These facts being admitted, it is surely not too great a stretch of probability to suppose, as I did, that a man whose nephew was king in 459-477, might have been alive in 410-432, that is to say, might have been a contemporary of Buddhaghosa. I did not commit myself to any further theories. The question whether Mahanama, the uncle of Dhatusena, was really the author of the Mahavamsa, the question whether he wrote the second half of the 37th chapter of that work, or broke off his chronicle in the middle of that chapter, I did not discuss, having no new materials to bring forward beyond those on which Turnour and those who followed him had founded their conclusions, and which I had discussed in my History of Sanskrit Literature (1859), p. 267. All I said was, 'It is difficult to determine whether the 38th as well as the (whole of the) 37th chapter came from the pen of Mahanama, for

[1. 'Ungefahr 50 Jahre alter als Mahanama ist Buddhaghosha,' see Westergaard, Uber Buddha's Todesjahr, p. 99.]

p. xvi the Mahavamsa was afterwards continued by different writers, even to the middle of the last century. But, taking into account all the circumstances of the case, it is most probable that Mahanama carried on the history to his own time, to the death of Dhatusena, 477 A.D.'

What I meant by 'all the circumstances of the case' might easily be understood by any one who had read Turnour's Preface to the Mahavamsa. Turnour himself thought at first that Mahanama's share in the Mahavamsa ended with the year 301 A.D., and that the rest of the work, called the Sulu Wanse, was composed by subsequent writers[1]. Dharmakirti is mentioned by name as having continued the work to the reign of Prakrama Bahu (A.D. 1266). But Turnour afterwards changed his mind[2]. Considering that the account of Mahasena's reign, the first of the Seven Kings, terminates in the middle of a chapter, at verse 48, while the whole chapter is called the Sattaragiko, 'the chapter of the Seven Kings,' he naturally supposed that the whole of that chapter, extending to the end of the reign of his nephew Dhatusena, might be the work of Mahanama, unless there were any strong proofs to the contrary. Such proofs, beyond the tradition of writers of the MSS., have not, as yet, been adduced[3].