[Footnote 1:  Detoo Tissa, A.D. 330, Mahawanso, xxxvii. p. 242.]

[Footnote 2:  Budha Daasa, A.D. 339. Mahawanso, xxxvii, p. 243.  His work on medicine, entitled Sara-sangraha or Sarat-tha-Sambo, is still extant, and native practitioners profess to consult it.—­TURNOUR’S Epitome, p. 27.]

[Footnote 3:  Not KALIDAS, the author of Sacontala, to whom Sir W. Jones awards the title of “The Shakspeare of the East,” but PANDITA KALIDAS, a Singhalese poet, none of whose verses have been preserved.  His royal patron was Kumara Das, king of Ceylon, A.D. 513.  For an account of Kalidas, see DE ALWIS’S Sidath Sangara, p. cliv.]

[Sidenote:  A.D. 400.]

With the exception of the embassy sent from Ceylon to Rome in the reign of the Emperor Claudius[1], the earliest diplomatic intercourse with foreigners of which a record exists, occurred in the fourth or fifth centuries, when the Singhalese appear to have sent ambassadors to the Emperor Julian[2], and for the first time to have established a friendly connection with China.  It is strange, considering the religious sympathies which united the two people, that the native chronicles make no mention of the latter negotiations or their results, so that we learn of them only through Chinese historians.  The Encyclopoedia of MA-TOUAN-LIN, written at the close of the thirteenth century[3], records that Ceylon first entered into political relations with China in the fourth century.[4] It was about the year 400 A.D., says the author, “in the reign of the Emperor Nyan-ti, that ambassadors arrived from Ceylon bearing a statue of Fo in jade-stone four feet two inches high, painted in five colours, and of such singular beauty that one would have almost doubted its being a work of human ingenuity.  It was placed in the Buddhist temple at Kien-Kang (Nankin).”  In the year 428 A.D., the King of Ceylon (Maha Nama) sent envoys to offer tribute, and this homage was repeated between that period and A.D. 529, by three other Singhalese kings, whose names it is difficult to identify with their Chinese designations of Kia-oe, Kia-lo, and the Ho-li-ye.

[Footnote 1:  PLINY, lib. vi. c. 24.]

[Footnote 2:  AMMIANUS MARCELLINUS, lib.  XX. c. 7.]

[Footnote 3:  KLAPROTH doubts, “si la science de l’Europe a produit jusqu’a present un ouvrage de ce genre aussi bien execute et capable de soutenir la comparaison avec cette encyclopedie chinoise.”—­Journ.  Asiat. tom. xxi. p. 3.  See also Asiatic Journal, London, 1832, xxxv. p. 110.  It has been often reprinted in 100 large volumes.  M. STANISLAS JULIEN says that in another Chinese work, Pien-i-tien, or The History of Foreign Nations, there is a compilation including every passage in which Chinese authors have written of Ceylon, which occupies about forty pages 4to. Ib. tom. xxix. p. 39.  A number of these authorities will be found extracted in the chapter in which I have described the intercourse between China and Ceylon, Vol.  I. P. v. ch. iii.]