SACRED MONUMENTS.

29

bestowed the name of their teacher. “I will lift up mine
ayes unto the hills, from whence cometh my help.”
Mihintale,aptly styled “a mountain carved into a temple,”
is an isolated hill rising to a height of upwards of a thousand
feet, and its summit is reached by over 1,800 steps of granite
slabs 15 feet wide, and from the top is obtained a magnificent
view across Ceylon from sea to sea.
From Mihintale to Anuradhapura, a distance of 8 miles, is
the Via Sacra of the Buddhist priesthood, a road traversed by
chariots 2,000 years ago, when the pious monarch Dewenipiyatissa
 sent an escort to bring Mahindo to the capital city.

A SIGIRIYA IRESCO

By the preaching of Mahindo this king and forty thousand of
his subjects were converted to the new religion.
At Anuradhapura itself the most venerated object is the
sacred Bo-tree (Ficus religiosa), probably the oldest historical
iree in the world. It wasbrought to Ceylon by Mahindo and
his sister Sanghamitta from India as a cutting from the
parent tree at Magadha in Northern Indiain 238 B.C.; itsage
8 a matter of historical record, and its conservancy has been
an object of solicitwle to successive dynasties for 2192 years.
Among the ornaments of the enclosure in which the Bo-tree
stands is a “ moonstone.” or semi-circular stone slab. whieh