Considering the situation of Ceylon and the Indian origin of the people, it was certain that numerous tales would be similar to those of India, if not identical with them; but, with the exception of the story of the Creation, there are merely bare references to the Indian deities in about four of the tales in this volume.
The great majority of the folk-tales collected by me, and almost the whole of those given in this volume, come from districts of the far interior of the island, where story-books in Sinhalese, Tamil,[4] or Arabic do not appear to have penetrated, and English is unknown by the villagers. Such tales are therefore nearly free from modern extraneous influences, and must be looked upon as often of genuine Sinhalese origin, even when they utilise the usual stock incidents of Indian folk-stories. A very few which resemble Jātaka stories may owe their dissemination to Buddhist teaching, and doubtless some also were orally transmitted by immigrants who were often of South Indian nationality—as their similarity to South Indian stories shows—or in some instances may have been settlers from the Ganges valley, or near it.
With regard to the latter, it is not probable that they consisted only of the early immigrants of pre-Christian times. King Niśśanka-Malla, who reigned from 1198 to 1207 A.D., has recorded in his inscriptions that he was a native of Sinhapura, then apparently the capital of the Kālinga kingdom, which extended far down the east coast of India, southward from the lower part of the Ganges valley; and he and his Chief Queen Subhadrā, a Kālinga Princess, must have brought into Ceylon many of their fellow-countrymen. The Queens of two other earlier Kings of Ceylon were also Princesses from Kālinga.
In the Galpota inscription at Polannaruwa (Prof. E. Müller’s Ancient Inscriptions in Ceylon, No. 148), he stated that “invited by the King [Parākrama-Bāhu I], who was his senior kinsman, to come and reign over his hereditary kingdom of Lakdiva [Ceylon], Vīra Niśśan̥ka-Malla landed with a great retinue in Lan̥kā” [Ceylon]. Further on in the same inscription he stated that “he sent to the country of Kālinga, and caused many Princesses of the Soma and Sūrya races to be brought hither.”
A connexion with the Kālinga kingdom seems to have been maintained from early times. In his inscriptions the same king claimed that the sovereignty of Ceylon belonged by right to the Kālinga dynasty. He described himself in his Dambulla inscription (Ancient Inscriptions, No. 143), as “the liege lord of Lakdiva by right of birth, deriving descent from the race of King Wijaya,” the first king of Ceylon, who according to the Sinhalese historical works was also born at a town called Sinhapura, which is stated to have been founded by his father. In the Galpota inscription we read of “Princes of the Kālinga race to whom the island of Lan̥kā has been peculiarly appropriate since the reign of Wijaya.”
Niśśanka-Malla was succeeded by his elder half-brother, Sāhasa-Malla, who remarked in his Polannaruwa inscription (Anc. Inscriptions, No. 156) that he also was born at Sinhapura. He, too, claimed that Wijaya was a member of their family. He said, “Because King Wijaya, having destroyed the Yakshas, established Lan̥kā like a field made by rooting out the stumps, it is a place much protected by Kings from this very family.”
Thus it will be seen that stories which are current in Central India, or the lower part of the Ganges Valley, or even the Panjāb, as well as tales of Indian animals such as the Lion, may have been brought direct to Ceylon by immigrants from Kālinga, or Magadha, or Bengal. Apparently it is in this manner that the evident connexion between the tales of Ceylon and Kashmīr is to be explained, the stories passing from Magadha or neighbouring districts, to Kashmīr on the one side, and from Magadha or Kālinga to Ceylon on the other.
To show the connexion of the Sinhalese stories with those of India, the outlines of some Indian parallels have been appended after each tale, as well as a very few from the interior of Western Africa; but no European variants, except in two instances, where they are inserted for the benefit of readers in Ceylon.
The stories have been arranged in two parts. In the first one are those told by members of the Cultivating Caste and Village Vaeddās; in the second one those related of or by members of lower castes. Those of each caste are given consecutively, the animal stories in each case coming last.
The general reader is advised to pay no attention to diacritical marks or dots which indicate separate letters in the Sinhalese alphabet, or to note only the long vowels. In all cases ae is to be pronounced as a diphthong, like a in “hat,” and not to rhyme with “me.” It is short where not marked long.