[Sidenote:  A.D. 640.]

Hiouen Thsang, a Chinese traveller, wno visited India between 629 A.D. and 645[1], encountered numbers of exiles, who informed him that they fled from civil commotions in Ceylon, in which religion had undergone persecution, the king had lost his life, cultivation had been interrupted, and the island exhausted by famine.  This account of the Chinese voyager accords accurately with the events detailed in the Singhalese annals, in which it is stated that Sanghatissa was deposed and murdered, A.D. 623, by the Seneriwat, his minister, who, amidst the horrors of a general famine, was put to death by the people of Rohuna, and a civil war ensued; one result of which was the defeat of the Malabar mercenaries and their distribution as slaves to the temples.  Hiouen Thsang relates the particulars of his interviews with the fugitives, from whom he learned the extraordinary riches of Ceylon, the number and wealth of its wiharas, the density of its population in peaceful times, the fertility of its soil, and the abundance of its produce.[2]

[Footnote 1:  Histoire de la Vie de Hiouen Thsang, et de ses Voyages dans l’Inde depuis l’an 629 jusquen 643. Par HOEI-LI et YEN-THSANG, _&c.  Traduite du Chinois par_ STANISLAUS JULIEN, Paris, 1853.]

[Footnote 2:  “Ce royaume a sept mille li de tour, et sa capitale quarante li; la population est agglomeree, et la terre produit des grains en abondance.”—­HIOUEN-THSANG, liv. iv. p. 194.]

For nearly four hundred years, from the seventh till the eleventh century, the exploits and escapes of the Malabars occupy a more prominent portion of the Singbalese annals than that devoted to the policy of the native sovereigns.  They filled every office, including that of prime minister[1], and they decided the claims of competing candidates for the crown.  At length the island became so infested by their numbers that the feeble monarchs found it impracticable to effect their exclusion from Anarajapoora[2]; and to escape from their proximity, the kings in the eighth century began to move southwards, and transferred their residence to Pollanarrua, which eventually became the capital of the kingdom.  Enormous tanks were constructed in the vicinity of the new capital; palaces were erected, surpassing those of the old city in architectural beauty; dagobas were raised, nearly equal in altitude to the Thuparama and Ruanwelli, and temples and statues were hewn out of the living rock, the magnitude and beauty of whose ruins attest the former splendour of Pollanarrua.[3]

[Footnote 1:  TURNOUR’S Epitome, p. 33.]

[Footnote 2:  TURNOUR’S Epitome, A.D. 686, p. 31.]

[Footnote 3:  The first king who built a palace at Pollanarrua was Sri Sanga Bo II., A.D. 642.  His successor, Sri Sanga Bo III., took up his residence there temporarily, A.D. 702; it was made the capital by Kuda Akbo, A.D. 769, and its embellishment, the building of colleges, and the formation of tanks in its vicinity, were the occupations of numbers of his successors.]