e sad story of the interview, "is like the glimmering of
lightning, and what reflecting man would devote himself to its pursuit!"
The Raja approached his friend and, "from the manner these two persons
discoursed, side by side, mutually quenching the fire of their
afflictions, they appeared as if endowed with royal prosperity. Having
allowed him to eat, the thero (Mahanamo) in various ways administered
consolation and abstracted his mind from all desire to prolong his
existence." The king then bathed in the tank; and pointing to his friend
and to it, "these," he exclaimed to the messengers, "are all the
treasures I possess."

[Sidenote: A.D. 477.]

He was conducted back to the capital; and Kasyapa, suspecting that the
king was concealing his riches for his second son, Mogallana, gave the
order for his execution. Arrayed in royal insignia, he repaired to the
prison of the raja, and continued to walk to and fro in his presence:
till the king, perceiving his intention to wound his feelings, said
mildly, "Lord of statesmen, I bear the same affection towards you as to
Mogallana." The usurper smiled and shook his head; then stripping the
king naked and casting him into chains, he built up a wall, embedding
him in it with his face towards the east, and enclosed it with clay:
"thus the monarch Dhatu-Sena, who was murdered by his son, united
himself with Sakko the ruler of Devos."[1]

[Footnote 1: _Mahawanso_, ch. xxxviii. To this hideous incident Mahanamo
adds the following curious moral: "This Raja Dhatu Sena, at the time he
was improving the Kalawapi tank, observed a certain priest absorbed in
meditation, and not being able to rouse him from abstraction, had him
buried under the embankment by heaping earth over him. His own living
entombment _was the retribution_ manifested in this life for that
impious act."]

[Sidenote: A.D. 477.]

The parricide next directed his groom and his cook to assassinate his
brother, who, however, escaped to the coast of India.[1] Failing in the
attempt, he repaired to Sihagiri, a place difficult of access to men,
and having cleared it on all sides, he surrounded it with a rampart. He
built three habitations, accessible only by flights of steps, and
ornamented with figures of lions (siho), whence the fortress takes its
name, _Siha-giri_, "the Lion Rock." Hither he carried the treasures of
his father, and here he built a palace, "equal in beauty to the
celestial mansion." He erected temples to