Age of the Nandas and Mauryas c11.s38.61

c11.s38.61

and two daughters. The second son Devānampiya Tissa was foremost among the brothers in virtue and intelligence, and succeeded his father. His friendly relations with the Mauryan emperor Aśoka, the exchanges of embassies and presents between them, the introduction of Buddhism into Ceylon by Mahinda and the fetching of a branch of the bōdhi-tree have been narrated in our account of Aśoka's reign. For the rest, there is good reason to believe that the development of culture by the reconciliation of the indigenous and exotic elements, by the growth of cities and the laying out of roads and extension of cultivation was going on apace. The Brāhmi inscriptions found by the score in practically all the caverns on every hill in the island and clearly belonging to the short period between the middle of the third century B. C. and the beginning of the first, attest the large numbers of Buddhist monks, votaries of the new sect introduced by Mahinda, and their peaceful occupation of these dwellings : but the primitive religious practices of the Vaeḍas seem to have been kept up side by side with other forms of worship. It is quite probable that some of the dagōbas and vihāras now in ruins, particularly those in Anurādhapura, may in their origin date back to the age of Tissa¹ and his successors, and that the style of these structures was borrowed from India along with Buddhism. The greeting of Mahinda by queen Anulā and five hundred (i.e. many) other women², and their subsequent ordination after the arrival of Saṅghamittā³, as also some references to women in the cave inscriptions show that women enjoyed a considerable amount of freedom and influence in this early Sinhalese society. The earliest coins of Ceylon were like those of India, purāṇas or śalākas, pieces of silver or copper of varying shapes, generally circular or oblong with a corner or corners chipped in some specimens and bearing punch marks on one side. Silver and copper are not products of Ceylon, and the metals, if not the coins themselves, must have been imported from India. A fragment of an admirably engraved thin cornelian showing the figure of a king sitting upon an ornamental chair ‘which can be no other than a royal throne’ was found in 1884 among the debris left round the Yaṭṭhāla dagoba at Tissa ; and this is considered by Parker a specimen of early North Indian work under strong Greek influence affording proof of the intercourse between Tissa and Aśoka recorded in the *Mahāvamsa*; he even suggests that the seated figure on the cornelian may be Aśoka himself¹.