To relieve the obscurity of their writings, and supply the omissions, occasioned by the fetters of rhythm and the necessity of permutations and elisions, required to accommodate their phraseology to the obligations of verse; the Pali authors of antiquity were accustomed to accompany their metrical compositions with a tika or running commentary, which contained a literal version of the mystical text, and supplied illustrations of its more abstruse passages.  Such a tika on the Mahawanso was generally known to have been written; but so utter was the neglect into which both it and the original text had been permitted to fall, that Turnour till 1826 had never met with an individual who had critically read the one, or more than casually heard of the existence of the other.[1] At length, amongst the books which, were procured for him by the high, priest of Saffragam, was one which proved to be this neglected commentary on the mystic and otherwise unintelligible Mahawanso; and by the assistance of this precious document he undertook, with confidence, a translation into English of the long lost chronicle, and thus vindicated the claim of Ceylon to the possession of an authentic and unrivalled record of its national history.

[Footnote 1:  TURNOUR’s Mahawanso, introduction, vol. i. p. ii.]

The title “Mahawanso,” which means literally the “Genealogy of the Great,” properly belongs only to the first section of the work, extending from B.C. 543 to A.D. 301,[1] and containing the history of the early kings, from Wijayo to Maha Sen, with whom the Singhalese consider the “Great Dynasty” to end.  The author of this portion was Mahanamo, uncle of the king Dhatu Sena, in whose reign it was compiled, between the years A.D. 459 and 477, from annals in the vernacular language then existing at Anarajapoora.[2]

[Footnote 1:  Although the Mahawanso must be regarded as containing the earliest historical notices of Ceylon, the island, under its Sanskrit name of Lanka, occupies a prominent place in the mythical poems of the Hindus, and its conquest by Rama is the theme of the Ramayana, one of the oldest epics in existence.  In the Raja-Tarangini also, an historical chronicle which may be regarded as the Mahawanso of Kashmir, very early accounts of Ceylon are contained, and the historian records that the King Megavahana, who, according to the chronology of Troyer, reigned A.D. 24, made an expedition to Ceylon for the purpose of extending Buddhism, and visited Adam’s Peak, where he had an interview with the native sovereign.—­Raja-Tarangini, Book iii. sl. 71-79. Ib. vol. ii. p. 364.]

[Footnote 2:  Mahawanso, ch. i.  The Arabian travellers in Ceylon mention the official historiographers employed by order of the kings.  See Vol.  I Pt.  III. ch. viii. p. 387, note.]