Note 1 — Chapter I

: SIR WILLIAM JONES adopted the legendary opinion that Ceylon "formerly perhaps, extended much farther to the west and south, so as to include Lanka or the equinoctial point of the Indian astronomers."—Discourse on the Institution of a Society for inquiring into the History, &c., of the Borderers, Mountaineers, and Islanders of Asia.—Works, vol. i. p. 120.

The Portuguese, on their arrival in Ceylon in the sixteenth century, found the natives fully impressed by the traditions of its former extent and partial submersion; and their belief in connection with it, will be found in the narratives and histories of De Barros and Diogo de Couto, from which they have been transferred, almost without abridgment, to the pages of Valentyn. The substance of the native legends will be found in the Mahawanso, c. xxii. p. 131; and Rajavali, p. 180, 190.

2: The first disturbance of the coast by which Ceylon is alleged to have been severed from the main land is said by the Buddhists to have taken place B.C. 2387; a second commotion is ascribed to the age of Panduwaasa, B.C. 504; and the subsidence of the shore adjacent to Colombo is said to have taken place 200 years later, in the reign of Devenipiatissa, B.C. 306. The event is thus recorded in the Rajavali, one of the sacred books of Ceylon:—"In these days the sea was seven leagues from Kalany; but on account of what had been done to the teeroonansee (a priest who had been tortured by the king of Kalany), the gods who were charged with the conservation of Ceylon, became enraged and caused the sea to deluge the land; and as during the epoch called duwapawrayaga on account of the wickedness of Rawana, 25 palaces and 400,000 streets were all over-run by the sea, so now in this time of Tissa Raja, 100,000 large towns, 910 fishers' villages, and 400 villages inhabited by pearl fishers, making together eleven-twelfths of the territory of Kalany, were swallowed up by the sea."—Rajavali, vol. ii. p. 180, 190.

FORBES observes the coincidence that the legend of the rising of the sea in the age of Panduwaasa, 2378 B.C., very nearly concurs with the date assigned to the Deluge of Noah, 2348,—Eleven Years in Ceylon, vol. ii. p. 258. A tradition is also extant, that a submersion took place at a remote period on the east coast of Ceylon, whereby the island of Giri-dipo, which is mentioned in the first chapter of the Mahawanso, was engulfed, and the dangerous rocks called the Great and Little Basses are believed to be remnants of it.—Mahawanso, c. i.

A résumé of the disquisitions which have appeared at various times as to the submersion of a part of Ceylon, will be found in a Memoir sur la Géographie ancienne de Ceylon, in the Journal Asiatique for January, 1857, 5th ser., vol. ix. p. 12; see also TURNOUR'S Introd. to the Mahawanso, p. xxxiv.

3: Some of the mammalia peculiar to the island are enumerated at p. 160; birds found in Ceylon but not existing in India are alluded to at p. 178, and Dr. A. GÜNTHER, in a paper on the Geographical Distribution of Reptiles, in the Mag. of Nat. Hist. for March, 1859, says, "amongst these larger islands which are connected with the middle palæotropical region, none offers forms so different from the continent and other islands as Ceylon. It might be considered the Madagascar of the Indian region. We not only find there peculiar genera and species, not again to be recognised in other parts; but even many of the common species exhibit such remarkable varieties, as to afford ample means for creating new nominal species," p. 280. The difference exhibited between the insects of Ceylon and those of Hindustan and the Dekkan are noticed by Mr. Walker in the present work, p. ii. ch. vii, vol. i. p. 270. See on this subject RITTER'S Erdkunde, vol. iv. p. 17.