accuracy.[18] The Sinhalese tradition agrees on the whole
with the data supplied by Indian inscriptions and Chinese pilgrims.
The names of missionaries mentioned in the Dipa and Mahavamsas recur
on urns found at Sanchi and on its gateways are pictures in relief
which appear to represent the transfer of a branch of the Bo-tree in
solemn procession to some destination which, though unnamed, may be
conjectured to be Ceylon.[19] The absence of Mahinda's name in Asoka's
inscriptions is certainly suspicious, but the Sinhalese chronicles
give the names of other missionaries correctly and a mere _argumentum
ex silentio_ cannot disprove their testimony on this important point.

The principal repositories of Sinhalese tradition are the Dipavamsa, the
Mahavamsa, and the historical preface of Buddhaghosa's Samanta-pasadika.
[20] All later works are founded on these three, so far as concerns
the conversion of Ceylon and the immediately subsequent period,
and the three works appear to be rearrangements of a single source known as
the Atthakatha, Sihalatthakatha, or the words of the Porana (ancients).
These names were given to commentaries on the Tipitaka written in Sinhalese
prose interspersed with Pali verse and several of the greater monasteries
had their own editions of them, including a definite historical
section.[21] It is probable that at the beginning of the fifth century A.D.
and perhaps in the fourth century the old Sinhalese in which the prose
parts of the Atthakatha were written was growing unintelligible, and that
it was becoming more and more the fashion to use Pali as the language of
ecclesiastical literature, for at least three writers set themselves to
turn part of the traditions not into the vernacular but into Pali. The
earliest and least artistic is the unknown author of the short chronicle
called Dipavamsa, who wrote between 302 A.D. and 430 A.D.[22] His work is
weak both as a specimen of Pali and as a narrative and he probably did
little but patch together the Pali verses occurring from time to time in
the Sinhalese prose of the Atthakatha. Somewhat later, towards the end of
the fifth century, a certain Mahanama arranged the materials out of which
the Dipavamsa had been formed in a more consecutive and artistic form,
combining ecclesiastical and popular legends.[23] His work, known as the
Mahavamsa, does not end with the reign of Elara, like the Dipavamsa, but
describes in 15 more chapters the exploits of Dutthag