e "forced labour" of the subjugated races.
Civil dissensions, religious schisms, royal intrigues and assassinations
contributed equally with foreign invasions to diminish the influence of
the monarchy and exhaust the strength of the kingdom.

Of sixty-two sovereigns who reigned from the death of Maha-Sen, A.D.
301, to the accession of Prakrama Bahu, A.D. 1153, nine met a violent
death at the hands of their relatives or subjects, two ended their days
in exile, one was slain by the Malabars, and four committed suicide. Of
the lives of the larger number the Buddhist historians fail to furnish
any important incidents; they relate merely the merit which each
acquired by his liberality to the national religion or the more
substantial benefits conferred on the people by the formation of lakes
for irrigation.

[Sidenote: A.D. 330.]

[Sidenote: A.D. 339.]

Unembarrassed by any questions of external policy or foreign
expeditions, and limited to a narrow range of internal administration, a
few of the early kings addressed themselves to intellectual pursuits.
One immortalised himself in the estimation of the devout by his skill in
painting and sculpture, and in carving in ivory, arts which he displayed
by modelling statues of Buddha, and which he employed himself in
teaching to his subjects.[1] Another was equally renowned as a medical
author and a practitioner of surgery[2], and a third was so passionately
attached to poetry that in despair for the death of Kalidas[3], he flung
himself into the flames of the poet's funeral pile.

[Footnote 1: Detoo Tissa, A.D. 330, _Mahawanso_, xxxvii. p. 242.]

[Footnote 2: Budha Daasa, A.D. 339. _Mahawanso_, xxxvii, p. 243. His
work on medicine, entitled _Sara-sangraha_ or _Sarat-tha-Sambo_, is
still extant, and native practitioners profess to consult it.--TURNOUR'S
_Epitome_, p. 27.]

[Footnote 3: Not KALIDAS, the author of _Sacontala_, to whom Sir W.
Jones awards the title of "The Shakspeare of the East," but PANDITA
KALIDAS, a Singhalese poet, none of whose verses have been preserved.
His royal patron was Kumara Das, king of Ceylon, A.D. 513. For an
account of Kalidas, see DE ALWIS'S _Sidath Sangara_, p. cliv.]

[Sidenote: A.D. 400.]

With the exception of the embassy sent from Ceylon to Rome in the reign
of the Emperor Claudius[1], the earliest diplomatic intercourse with
foreigners of which a record exists, occurred in the fourth or fifth
centuries, when the Singhalese appear to