Great_," properly belongs only to the first section of the work,
extending from B.C. 543 to A.D. 301,[1] and containing the history of
the early kings, from Wijayo to Maha Sen, with whom the Singhalese
consider the "Great Dynasty" to end. The author of this portion was
Mahanamo, uncle of the king Dhatu Sena, in whose reign it was compiled,
between the years A.D. 459 and 477, from annals in the vernacular
language then existing at Anarajapoora.[2]

[Footnote 1: Although the _Mahawanso_ must be regarded as containing the
earliest _historical_ notices of Ceylon, the island, under its Sanskrit
name of Lanka, occupies a prominent place in the mythical poems of the
Hindus, and its conquest by Rama is the theme of the _Ramayana_, one of
the oldest epics in existence. In the _Raja-Tarangini_ also, an
historical chronicle which may be regarded as the _Mahawanso_ of
Kashmir, very early accounts of Ceylon are contained, and the historian
records that the King Megavahana, who, according to the chronology of
Troyer, reigned A.D. 24, made an expedition to Ceylon for the purpose of
extending Buddhism, and visited Adam's Peak, where he had an interview
with the native sovereign.--_Raja-Tarangini_, Book iii. sl. 71-79. _Ib._
vol. ii. p. 364.]

[Footnote 2: _Mahawanso_, ch. i. The Arabian travellers in Ceylon
mention the official historiographers employed by order of the kings.
See Vol. I Pt. III. ch. viii. p. 387, note.]

The sovereigns who succeeded Maha Sen are distinguished as the
"Sulu-wanse," the "lower race," and the story of their line occupies the
continuation of this extraordinary chronicle, the second portion of
which was written by order of the illustrious king Prakrama Bahu, about
the year A.D. 1266, and the narrative was carried on, under subsequent
sovereigns, down to the year A.D. 1758, the latest chapters having been
compiled by command of the King of Kandy, Kirti-Sri, partly from
Singhalese works brought back to the island from Siam (whither they had
been carried at former periods by priests dispatched upon missions), and
partly from native histories, which had escaped the general destruction
of such records in the reign of Raja Singha I., an apostate from
Buddhism, who, about the year A.D. 1590, during the period when the
Portuguese were in occupation of the low country, exterminated the
priests of Buddha, and transferred the care of the shrine on Adam's Peak
to Hindu Fakirs.

But the _Mahawanso_, although the mo