anagghan   wajira-chumbatan.
a valuable diamond    hoop.

TURNOUR wrote his translation whilst residing at Kandy and with the aid of the priests, who being ignorant of English could only assist him to Singhalese equivalents for Pali words.  Hence he was probably led into the mistake of confounding wajira, which signifies “diamond,” or an instrument for cutting diamonds, with the modern word widura, which bears the same import but is colloquially used by the Kandyans for “glass.”  However, as glass as well as the diamond is an insulator of electricity, the force of the passage would be in no degree altered whichever of the two substances was really particularised.  TURNOUR was equally uncertain as to the meaning of chumbatan, which in one instance he has translated a “pinnacle” and in the other he has left without any English equivalent, simply calling “wajira-chumbatan” a “chumbatan of glass.”—­Mahawanso, ch. xxxviii. p. 259.]

[Illustration: 

  A. Crown of the Dagoba. 
  B. The capital, with the sun on each of the four sides. 
  C. The spire. 
  D. The umbrella or chatta, gilt and surrounded
     by “chumbatan,” a diamond circlet.]

The chief interest of the story centres in the words “to serve as a protection against lightning,” which do not belong to the metrical text of the Mahawanso, but are taken from the explanatory notes appended to it.  I have stated elsewhere, that it was the practice of authors who wrote in Pali verse, to attach to the text a commentary in prose, in order to illustrate the obscurities incident to the obligations of rhythm.  In this instance, the historian, who was the kinsman and intimate friend of the king, by whose order the glass pinnacle was raised in the fifth century, probably felt that the stanza descriptive of the placing of the first of those costly instruments in the reign of Sanghatissa, required some elucidation, and therefore inserted a passage in the “tika,” by which his poem was accompanied, to explain that the motive of its erection was “for the purpose of averting the dangers of lightning."[1]

[Footnote 1:  The explanatory sentence in the “tika” is as follows: 

“Thupassa muddhani tatha naggha wajira-chumbatanti tathewa maha thupassa muddhani satasahasaggha nikan maha manincha patitha petwa ta—­ahetta asani upaddawa widdhanse natthan adhara walayamewn katwa anaggha wajira-chumbatancha pujeseti atho.”

Mr. DE SARAY and Mr. DE AIWIS concur in translating this passage as follows, “In like manner having placed a large gem, of a lac in value, on the top of the great thupa, he fixed below it, for the purpose of destroying the dangers of lightning, an invaluable diamond chumbatan, having made it like a supporting ring or circular rest.”  Words equivalent to those in italics, Mr. TURNOUR embodies in his translation, but placed them between brackets to denote that they wore a quotation.]