In the second and third centuries the Court seems to have favoured the Mahâvihâra and King Goṭhâbhaya banished monks belonging to the Vetulya sect,[48] but in spite of this a monk of the Abhayagiri named Sanghamitta obtained his confidence and that of his son, Mahâsena, who occupied the throne from 275 to 302 A.D. The Mahâvihâra was destroyed and its occupants persecuted at Sanghamitta's instigation but he was murdered and after his death the great Monastery was rebuilt. The triumph however was not complete for Mahâsena built a new monastery called Jetavana on ground belonging to the Mahâvihâra and asked the monks to abandon this portion of their territory. They refused and according to the Mahâvamsa ultimately succeeded in proving their rights before a court of law. But the Jetavana remained as the headquarters of a sect known as Sagaliyas. They appear to have been moderately orthodox, but to have had their own text of the Vinaya for according to the Commentary[49] on the Mahâvamsa they "separated the two Vibhangas of the Bhagavâ[50] from the Vinaya ... altering their meaning and misquoting their contents." In the opinion of the Mahâvihâra both the Abhayagiri and Jetavana were schismatical, but the laity appear to have given their respect and offerings to all three impartially and the Mahâvamsa several times records how the same individual honoured the three Confraternities. With the death of Mahâsena ends the first and oldest part of the Mahâvamsa, and also in native opinion the grand period of Sinhalese history, the subsequent kings being known as the Cûlavaṃsa or minor dynasty. A continuation[51] of the chronicle takes up the story and tells of the doings of Mahâsena's son Sirimeghavaṇṇa.[52] Judged by the standard of the Mahâvihâra, he was fairly satisfactory. He rebuilt the Lohapasâda and caused a golden image of Mahinda to be made and carried in procession. This veneration of the founder of a local church reminds one of the respect shown to the images of half-deified abbots in Tibet, China and Japan. But the king did not neglect the Abhayagiri or assign it a lower position than the Mahâvihâra for he gave it partial custody of the celebrated relic known as the Buddha's tooth which was brought to Ceylon from Kalinga in the ninth year of his reign and has ever since been considered the palladium of the island. 2