The Mānāvuḷu - sandesaya, or in Pali Mahānāgakula - sandesa, which to-day first reaches the Western reader, is a little Pali poem of somewhat singular character. It is in the form of a poetical epistle, in the style of high kāvya. It is dated from Mahānāgakula (Mānāvuḷu), a city of Ceylon. After long and occasionally complicated panegyrics upon this city, a local Buddhist monastery, and the mahāthera Nāgasena residing in the latter, it proceeds to describe in similar strains the city of Arimaddanapura (Pugāma, the modern Pagan), the emperor Siri-Dhammarāja who bears rule therein, a monastery built by the latter near his capital, and a distinguished mahāthera named Kassapa - Saṅgha - rakkhita who dwells there. Then follows an address from Nāgasena to Kassapa, in which Nāgasena mentions that he has received a letter from Kassapa through a minister Ñāṇa, apparently containing a request. The poem here practically comes to an end. Five verses follow, containing greetings to a certain Sāriputta and an exhortation to reform the Church in Pagan as it had been reformed in Ceylon by Parākrama-bāhu; but as these verses are in part grossly corrupt, as they are singularly feeble and debased in style, and as they are ignored by the Sinhalese translator of the rest of the poem, we are justified in regarding them with suspicion. Either they are altogether spurious, or they are a rough draft which the poet never worked out. The poem is thus a mere fragment.