මහාවංශය (Great Chronicle of Ceylon)

undeserved distrust and exaggerated scepticism. I draw attention expressly to this essay because it naturally has many points of contact with my own researches.

If we next consider the two chronicles as a whole, without any prepossessions, it is not easy to understand whence this widespread doubt of their trustworthiness. The presentation of the subject, taken as a whole, may be called modest and simple, indeed dry. True, there is no lack of fables and marvellous tales. But they appear as outward decoration which can be easily omitted. Besides, we always meet with such stories of miracles in connexion with events of a quite clearly defined category, namely, when it is a question of celebrating the splendour and majesty of the Buddhist Order.

Mahinda arrives in Ceylon in marvellous fashion, flying through the air; miraculous phenomena accompany the "Establishment of the Doctrine," the arrival of the relics, the planting of the Bodhi-tree, and so forth. None of this can appear strange to us. The ornament with which tradition here decks out the victory of the Order and the true faith enfolds a deeper meaning. The facts in themselves are extraordinarily simple; but to the pious sentiment of the believer they seemed great; and fantasy glorifies them with the many-coloured lights of miracle and legend.

I do not conceal from myself that this judgement of the situation lays itself open to the reproach that our method is simply to eliminate from the tradition all the miraculous stories and consider what is left over as authentic history. 1 But I think WINDISCH 2 has shown admirably how, in fact, in the Buddhist tradition, around a relative small nucleus all kinds of additions have collected in time, by which events, originally simple, are withdrawn gradually into the region