Buddha, and monasteries for
his priests, but conscious of the enormity of his crimes, these
endowments were conferred in the names of his minister and his children.
Failing to "derive merit" from such acts, stung with remorse, and
anxious to test public feeling, he enlarged his deeds of charity; he
formed gardens at the capital, and planted groves of mangoes throughout
the island. Desirous to enrich a wihara at Anarajapoora, he proposed to
endow it with a village, but "the ministers of religion, regardful of
the reproaches of the world, declined accepting gifts at the hands of a
parricide. Kasyapa, bent on befriending them, dedicated the village to
Buddha, after which they consented, _on the ground that it was then the
property of the divine teacher_." Impelled, says the _Mahawanso_, by the
irrepressible dread of a future existence, he strictly performed his
"aposaka"[2] vows, practised the virtue of non-procrastination, acquired
the "dathanga,"[3] and caused books to be written, and image and
alms-edifices to be formed.

[Footnote 1: I am indebted to the family of the late Mr. Turnour for
access to a manuscript translation of a further portion of the
_Mahawanso_, from which this continuation of the narrative is
extracted.]

[Footnote 2: A lay devotee who takes on himself the obligation of
asceticism without putting on the yellow robe.]

[Footnote 3: The dathanga or "teles-dathanga" are the thirteen
ordinances by which the cleaving to existence is destroyed, involving
piety, abstinence, and self-mortification.--HARDY'S _Eastern Monachism_,
ch. ii. p. 9.]

[Illustration: FORTIFIED ROCK OF SIGIRI]

[Sidenote: A.D. 495.]

Meanwhile, after an interval of eighteen years, Mogallana, having in his
exile collected a sufficient force, returned from India to avenge the
murder of his father; and the brothers encountered each other in a
decisive engagement at Ambatthakolo in the Seven Corles. Kasyapa,
perceiving a swamp in his front, turned the elephant which he rode into
a side path to avoid it; on which his army in alarm raised the shout
that "their liege lord was flying," and in the confusion which followed,
Mogallana, having struck off the head of his brother, returned the krese
to its scabbard, and led his followers to take possession of the
capital; where he avenged the death of his father, by the execution of
the minister who had consented to it. He established a marine force to
guard the island against the descents