onclude the task he had so nobly begun; he died
while engaged on the second volume of his translation, and only a few
chapters, executed with his characteristic accuracy, remain in
manuscript in the possession of his surviving relatives. It diminishes,
though in a slight degree, our regret for the interruption of his
literary labours to know that the section of the _Mahawanso_ which he
left unfinished is inferior both in authority and value to the earlier
portion of the work, and that being composed at a period when literature
was at its lowest ebb in Ceylon, it differs little if at all from other
chronicles written during the decline of the native dynasty.]

It is necessary to premise, that the most renowned of the Singhalese
books is the _Mahawanso_, a metrical chronicle, containing a dynastic
history of the island for twenty-three centuries from B.C. 543 to A.D.
1758. But being written in Pali verse its existence in modern times was
only known to the priests, and owing to the obscurity of its diction it
had ceased to be studied by even the learned amongst them.

To relieve the obscurity of their writings, and supply the omissions,
occasioned by the fetters of rhythm and the necessity of permutations
and elisions, required to accommodate their phraseology to the
obligations of verse; the Pali authors of antiquity were accustomed to
accompany their metrical compositions with a _tika_ or running
commentary, which contained a literal version of the mystical text, and
supplied illustrations of its more abstruse passages. Such a _tika_ on
the _Mahawanso_ was generally known to have been written; but so utter
was the neglect into which both it and the original text had been
permitted to fall, that Turnour till 1826 had never met with an
individual who had critically read the one, or more than casually heard
of the existence of the other.[1] At length, amongst the books which,
were procured for him by the high, priest of Saffragam, was one which
proved to be this neglected commentary on the mystic and otherwise
unintelligible _Mahawanso_; and by the assistance of this precious
document he undertook, with confidence, a translation into English of
the long lost chronicle, and thus vindicated the claim of Ceylon to the
possession of an authentic and unrivalled record of its national
history.

[Footnote 1: TURNOUR's _Mahawanso_, introduction, vol. i. p. ii.]

The title "Mahawanso," which means literally the "_Genealogy of the