[Sidenote:  A.D. 275.]

The new sect had, however, established an interest in high places; and Sangha-mitta, one of the exiled priests, returning from banishment on the death of the king, so ingratiated himself with his successor, that he was entrusted with the education of the king’s sons.  One of the latter, Maha-Sen, succeeded to the throne, A.D. 275, and, openly professing his adoption of the Wytulian tenets, dispossessed the popular priesthood, and overthrew the Brazen Palace.  With the materials of the great wihara, he constructed at the sacred Bo-tree a building as a receptacle for relics, and a temple in which the statue of Buddha was to be worshipped according to the rites of the reformed religion.[1]

[Footnote 1:  Mahawanso, ch. xxxvii. p. 235.]

[Sidenote:  A.D. 275.]

So bold an innovation roused the passions of the nation; the people prepared for revolt, and a conflict was imminent, when the schismatic Sangha-mitta was suddenly assassinated, and the king, convinced of his errors, addressed himself with energy to restore the buildings he had destroyed, and to redress the mischiefs chiefs caused by his apostacy.  He demolished the dewales of the Hindus, in order to use their sites for Buddhist wiharas; he erected nunneries, constructed the Jaytawanarama (a dagoba at Anarajapoora), formed the great tank of Mineri by drawing a dam across the Kara-ganga and that of Kandelay or Dantalawa, and consecrated the 20,000 fields which it irrigated to the Dennanaka Wihare.[1] “He repaired numerous dilapidated temples throughout the island, made offerings of a thousand robes to a thousand priests, formed sixteen tanks to extend cultivation—­there is no defining the extent of his charity”—­and having performed during his existence acts both of piety and impity, the Mahawanso cautiously adds, “his destiny after death was according to his merits."[2]

[Footnote 1:  TURNOUR’s Epitome, p. 25.]

[Footnote 2:  Mahawanso, ch. xxxiii. p. 238.]

[Sidenote:  A.D. 302.]

With King Maha-Sen end the glories of the “superior dynasty” of Ceylon.  The “sovereigns of the Suluwanse, who followed,” says the Rajavali, “were no longer of the unmixed blood, but the offspring of parents, only one of whom was descended from the sun, and the other from the bringer of the Bo-tree or the sacred tooth; on that account, because the God Sakkraia had ceased to watch over Ceylon, because piety had disappeared, and the city of Anarajapoora was in ruins, and because the fertility of the land was diminished, the kings who succeeded Maha-Sen were no longer reverenced as of old."[1]

[Footnote 1:  Rajavali, p. 289.]

[Sidenote:  A.D. 302.]