[Footnote 3:  The Ming-she calls the Emperor “Ching-tsoo.”]

[Footnote 4:  So called in the Chinese original.]

From the beginning of the 13th century to the extinction of the Singhalese dynasty in the 18th, the island cannot be said to have been ever entirely freed from the presence of the Malabars.  Even when temporarily subdued, they remained with forced professions of loyalty; Damilo soldiers were taken into pay by the Singhalese sovereigns; the dewales of the Hindu worship were built in close contiguity to the wiharas of Buddhism, and by frequent intermarriages the royal line was almost as closely allied to the kings of Chola and Pandya as to the blood of the Suluwanse.[1]

[Footnote 1:  Rajavali, p.261, 262.  In A.D. 1187 on the death or Mahindo V., the second in succession from the great Prakrama, the crown devolved upon Kirti Nissanga, who was summoned from Calinga on the Coromandel Coast.  On the extinction of the recognised line of Suluwanse in A.D. 1706, a prince from Madura, who was merely a connection by marriage, succeeded to the throne.  The King Raja Singha, who detained Knox in captivity, A.D. 1640, was married to a Malabar princess.  In fact, the four last kings of Ceylon, prior to its surrender to Great Britain, were pure Malabars, without a trace of Singhalese blood.]

[Sidenote:  A.D. 1505.]

It was in this state of exhaustion, that the Singhalese were brought into contact with Europeans, during the reign of Dharma Prakrama IX, when the Portuguese, who had recently established themselves in India, appeared for the first time in Ceylon, A.D. 1505.  The paramount sovereign was then living at Cotta; and the Rajavali records the event in the following terms:—­“And now it came to pass that in the Christian year 1522 A.D., in the month of April, a ship from Portugal arrived at Colombo, and information was brought to the king, that there were in the harbour a race of very white and beautiful people, who wear boots and hats of iron, and never stop in one place.  They eat a sort of white stone, and drink blood; and if they get a fish they give two or three ride in gold for it; and besides, they have guns with a noise louder than thunder, and a ball shot from one of them, after traversing a league, will break a castle of marble."[1]

[Footnote 1:  Rajavali, Upham’s version, p. 278.]

Before proceeding to recount the intercourse of the islanders with these civilised visitors, and the grave results which followed, it will be well to cast a glance over the condition of the people during the period which preceded, and to cull from the native historians such notices of their domestic and social position as occur in passages intended by the Singhalese annalists to chronicle only those events which influenced the national worship, or the exploits of those royal personages, who earned immortality by their protection of Buddhism.