Note 1 — CHAP. VI.

: There is something very striking in the facility with which aspirants to the throne obtained the instant acquiescence of the people, so soon as assassination had put them in possession of power. And this is the more remarkable, where the usurpers were of the lower grade, as in the instance of Subho, a gate porter, who murdered King Yasa Silo, A.D. 60, and reigned for six years (Mahaw. ch. xxxv. p. 218). A carpenter, and a carrier of fire-wood, were each accepted in succession as sovereigns, A.D. 47; whilst the "great dynasty" was still in the plenitude of its popularity. The mystery is perhaps referable to the dominant necessity of securing tranquillity at any cost, in the state of society where the means of cultivation were directly dependent on the village organisation, and famine and desolation would have been the instant and inevitable consequences of any commotions which interfered with the conservancy and repair of the tanks and means of irrigation, and the prompt application of labour to the raising and saving of produce at the instant when the fall of the rains or the ripening of the crops demanded its employment with the utmost vigour.

2: In theory the Singhalese monarchy was elective in the descendants of the Solar race: in practice, primogeniture had a preference, and the crown was either hereditary or became the prize of those who claimed to be of royal lineage. On reviewing the succession of kings from B.C. 307 to A.D. 1815, thirty-nine eldest sons (or nearly one fourth), succeeded to their fathers: and twenty-nine kings (or more than one fifth), were succeeded by brothers. Fifteen reigned for a period less than one year, and thirty for more than one year, and less than four. Of the Singhalese kings who died by violence, twenty-two were murdered by their successors; six were killed by other individuals; thirteen fell in feuds and war, and four committed suicide; eleven were dethroned, and their subsequent fate is unknown. Not more than two-thirds of the Singhalese kings retained sovereign authority to their decease, or reached the funeral pile without a violent death.—FORBES' Eleven Years in Ceylon, vol. i. ch. iv. p. 80, 97; JOINVILLE, Religion and Manners of the People of Ceylon; Asiat. Res. vol. vii. p. 423. See also Mahawanso, ch. xxiii. p. 201.