of gems"[7] was disputed by the rival sovereign of a neighbouring kingdom.  So numerous were the followers of this gloomy idolatry of that time in Ceylon, that they gave the name of Nagadipo[8], the Island of Serpents, to the portion of the country which they held, in the same manner that Rhodes and Cyprus severally acquired the ancient designation of Ophiusa, from the fact of their being the residence of the Ophites, who introduced serpent-worship into Greece.[9]

[Footnote 1:  Mahawanso, ch. vii.; FA HIAN, Fo[)e]-kou[)e]-ki, ch. xxxvii.]

[Footnote 2:  Rajavali, p. 169.]

[Footnote 3:  REINAUD, Introd. to Abouldfeda, vol. i. sec. iii. p. ccxvi.  See also CLOUGH’S Singhalese Dictionary, vol. ii. p. 2.]

[Footnote 4:  MOUNTSTUART ELPHINSTONE’S, History of India, b. iv. ch. xi. p. 216.]

[Footnote 5:  The first descent of Gotama Buddha in Ceylon was amongst the Yakkhos at Bintenne; in his second visit he converted the “Naga King of Kalany,” near Colombo, Mahawanso, ch. i. p. 5.]

[Footnote 6:  FABER, Origin of Idolatry, b. ii ch. vii. p. 440.]

[Footnote 7:  Mahawanso, ch. i.]

[Footnote 8:  TURNOUR was unable to determine the position on the modern map of the ancient territory of Nagadipo.—­Introd. p. xxxiv.  CASIE CHITTY, in a paper in the Journal of the Ceylon Asiatic Society, 1848, p. 71, endeavours to identify it with Jaffna, The Rajaratnacari places it at the present Kalany, on the river of that name near Colombo (vol. ii. p. 22).  The Mahawanso in many passages alludes to the existence of Naga kingdoms on the continent of India, showing that at that time serpent-worship had not been entirely extinguished by Brahmanism in the Dekkan, and affording an additional ground for conjecture that the first inhabitants of Ceylon were a colony from the opposite coast of Calinga.]

[Footnote 9:  BRYANT’S Analysis of Mythology, chapter on Ophiolatria, vol. i p. 480, “Euboea means Oub-aia, and signifies the serpent island.” (Ib.)

But STRABO affords us a still more striking illustration of the Mahawanso, in calling the serpent worshippers of Ceylon “Serpents,” since he states that in Phrygia and on the Hellespont the people who were styled [Greek:  ophiogeneis], or the Serpent races, actually retained a physical affinity with the snakes with whom they were popularly identified, [Greek:  “entautha mytheuousi tous Ophiogeneis syngenneian tina echein pros tous oseis."]—­STRABO, lib. xiii. c. 588.

PLINY alludes to the same fable (lib. vii.).  And OVID, from the incident of Cadmus’ having sown the dragon’s teeth (that is, implanted Ophiolatria in Greece), calls the Athenians Serpentigenae.]

But whatever were the peculiarities of religion which distinguished the aborigines from their conquerors, the attention of Wijayo was not diverted from his projects of colonisation by any anxiety to make converts to his own religious belief.  The earliest cares of himself and his followers were directed to implant civilisation, and two centuries were permitted to elapse before the first effort was made to supersede the popular worship by the inculcation of a more intellectual faith.