HINDU PERIOD
Vijaya's followers.[1] Their wives and children, making up more than seven hundred, were also cast adrift in similar ships.[2] The ship in which the lion-prince, Sińhala, sailed from some unknown part of Jambudvīpa to Ceylon contained five hundred merchants besides himself.[3] The ship in which Vijaya's Pandyan bride was brought over to Ceylon was also of a very large size, for she is said to have carried no less than 800 passengers on board.[4] The Janaka-Jātaka mentions a ship that was wrecked with all its crew and passengers to the favourite number of seven hundred, in addition to Buddha himself in an earlier incarnation.[5] So also the ship in which Buddha in the Supparaka-Bodhisat incarnation made his voyages from Bharukaccha (Broach) to "the Sea of the Seven Gems"[6] carried seven hundred merchants besides himself. The wrecked ship of the Vālahassa-Jātaka carried five hundred merchants.[7] The ship which is mentioned in the Samudda-Vanija-Jātaka was so large as to accommodate also a whole village
- ↑ Upham's Sacred Books of Ceylon, ii. 28, 168. Turnour's Mahāwańso, 46, 47.
- ↑ Turnour's Mahāwańso, 46.
- ↑ Si-yu-ki, ii. 241.
- ↑ Turnour's Mahāwańso, 51.
- ↑ Bishop Bigandet's Life of Godama, 415.
- ↑ Hardy's Manual of Buddhism, 13.
- ↑ "Now it happened that five hundred shipwrecked traders were cast ashore near the city of these sea-goblins."
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