappy sovereign had no other resource than
to purchase the evacuation of the island by a heavy ransom.[1] Yet such
was the influence still exercised by the Malabars, that within a very
few years his successor on the throne lent his aid to the son of the
same king of Pandya in a war against his father, and conducted the
expedition in person.[2] His army was, in all probability, composed
chiefly of Damilos, with whom he overran the south of the Indian
peninsula, and avenged the outrage inflicted on his own kingdom in the
late reign by bearing back the plunder of Madura.

[Footnote 1: TURNOUR'S _Epitome_, p. 35; _Rajaratnacari_, p. 79.]

[Footnote 2: A.D. 858; _Rajaratnacari_, p, 84.]

[Sidenote: A.D. 954.]

This exploit served to promote a more intimate intercourse between the
two races, and after the lapse of a century, A.D. 954, the king of
Ceylon a second time interposed with an army to aid the Pandyan
sovereign in a quarrel with his neighbour of Chola, wherein the former
was worsted, and forced to seek a refuge in the territory of his insular
ally, whence he was ultimately expelled for conspiracy against his
benefactor. Having fled to India without his regalia, his Cholian rival
made the refusal of the king of Ceylon to surrender them the pretext for
a fresh Malabar invasion, A.D. 990, when the enemy was repulsed by the
mountaineers of Rohuna, who, from the earliest period down to the
present day, have evinced uniform impatience of strangers, and steady
determination to resist their encroachments.

[Sidenote: A.D. 997.]

But such had been the influx of foreigners, that the efforts of these
highland patriots were powerless against their numbers. Mahindo III.,
A.D. 997, married a princess of Calinga[1], and in a civil war which
ensued, during the reign of his son and successor, the novel spectacle
was presented of a Malabar army supporting the cause of the royal family
against Singhalese insurgents. The island was now reduced to the extreme
of anarchy and insecurity; "the foreign population" had increased to
such an extent a