In the following year Ching-Ho, having been despatched on a similar mission to Ceylon, the king, A-lee-ko-nae-wah, decoyed his party into the interior, threw up stockades with a view to their capture, in the hope of a ransom, and ordered soldiers to the coast to plunder the Chinese junks.  But Ching-Ho, by a dexterous movement, avoided the attack, and invested the capital[1], made a prisoner of the king, succeeded in conveying him on board his fleet, and carried him captive to China, together with his queen, his children, his officers of state, and his attendants.  He brought away with him spoils, which were long afterwards exhibited in the Tsing-hae monastery at Nankin[2], and one of the commentaries on the Si-yu-ke of Hiouen Thseng, states that amongst the articles carried away, was the sacred tooth of Buddha.[3] “In the sixth month of the year 1411,” says the author of the Ming-She, “the prisoners were presented at court.  The Chinese ministers pressed for their execution, but the emperor, in pity for their ignorance, set them at liberty, but commanded them to select a virtuous man from the same family to occupy the throne.  All the captives declared in favour of Seay-pa-nae-na, whereupon an envoy was sent with a seal to invest him with the royal dignity, as a vassal of the empire,” and in that capacity he was restored to Ceylon, the former king being at the same time sent back to the island.[4] It would be difficult to identify the names in this story with the kings of the period, were it not stated in another chronicle, the Woo-he[)o]-peen, or Record of the Ming Dynasty, that Seay-pa-nae-na was afterwards named Pu-la-ko-ma Ba-zae La-cha, in which it is not difficult to recognise “Sri Prakrama Bahu Raja,” the sixth of his name, who transferred the seat of government from Gampola to Cotta, and reigned from A.D. 1410 to 1462.[5]

[Footnote 1:  Gampola.]

[Footnote 2:  S[)u]h-Wan-heen tung-kaou, book ccxxxvi p. 12.]

[Footnote 3:  See note at the end of this chapter.]

[Footnote 4:  Ming-she, b. cccxxvi. p. 5.  M. STANISLAS JULIEN intimates that the forthcoming volume of his version of the Si-yu-ki will contain the eleventh book, in which an account will be given of the expedition of Ching Ho.—­Memoires sur les Contrees Occidentales, tom. i. p. 26.  In anticipation of its publication, M. JULIEN has been so obliging as to make for me a translation of the passage regarding Ceylon, but it proves to be an annotation of the fifteenth century, which, by the inadvertence of transcribers, has become interpolated in the text of Hiouen-Thsang.  It contains, however, no additional facts or statements beyond the questionable one before alluded to, that the sacred tooth of Buddha was amongst the spoils carried to Pekin by Ching Ho.]