ABSTRACT
The incidence that Ceylon is a country comparatively remote from all others, with the obvious exception of India, has served as a justification throughout the ages for the zealous traveller to keep a journal or to write a book. The first of these was the Chinese monk Fa-Hien, who in his pious search for traces of Buddha Gautama visited Ceylon about a.d. 400. On his return he wrote copiously about the “Master’s” activities there, although historically he never once visited the island. Fa-Hien records, however, that at Anuradhapura he saw an image of Buddha in green jade, which was more than twenty cubits high. In the palm of the right hand lay a priceless pearl, and the image had “an appearance of solemn dignity which words cannot express.” A hundred years later Sopater wrote of the famous ruby which had been erected on the tee of a Dagoba in the capital of Anuradhapura, which was like a “hyacinth, as large as a pine cone, the colour of fire …” Seven hundred years later the ubiquitous Marco Polo arrived and was fascinated by the jewels of Ceylon, noting that the King possessed “the grandest ruby that was ever seen, a span in length, the thickness of a man’s arm.”
