or Kusinagara
with _Kusia_ in Gorakhpur, _Journ. Roy. Asiat. Soc._, vol xvi. p. 246.]

In the course of his ministrations Gotarna is said to have thrice landed
in Ceylon. Prior to his first coming amongst them, the inhabitants of
the island appear to have been living in the simplest and most primitive
manner, supported on the almost spontaneous products of the soil. Gotama
in person undertook their conversion, and alighted on the first occasion
at Bintenne, where there exists to the present day the remains of a
monument erected two thousand years ago[1] to commemorate his arrival.
His second visit was to Nagadipo in the north of the island, at a place
whose position yet remains to be determined; and the "sacred foot-print"
on Adam's Peak is still worshipped by his devotees as the miraculous
evidence of his third and last farewell.

[Footnote 1: By Dutugaimunu, B.C. 164. For an account of the present
condition of this Dagoba at Bintenne, see Vol. II. Pt. IX. ch. ii.]

To the question as to what particular race the inhabitants of Ceylon at
that time belonged, and whence or at what period the island was
originally peopled, the Buddhist chronicles furnish no reply. And no
memorials of the aborigines themselves, no monuments or inscriptions,
now remain to afford ground for speculation. Conjectures have been
hazarded, based on no sufficient data, that the Malayan type, which
extends from Polynesia to Madagascar, and from Chin-India to Taheite,
may still be traced in the configuration, and in some of the immemorial
customs, of the people of Ceylon.[1]

[Footnote 1: Amongst the incidents ingeniously pressed into the support
of this conjecture is the use by the natives of Ceylon of those _double
canoes_ and _boats with outriggers_, which are never used on the Arabian
side of India, but which are peculiar to the Malayan race in almost
every country to which they have migrated; Madagascar and the Comoro
islands, Sooloo, Luzon, the Society Islands, and Tonga. PRITCHARD'S
_Races of Man_, ch. iv. p. 17. For a sketch of this peculiar canoe, see
Vol. II. Pt. VII. ch. i.

There is a dim tradition that the first settlers in Ceylon arrived from
the coasts of China. It is stated in the introduction to RIBEYRO'S
_History of Ceylon_, but rejected by VALENTYN, ch, iv. p. 61.

The legend prefixed to RIBEYRO is as follows. "Si nous en croyons les
historiens Portugais, les Chinois out ete les premiers qui ont habite
cette isle, et cela ar