Cingalese history of authenticated by the concurrence of every evidence that can contribute to verify the annals of any country. At the opening of the nineteenth century, the existence of an historical record called the Mahawansa, or Great Dynasty, was known to a handful of Buddhist priests. It was a metrical chronicle, hiding in mystical verse the most astonishing dynastic history of any people, and it covered a period of twenty-three centuries from the year 543 B.C. to A.D. 1758. The one hundred books of the Mahawansa covered, in fullest detail, two thousand years of Ceylon history, during which fifty-four kings of the great dynasty – the Mahawansa of the title and one hundred and eleven sovereigns of the Sulawansa, or lower race, sat on the throne of Lanka.
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