B.C. 104. Buddhist edicts engraved on various rocks and monuments in India, the deciphering of which was the grand achievement of Prinsep and his learned coadju tors. On the pillars of Delhi, Allahabad, and other places, and on the rocks of Girnar and Dhauli, there exist a number of Pali inscriptions purporting to be edicts of Asoca (the Dharmasoca of the Mahawanso), King of Magadha, in the third century before the Christian era, who, on his conversion to the religion of Buddha, commissioned Mahindo, his son, to undertake its establishment in Ceylon. In these edicts, which were promulgated in the vernacular dialect, the king endea voured to impress both upon his subjects and allies, as well as those who, although aliens, were yet "united in the law" of Buddha, the divine precepts of their great teacher; prominent amongst which are the prohibition against taking animal life', and the injunction that, "everywhere wholesome vegetables, roots, and fruit trees shall be cultivated, and that on the roads wells shall be dug and trees planted for the enjoyment of men and animals." In apparent conformity with these edicts, one of the kings of Ceylon, Addagaimunu, A.D. 20, is stated in the Mahawanso to have " caused to be planted throughout the island every description of fruit-bearing creepers, and interdicted the destruction of animal life 2, " and similar acts of pious benevolence, performed by command of various other sovereigns, are adverted to on numerous occasions. 1 It is curious that one of these edicts of Asoca, who was cotemporary with Devenipiatissa, is addressed to "all the conquered territories of the raja, even unto the ends of the earth, as in Chola, in Pida, in Keralaputra, and in Tambapanni (or Ceylon)." This license of speech, reminding one of the grandiloquent epistles "from the Flaminian Gate," was no doubt assumed in virtue of the recent establishment of Buddhism, or, as it is called in the Mahawanso, "the religion of the Vanquisher," and Asoca, as its propagator, thus 66 claims to address the converts as his "subjects." 2 Mahawanso, ch. xxxv. p. 215. The king Upatissa, A.D. 368, in the midst of a solemn ceremonial, "observing ants and other insects drowning in an inundation, halted, and having swept them towards the bank with the feathers of a peacock's tail, and enabled them to save themselves, he continued the procession.”—Mahawanso, ch. xxxvii. p. 249; Rajaratnacari, p. 49, 52; Rajavali, p. 228. 369 CHAP. VII. FATE OF THE ABORIGINES. 104. IT has already been shown, that devotion and policy B.C. combined to accelerate the progress of social improvement in Ceylon, and that before the close of the third century of the Christian era, the island to the north of the Kandyan mountains contained numerous cities and villages, adorned with temples and dagobas, and seated in the midst of highly cultivated fields. The face of the country exhibited broad expanses of rice land, irrigated by artificial lakes, and canals of proportionate magnitude, by which the waters from the rivers, which would otherwise have flowed idly to the sea, were diverted inland in all directions to fertilise the rice. fields of the interior.1 In the formation of these prodigious tanks, the labour chiefly employed was that of the aboriginal inhabitants, the Yakkhos and Nagas, directed by the science and skill of the conquerors. Their contributions of this kind, though in the instance of the Buddhist converts they may have been to some extent voluntary, were, in general, the result of compulsion.2 Like the Israelites under the Egyptians, the aborigines were compelled to make bricks for the stupendous dagobas erected by their masters; and eight hundred years after the subjugation of the island, the Rajavali describes vast reservoirs and appliances for irrigation, as being constructed by the forced labour of the 1 Mahawanso, ch. xxxv. xxxvii. 2 In some instances the soldiers of the king were employed in forming works of irrigation. 3 Mahawanso, ch. xxxviii. VOL. I. BB B.C. Yakkhos1, under the superintendence of Brahman engi 104. neers. This, to some extent, accounts for the prodigious amount of labour bestowed on these structures; labour which the whole revenue of the kingdom would not have sufficed to purchase, had it not been otherwise procurable. Under this system, the fate of the aborigines was that usually consequent on the subjugation of an infe rior race by one more highly civilised. The process of their absorption into the dominant race was slow, and for centuries they continued to exist distinct, as a subju gated people. So firmly rooted amongst them was the worship both of demons and serpents, that, notwithstanding the ascendency of Buddhism, many centuries elapsed before it was ostensibly abandoned; from time to time, "demon offerings" were made from the royal treasury3; and one of the kings, in his enlarged liberality, ordered that for every ten villages there should be maintained an astrologer and a "devil-dancer," in addition to the doctor and the priest. Throughout the Singhalese chronicles, the notices of the aborigines are but casual, and occasionally contemptuous. Sometimes they allude to "slaves of the Yakkho tribe," and in recording the progress and completion of the tanks and other stupendous works, the Mahawanso and the Rajaratnacari, in order to indicate the inferiority of the natives to their masters, speak of their conjoint labours as that of "men and snakes," and "men and demons." 