[Footnote 1:  Makalantissa, who reigned B.C. 41, “built a rampart seven cubits high, and dug a ditch round the capital.”—­Mahawanso, ch. xxxiv. p. 210.]

[Footnote 2:  Rajavali, p. 212; Mahawanso, ch. xxv. p. 151.]

[Footnote 3:  Rajavali, p. 187.]

[Footnote 4:  Rajavali, p. 216; Mahawanso ch. xxv. p. 152.]

At a later time, the Malabars, when in possession of the northern portion of the island, formed a chain of strong “forts” from the eastern to the western coast, and the Singhalese, in imitation of them, occupied similar positions.  The most striking example of mediaeval fortification which still survives, is the imperishable rock of Sigiri, north-east of Dambool, to which the infamous Kassyapa retired with his treasures, after the assassination of his father, King Dhatu Sena, A.D. 459; when having cleared its vicinity, and surrounded it by a rampart, the figures of lions with which he decorated it, obtained for it the name of Sihagiri, the “Lion-rock.”  But the real defences of Sigiri were its precipitous cliffs, and its naturally scarped walls, which it was not necessary to strengthen by any artificial structures.

Their rocky hills, and the almost impenetrable forests which enveloped them, were in every age the chief security of the Singhalese; and so late as the 12th century, the inscription engraved on the rock at Dambool, in describing the strength of the national defences under the King Kirti Nissanga, enumerates them as “strongholds in the midst of forests, and those upon steep hills, and the fastnesses surrounded by water."[1]

[Footnote 1:  TURNOUR’S Epitome and Appendix, p. 95.]

Thorn-gates.—­The device, retained down to the period of the capture of Kandy by the British, when the passes into the hill country were defended by thick plantations of formidable thorny trees, appears to have prevailed in the earliest times.  The protection of Mahelo, a town assailed by Dutugaimunu, B.C. 162, consisting in its being “surrounded on all sides with the thorny dadambo creeper, within which was a triple line of fortifications."[1]

[Footnote 1:  Mahawanso, ch. xxv. p. 153.  When Albuquerque attacked Malacca in A.D. 1511, the chief who defended the place “covered the streets with poisoned thorns, to gore the Portuguese coming in” FARIA Y SOUZA, vol. i. p. 180.  VALENTYN, in speaking of the dominions of the King of Kandy during the Dutch occupation of the Low Country, describes the density of the forests, “which not only serve to divide the earldoms one from another, but, above all, tend to the fortification of the country, on which account no one dare, on pain of death, to thin or root out a tree, more than to permit a passage for one man at a time, it being impossible to pass through the rest thereof.”—­VALENTYN, Oud en Nieuw Oost-Indien, &c., ch. i. p. 22.  KNOX gives a curious account of these “thorn-gates.” (Part ii. ch. vi. p. 45.)]