Enough material has been collected for a second volume, which it is hoped may be published next year.
As reference has been made to the subject in the foregoing extracts from Sinhalese inscriptions, a few lines may be added regarding the district from which Wijaya came, and his journey to Ceylon. The sentences that have been quoted prove that at the beginning of the thirteenth century A.D., it was claimed by two kings of Ceylon who came from Sinhapura in the Kālinga country that they were of the same family as Wijaya.
At a very early date the lands along the southern bank of the Ganges were divided into a series of states that once were independent. Proceeding eastward in the lower part of the valley, these were Magadha, occupying southern Bihār, with its capital Rājagaha (called also Rājagriha and Girivraja), afterwards abandoned in favour of Pāṭaliputta, near Patnā; Anga, separated from it by the river Campā (c pronounced as ch), on which was its capital Campā; Vanga or Banga, probably extending on both sides of the Ganges, and forming part of the modern Bengal; and Tāmalitta, or Tāmralipta, with a capital of the same name at Tamluk, near the southern mouth of the Ganges. Extending along the east coast was Kālinga; and between it and Magadha and Anga came the Puṇḍra and Ōḍra states, the latter occupying part of Orissa.
An old legend recorded that several of these states had a common origin. It was said that the wife of a Yādava king Vali or Bali had five sons, Anga, Vanga, Kālinga, Puṇḍra and Ōḍra or Sunga, each of whom founded a separate state. The names of the first four are grouped together several times in the Mahā Bhārata, as taking part with Kōśala and Magadha in the great legendary fight against the Pāṇḍavas, and on one day the troops from Magadha and Kālinga are said to have formed, with another people, one wing of the Kuru army.
Regarding Kālinga, Pliny gives the name of a race called the Maccocalingæ, who have been thought to belong to Orissa, and he wrote that the Modogalingæ occupied a very large island in the Ganges, that is, apparently part of the delta.
At a later date there were said to be three districts called collectively Trikālinga. Whether these were portions of the more southern part of the Kālinga country only, or included the land of the Modogalingæ, is not clear. If the Kālinga kingdom once included the territory of the Modogalingæ, the Tāmalitta district would be part of the Kālinga country at that time; but apparently Vanga was unconnected with Kālinga, the two being mentioned as separate kingdoms.
Divested of its impossibilities, the story of Wijaya’s ancestry which is contained in the Sinhalese histories is that a king of Vanga, who had married the daughter of a king of Kālinga, had a daughter who joined a caravan that was proceeding to Magadha. On the way, either a robber chief called Sīha, “Lion,” attacked and plundered the caravan, and carried off the Princess, or she joined a member of the caravan who had that name. They settled down in a wild tract of country termed Lāḷa, near the western border of the Vanga territory. There she had two children—the eldest being Sīha-Bāhu—with whom she afterwards returned to the Vanga capital, where her cousin Anura, who became King of Vanga, is said to have married her. Her son Sīha-Bāhu went back to his father’s district, Lāḷa, founded a town called Sīhapura or Sinhapura, and lived there as the ruler of the country around. Evidently it was a subordinate district belonging to Vanga; it is stated that the Vanga king granted it to him (Mah. i. p. 31). It is not mentioned in the Rāmāyana, the Mahā Bhārata, the Jātaka stories, or in the lists of countries given in the Purānas to which I have access; but the people of Lāṭa are referred to in a tenth century grant from Bhāgalpur, a town on territory that once formed the eastern part of Magadha (Indo-Aryans, by Dr. R. Mitra, ii. 273).
The first marriage or elopement of the Princess does not appear to have affected the status of her son Sīha-Bāhu. According to the histories, his eldest son, Wijaya, eventually married the daughter of the Pāṇḍiyan king of the southern Madura, and his second son, Sumitta, who succeeded him, married the daughter of the King of Madda or Madra, probably a small eastern state of that name, rather than the distant Madda in the Panjāb.
The Sinhalese histories record that Wijaya was exiled on account of his lawless behaviour, but the truth of this statement may be doubted, and it is a suspicious fact that this part of the story resembles folk-tales from Kashmīr.[5] We are informed in those works not only that he was exiled, but that he was also forcibly deported by sea, together with seven hundred followers, and their wives and children, that is, two or three thousand persons.
All that is actually credible in this incident is that for a reason which is unknown, perhaps a love of adventure, or possibly at the solicitation of traders who had settled there, he proceeded by sea to Ceylon, where he became the first Sinhalese king. Most probably he accompanied a party of Magadhese or other merchants.