[Footnote 1:  A.D. 405.  Gibbon alludes with natural surprise to his discovery of the fact, that prior to the reign of Justinian, the “monarch of China had actually received an embassy from the Island of Ceylon.”—­Decline and Fall, c. xl.]

[Footnote 2:  Leang-shoo, A.D. 630, b. liv. p. 13.  The ultimate fate of this renowned work of art is related in the Leang-shoo, and several other of the Chinese chronicles.  Throughout the | Tsin and Sung dynasties it was preserved in the Wa-kwan monastery at Nankin, along with five other statues and three paintings which were esteemed chefs-d’oeuvre.  The jade-stone image was at length destroyed in the time of Tung-hwan, of the Tse dynasty; first, the arm was broken off, and eventually the body taken to make hair-pins and armlets for the emperor’s favourite consort Pwan. Nan-she, b. lxxviii. p. 13. Tung-teen, b. cxciii. p. 8. Tae-ping, &c., b. dcclxxxvii. p. 6.]

During the same century there were four other embassies from Ceylon.  One A.D. 428, when the King Cha-cha Mo-ho-nan (Raja Maha Naama) sent an address to the emperor, which will be found in the history of the Northern Sung dynasty[1], together with a “model of the shrine of the tooth,” as a token of fidelity;—­two in A.D. 430 and A.D. 435; and a fourth A.D. 456, when five priests, of whom one was Nante, the celebrated sculptor, brought as a gift to the emperor a “three-fold image of Buddha."[2]

[Footnote 1:  Sung-shoo, A.D. 487, b. xcvii. p. 5.]

[Footnote 2:  Probably one in each of the three orthodox attitudes,—­sitting in meditation, standing to preach, and reposing in “nirwana.” Wei-shoo, “History of the Wei Tartar Dynasty,” A.D. 590, b. cxiv. p. 9.]

According to the Chinese annalists, the kings of Ceylon, in the sixth century, acknowledged themselves vassals of the Emperor of China, and in the year 515, on the occasion of Kumara Das raising the chatta, an envoy was despatched with tribute to China, together with an address, announcing the royal accession, in which the king intimates that he “had been desirous to go in person, but was deterred by fear of winds and waves."[1]

[Footnote 1:  Leang-shoo, b. liv. p. 10. Y[(u]h-hae, “Ocean of Gems,” A.D. 1331, b. clii. p. 33.  The latter authority announces in like terms two other embassies with tribute to China, one in A.D. 523, and another in the reign of Kirti Sena, A.D. 527.  The Tsih-foo yuen-kwei mentions a similar mission in A.D. 531, b. dcccclxviii. p. 20.]

But although all these embassies are recorded in the Chinese chronicles as so many instances of acknowledged subjection, there is every reason to believe that the magniloquent terms in which they are described are by no means to be taken in a literal sense, and that the offerings enumerated were merely in recognition of the privilege of commercial intercourse subsisting between the two nations:  but as the Chinese literati affect a lofty contempt for commerce, all allusion to trade is omitted; and beyond an incidental remark in some works of secondary importance, the literature of China observes a dignified silence on the subject.