ned with gems and
native pearls; the decorated terraces of the Bo-tree, and the Brazen
Palace, with its thousand chambers and its richly embellished halls. The
city was enclosed by a rampart upwards of twenty feet in height[1],
which was afterwards replaced by a wall[2]; and, so late as the fourth
century, the Chinese traveller Fa Hian describes the condition of the
place in terms which fully corroborate the accounts of the _Mahawanso_.
It was crowded, he says, with nobles, magistrates, and foreign
merchants; the houses were handsome, and the public buildings richly
adorned. The streets and highways were broad and level, and halls for
preaching and reading _bana_ were erected in all the thoroughfares. He
was assured that the island contained not less than from fifty to sixty
thousand ecclesiastics, who all ate in common; and of whom from five to
six thousand were supported by the bounty of the king.

[Footnote 1: By WASABHA, A.D. 66. _Mahawanso_, ch. xxxv. p. 222.]

[Footnote 2: TURNOUR, in his _Epitome of the History of Ceylon_, says
that Anarajapoora was enclosed by a rampart seven cubits high, B.C. 41,
and that A.D. 66 King Wasabha built a wall round the city sixteen gows
in circumference. As he estimates the gow at four English miles, this
would give an area equal to about 300 square miles. A space so
prodigious for the capital seems to be disproportionate to the extent of
the kingdom, and far too extended for the wants of the population.
TURNOUR does not furnish the authority on which he gives the dimensions,
nor have I been able to discover it in the _Rajavali_ nor in the
_Rajaratnacari_. The _Mahawanso_ alludes to the fact of Anarajapoora
having been fortified by Wasabha, but, instead of a wall, the work which
it describes this king to have undertaken, was the raising of the height
of the rampart from seven cubits to eighteen (_Mahawanso_, ch. xxxv. p.
222). Major Forbes, in his account of the ruins of the ancient city,
repeats the story of their former extent, in which he no doubt
considered that the high authority of Turnour in matters of antiquity
was sustained by a statement made by Lieutenant Skinner, who had
surveyed the ruins in 1822, to the effect that he had discovered near
Alia-parte the remains of masonry, which he concluded to be a portion of
the ancient city wall running north and south and forming the west face;
and, as Alia-parte is seven miles from Anarajapoora, he regarded this
discovery as conf