The legend tells how Mahinda and his following alighted on the Missaka mountain[27] whither King Devanampiya Tissa had gone in the course of a hunt.  The monks and the royal cortege met:  Mahinda, after testing the king’s intellectual capacity by some curious dialectical puzzles, had no difficulty in converting him.[28] Next morning he proceeded to Anuradhapura and was received with all honour and enthusiasm.  He preached first in the palace and then to enthusiastic audiences of the general public.  In these discourses he dwelt chiefly on the terrible punishment awaiting sinners in future existences.[29]

We need not follow in detail the picturesque account of the rapid conversion of the capital.  The king made over to the Church the Mahamegha garden and proceeded to construct a series of religious edifices in Anuradhapura and its neighbourhood.  The catalogue of them is given in the Mahavamsa[30] and the most important was the Mahavihara monastery, which became specially famous and influential in the history of Buddhism.  It was situated in the Mahamegha garden close to the Bo-tree and was regarded as the citadel of orthodoxy.  Its subsequent conflicts with the later Abhayagiri monastery are the chief theme of Sinhalese ecclesiastical history and our version of the Pali Pitakas is the one which received its imprimatur.

Tissa is represented as having sent two further missions to India.  The first went in quest of relics and made its way not only to Pataliputra but to the court of Indra, king of the gods, and the relics obtained, of which the principal was the Buddha’s alms-bowl,[31] were deposited in Anuradhapura.  The king then built the Thuparama dagoba over them and there is no reason to doubt that the building which now bears this name is genuine.  The story may therefore be true to the extent that relics were brought from India at this early period.

The second mission was despatched to bring a branch of the tree[32] under which the Buddha had sat when he obtained enlightenment.  This narrative[33] is perhaps based on a more solid substratum of fact.  The chronicles connect the event with the desire of the Princess Anula to become a nun.  Women could receive ordination only from ordained nuns and as these were not to be found on the island it was decided to ask Asoka to send a branch of the sacred tree and also Mahinda’s sister Sanghamitta, a religieuse of eminence.  The mission was successful.  A branch from the Bo-tree was detached, conveyed by Asoka to the coast with much ceremony and received in Ceylon by Tissa with equal respect.  The princess accompanied it.  The Bo-tree was planted in the Meghavana garden.  It may still be seen and attracts pilgrims not only from Ceylon but from Burma and Siam.  Unlike the buildings of Anuradhapura it has never been entirely neglected and it is clear that it has been venerated as the Bo-tree from an early period of Sinhalese history.  Botanists consider its long life, though remarkable, not impossible since