“Venerable,” he asked Mahanama, “were the yakkhas truly evil, or just the old gods of this land?”

Mahanama smiled thinly. “Correct. It lists kings. It counts years. It has no blood, no tears, no glory. The King wants a Mahavamsa —a ‘Great Chronicle.’ A poem to make the gods weep and the enemies tremble.”

Ananda, the scribe of the Dipavamsa , had wanted only to survive.

They saw that the Dipavamsa was the older, more honest witness—a harried monk’s record of a chaotic past. The Mahavamsa was the polished lie, the beautiful weapon, the story a king needed to believe.

The story ends with a final irony.