7 1 Rajavali, p. 237, 238. Exceptions to the extortion of forced labour for public works took place under the more pious kings, who made a merit of paying the workmen employed in the erection of dagobas and other religious monuments. Mahawanso, ch. xxxv. 2 Mahawanso, ch. x. 1 4 TURNOUR'S Epitome, p. 27; Rajaratnacari, ch. ii.; Rajavali, p. 241. 5 Mahawanso, ch. x. Ibid., ch. xix. p. 115. 7 The King Maha-Sen, anxious for the promotion of agriculture, caused many tanks to be made "by men and devils."- Mahawanso, ch. xxxvii.; UPHAM'S Transl.; Rajaratnacari, p. 3 Mahawanso, ch. x.; TURNOUR'S 69; Rajavali, p. 237. Epitome, p. 23. Notwithstanding the degradation of the natives, it was indispensable to "befriend the interests" of a race so numerous and so useful; hence, they were frequently employed in the military expeditions of the Wijayan sovereigns', and the earlier kings of that dynasty admitted the rank of the Yakkho chiefs who shared in these enterprises. They assigned a suburb of the capital for their residence2, and on festive occasions they were seated on thrones of equal eminence with that of the king. But every aspiration towards a recovery of their independence was checked by a device less characteristic of ingenuity in the ascendant race, than of simplicity combined with jealousy in the aborigines. The feeling was encouraged and matured into a conviction which prevailed to the latest period of the Singhalese sovereignty, that no individual of pure Singhalese extraction could be elevated to the supreme power, since no one could prostrate himself before one of his own nation.4 For successive generations, however, the natives, although treated with partial kindness, were regarded as a separate race. Even the children of Wijayo, by his first wife Kuweni, united themselves with their maternal connexions on the repudiation of their mother by the king, "and retained the attributes of Yakkhos," and by that designation the natives continued to be distinguished down to the reign of Dutugaimunu. In spite of every attempt at conciliation, the process of amalgamation between the two races was reluctant and slow. The earliest Bengal The earliest Bengal immigrants sought wives among the Tamils, on the opposite coast of India; and although their descendants intermarried with the natives, the great mass of the population long held aloof from the invaders, and occasionally vented 1 Mahawanso, ch. x. 2 Ibid., ch. x. p. 67. 3 Ibid., p. 66. 4 JOINVILLE's Asiat. Res. vol. vii. p. 422. 5 Mahawanso, ch. vii. 6 Ibid., p. 53. B.C. 104. B.C. their impatience in rebellion. 104. civilisation amongst them was Hence the progress of Hence the but partial and slow, and in the narratives of the early rulers of the island there is ample evidence that the aborigines long retained their habits of shyness and timidity. Notwithstanding the frequent resort of every nation of antiquity to its coasts, the accounts of the first voyagers are almost wholly confined to descriptions of the loveliness of the country, the singular brilliancy of its jewels, the richness of its pearls, the sagacity of its elephants, and the delicacy and abundance of its spices; but the information which they furnish regarding its inhabitants is so uniformly meagre, as to attest the absence of intercourse; and the writers of all nations, Romans, Greeks, Arabians, Chinese and Indians, concur in their allusions to the unsocial and uncivilised customs of the islanders.2 As the Bengal adventurers advanced into the interior of the island, a large section of the natives withdrew into the forests and hunting grounds on the eastern and southern coasts.3 There, subsisting by the bow and the chase, they adhered, with moody tenacity, to the rude habits of their race; and in the Veddah of the present day, there is still to be recognised a remnant of the untamed aborigines of Ceylon.5 Even those of the original race who slowly conformed to the religion and habits of their masters, were never entirely emancipated from the ascendency of their ancient superstitions. Traces of the worship of snakes and demons are to the present hour clearly perceptible amongst them; the Buddhists still resort to the incan 1 Mahawanso, ch. lxxxv. 2 See an account of these singular peculiarities, Vol. I. P. IV. c. vii. 3 Hiouen Thsang, the Chinese geographer, who visited India in the seventh century, says that at that time the Yakkhos had retired to the south-east corner of Ceylon; and here their descendants, the Veddahs, are found at the present day. -Voyages, &c., liv. iv. p. 200. 4 Mahawanso, ch. xxiv. p. 145, xxxiii. p. 204. 5 DE ALWIS, Sidath Sangara, p. xvii. For an account of the Veddahs and their present condition, see Vol. II. P. IX. ch. iii. |