C. 2387; a second commotion is ascribed to the age
of Panduwaasa, B.C. 504; and the subsidence of the shore adjacent to
Colombo is said to have taken place 200 years later, in the reign of
Devenipiatissa, B.C. 306. The event is thus recorded in the _Rajavali_,
one of the sacred books of Ceylon:--"In these days the sea was seven
leagues from Kalany; but on account of what had been done to the
teeroonansee (a priest who had been tortured by the king of Kalany), the
gods who were charged with the conservation of Ceylon, became enraged
and caused the sea to deluge the land; and as during the epoch called
_duwapawrayaga_ on account of the wickedness of Rawana, 25 palaces and
400,000 streets were all over-run by the sea, so now in this time of
Tissa Raja, 100,000 large towns, 910 fishers' villages, and 400 villages
inhabited by pearl fishers, making together eleven-twelfths of the
territory of Kalany, were swallowed up by the sea."--_Rajavali_, vol.
ii. p. 180, 190.

FORBES observes the coincidence that the legend of the rising of the sea
in the age of Panduwaasa, 2378 B.C., very nearly concurs with the date
assigned to the Deluge of Noah, 2348,--_Eleven Years in Ceylon_, vol.
ii. p. 258. A tradition is also extant, that a submersion took place at
a remote period on the east coast of Ceylon, whereby the island of
Giri-dipo, which is mentioned in the first chapter of the _Mahawanso_,
was engulfed, and the dangerous rocks called the Great and Little Basses
are believed to be remnants of it.--_Mahawanso_, c. i.

A _resume_ of the disquisitions which have appeared at various times as
to the submersion of a part of Ceylon, will be found in a Memoir _sur la
Geographie ancienne de Ceylon_, in the Journal Asiatique for January,
1857, 5th ser., vol. ix. p. 12; see also TURNOUR'S _Introd. to the
Mahawanso_, p. xxxiv.]

[Footnote 3: Some of the mammalia peculiar to the island are enumerated
at p. 160; birds found in Ceylon but not existing in India are alluded
to at p. 178, and Dr. A. GUENTHER, in a paper on the _Geographical
Distribution of Reptiles_, in the _Mag. of Nat. Hist._ for March, 1859,
says, "amongst these larger islands which are connected with the middle
palaeotropical region, none offers forms so different from the continent
and other islands as Ceylon. It might be considered the Madagascar of
the Indian region. We not only find there peculiar genera and species,
not again to be recognised in other parts; but even many o