Dekkan. Busied with such employments, the early colonists
had no leisure for military service; besides, whilst Devenipiatissa and
his successors were earnestly engaged in the formation of religious
communities, and the erection of sacred edifices in the northern portion
of the island, various princes of the same family occupied themselves in
forming settlements in the south and west; and hence, whilst their
people were zealously devoted to the service and furtherance of
religion, the sovereign at Anarajapoora was compelled, through a
combination of causes, to take into his pay a body of Malabars[1] for
the protection both of the coast and the interior. Of the foreigners
thus confided in, "two youths, powerful in their cavalry and navy, named
Sena and Gottika,"[2] proved unfaithful to their trust, and after
causing the death of the king Suratissa (B.C. 237), retained the supreme
power for upwards of twenty years, till overthrown in their turn and put
to death by the adherents of the legitimate line.[3] Ten years, however,
had barely elapsed when the attempt to establish a Tamil sovereign was
renewed by Elala, "a Malabar of the illustrious Uju tribe, who invaded
the island from the Chola[4] country, killed the reigning king Asela,
and ruled the kingdom for forty years, administering justice impartially
to friends and foes."

[Footnote 1: The term "Malabar" is used throughout the following pages
in the comprehensive sense in which it is applied in the Singhalese
chronicles to the continental invaders of Ceylon; but it must be
observed that the adventurers in these expeditions, who are styled in
the _Mahawanso, "damilos"_ or Tamils, came not only from the
south-western tract of the Dekkan, known in modern geography as
"Malabar," but also from all parts of the peninsula, as far north as
Cuttack and Orissa.]

[Footnote 2: _Mahawanso_, ch. xxi. p. 127.]

[Footnote 3: _Mahawanso_, xxi.; _Rajaratnacari_, ch. ii.]

[Footnote 4: Chola, or Solee, was the ancient name of Tanjore, and the
country traversed by the river Caveri.]

[Sidenote: B.C. 161.]

Such is the encomium which the _Mahawanso_ passes on an infidel usurper,
because Elala offered his protection to the priesthood; but the orthodox
annalist closes his notice of his reign by the moral reflection that
"even he who was an heretic, and doomed by his creed to perdition,
obtained an exalted extent of supernatural power from having eschewed
impiety and injustice."[1]