ith his successor, that
he was entrusted with the education of the king's sons. One of the
latter, Maha-Sen, succeeded to the throne, A.D. 275, and, openly
professing his adoption of the Wytulian tenets, dispossessed the popular
priesthood, and overthrew the Brazen Palace. With the materials of the
great wihara, he constructed at the sacred Bo-tree a building as a
receptacle for relics, and a temple in which the statue of Buddha was to
be worshipped according to the rites of the reformed religion.[1]

[Footnote 1: _Mahawanso_, ch. xxxvii. p. 235.]

[Sidenote: A.D. 275.]

So bold an innovation roused the passions of the nation; the people
prepared for revolt, and a conflict was imminent, when the schismatic
Sangha-mitta was suddenly assassinated, and the king, convinced of his
errors, addressed himself with energy to restore the buildings he had
destroyed, and to redress the mischiefs chiefs caused by his apostacy.
He demolished the dewales of the Hindus, in order to use their sites for
Buddhist wiharas; he erected nunneries, constructed the Jaytawanarama (a
dagoba at Anarajapoora), formed the great tank of Mineri by drawing a
dam across the Kara-ganga and that of Kandelay or Dantalawa, and
consecrated the 20,000 fields which it irrigated to the Dennanaka
Wihare.[1] "He repaired numerous dilapidated temples throughout the
island, made offerings of a thousand robes to a thousand priests, formed
sixteen tanks to extend cultivation--there is no defining the extent of
his charity"--and having performed during his existence acts both of
piety and impity, the _Mahawanso_ cautiously adds, "his destiny after
death was according to his merits."[2]

[Footnote 1: TURNOUR's _Epitome_, p. 25.]

[Footnote 2: _Mahawanso_, ch. xxxiii. p. 238.]

[Sidenote: A.D. 302.]

With King Maha-Sen end the glories of the "superior dynasty" of Ceylon.
The "sovereigns of the _Suluwanse_, who followed," says the _Rajavali_,
"were no longer of the unmixed blood, but the offspring of parents, only
one of whom was descended from the sun, and the other from the bringer
of the Bo-tree or the sacred tooth; on that account, because the God
Sakkraia had ceased to watch over Ceylon, because piety had disappeared,
and the city of Anarajapoora was in ruins, and because the fertility of
the land was diminished, the kings who succeeded Maha-Sen were no longer
reverenced as of old."[1]

[Footnote 1: _Rajavali_, p. 289.]

[Sidenote: A.D. 302.]

The prosp