A Legend of Kandy1
H. (Henry) Parker translation
A Legend of Kandy1
One day a Basket-mender for the purpose of cutting bamboos went into this forest. While he was cutting bamboos a certain jackal went driving a hare on the path. At the time when the hare arrived near this rock the jackal began to run back, and the hare ran behind it.
The Basket-mender, having been looking at this, examined the place, and having gone near the King who was ruling at that time, told him of this circumstance. And the King, having thought that it is a good victorious ground, went there, and having built a city makes it his capital (rāja-dhāniya). For that city he made the name Sen̥kaḍagala [Nuwara—that is, Kandy].
Ūva Province.
Notes in this chapter
Note 1 · The Sinhalese title is, “The Jackal and the Basket-mender,”—at least this is what I take to be the meaning of Kulupottā, a word I do not knoNote 2 · A large monkey of two species (Semnopithecus). ↑Note 3 · Deriving Seṇ from sema. Kandy appears to have been founded at the beginning of the fourteenth century (Ancient Ceylon, p. 354, note). ↑Note 4 · At a certain place in Lan̥kāwa (Ceylon), there was an extensive forest. In that forest there were elephants, bears, leopards, wan̆durās,2 anNote 5 · At any time whatever, at the time when any animal springs for seizing an animal that is its prey, it comes running near a rock that is in anNote 6 · In a certain country there were a Gamarāla and a daughter of the Gamarāla’s, it is said. Well then, for the Gamarāla they brought a Gama-mah