. iii.]

[Footnote 2: The narrative in the text is extracted from the
_Ta-tsing-yi-tung_, a "Topographical Account of the Manchoo Empire,"
written in the seventeenth century, to a copy of which, in the British
Museum, my attention was directed by the erudite Chinese scholar, Mr.
MEADOWS, author of "_The Chinese and their Rebellions_." The story of
this Chinese expedition to Ceylon will also be found in the
_Se-yih-ke-foo-choo_, "A Description of Western Countries," A.D. 1450;
the _Woo heo-pecu_, "A Record of the Ming Dynasty," A.D. 1522, b. lviii.
p. 3, and in the _Ming-she_, "A History of the Ming Dynasty," A.D. 1739,
cccxxvi. p. 2. For a further account of this event see Part v. of this
work; ch. iii.]

[Footnote 3: The _Ming-she_ calls the Emperor "Ching-tsoo."]

[Footnote 4: So called in the Chinese original.]

From the beginning of the 13th century to the extinction of the
Singhalese dynasty in the 18th, the island cannot be said to have been
ever entirely freed from the presence of the Malabars. Even when
temporarily subdued, they remained with forced professions of loyalty;
Damilo soldiers were taken into pay by the Singhalese sovereigns; the
dewales of the Hindu worship were built in close contiguity to the
wiharas of Buddhism, and by frequent intermarriages the royal line was
almost as closely allied to the kings of Chola and Pandya as to the
blood of the Suluwanse.[1]

[Footnote 1: _Rajavali_, p.261, 262. In A.D. 1187 on the death or
Mahindo V., the second in succession from the great Prakrama, the crown
devolved upon Kirti Nissanga, who was summoned from Calinga on the
Coromandel Coast. On the extinction of the recognised line of Suluwanse
in A.D. 1706, a prince from Madura, who was merely a connection by
marriage, succeeded to the throne. The King Raja Singha, who detained
Knox in captivity, A.D. 1640, was married to a Malabar princess. In
fact, the four last kings of Ceylon, prior to its surrender to Great
Britain, were pure Malabars, without a trace of Singhalese blood.]

[Sidenote: A.D. 1505.]

It was in this state of exhaustion, that the Singhalese were brought
into contact with Europeans, during the reign of Dharma Prakrama IX,
when the Portuguese, who had recently established themselves in India,
appeared for the first time in Ceylon, A.D. 1505. The paramount
sovereign was then living at Cotta; and the _Rajavali_ records the event
in the following terms:--"And now it came to pass that in the Ch