Το by which the king had a right to employ, for public purposes, the compulsory labour of the inhabitants. what extent this was capable of exaction, or under what safeguards it was enforced in early times, does not appear from the historical books. But on all occasions when tanks were to be formed, or canals cut for irrigation, the Mahawanso alludes, -almost in words of course,-to the application of Raja-kariya for their construction1, the people being summoned to the task by beat of drum.2 The only mention of the system which attracts particular attention, is the honour awarded to the most pious of the kings, who, whilst maintaining Raja-kariya as an institution, nevertheless stigmatised it as "oppression" when applied to non-productive objects; and on the occasion of erecting one of the most stupendous of the monuments dedicated to the national faith, felt that the merit of the act would be neutralised, were it to be accomplished by "unrequited" labour.3 The inscription engraven on the rock at Mihintala, amongst other regulations for enforcing the observance by the temple tenants of the conditions on which their lands were held, declares that "if a fault be committed by any of the cultivators, the adequate fine shall be assessed according to usage; or in lieu thereof, the delinquent shall be directed to work at the lake in making an excavation not exceeding sixteen cubits in circumference and one cubit deep."-TURNOUR'S Epitome, &c., Appendix, p. 87. 2 Mahawanso, ch. xxv. p. 149. 3 Ibid., ch. xxvii. pp. 163, 165. King Tissa, A.D. 201, in imitation of Dutugaimunu, caused the restorations of monuments at the capital "to be made with paid labour."-Ibid., ch. xxxvi. p. 226. See ante Vol. I. Pt. III. ch. v. p. 357. 429 CHAP. II. CATTLE AND CROPS. AGRICULTURE. IRRIGATION. AGRICULTURE.-Prior to the arrival of the Bengalis, and even for some centuries after the conquest of Wijayo, before the knowledge of agriculture had extended throughout the island, the inhabitants appear to have subsisted to a great extent by the chase.' Hunting the elk and the boar was one of the amusements of the early princes; the "Royal Huntsmen" had a range of buildings erected for their residence at Anarajapoora, B. c. 5042, and the laws of the chase generously forbade to shoot the deer except in flight. Dogs were trained to assist in the sport and the oppressed aborigines, driven by their conquerors to the forests of Rohuna and Maya, are the subjects of frequent commendation in the pages of the Mahawanso, from their singular ability in the use of the bow.5 3 Before the arrival of Wijayo, B.C. 543, agriculture was unknown in Ceylon, and grain, if grown at all, was not systematically cultivated. The Yakkhos, the aborigines, subsisted, as the Veddahs, their lineal descendants, live at the present day, on fruits, honey, and the products of the chase. Rice was distributed by Kuweni to the followers of Wijayo, but it was "rice procured from the wrecked ships of mariners." And two centuries later, so scanty was the production of native grain, that Asoca, amongst the presents which he sent to his ally Devenipiatissa, included "one hundred and sixty loads of hill paddi from Bengal." 2 A Singhalese narrative of the " Planting of the Bo-tree," an English version of which will be found amongst the translations prepared for Sir Alexander Johnston, mentions the fact, that rice was still imported into Ceylon from the Coromandel coast in the second century before Christ. Irrigation. It was to the Hindu kings who succeeded Wijayo, that Ceylon was indebted for the earliest knowledge of agriculture, for the construction of reservoirs, and the practice of irrigation for the cultivation of rice.* 1 Mahawanso, ch. vii. P. 49. 2 Ibid., ch. xi. p. 70. 3 UPHAM, Sacred Books of Ceylon, vol. iii. p. 231. A very able report on irrigation in some of the districts of Ceylon has been recently drawn up by Mr. BAILEY, of the Ceylon Civil Service; but the author has been led into an error in supposing that "it cannot be to India that we must look for the origin of tanks and canals in Ceylon," and that the knowledge of their construction was derived through "the Arabian and Persian merchants who traded between Egypt and Ceylon." Mr. Bailey rests this conclusion on the assertion that the first Indian canal of which we have any record dates no farther back than the middle of the fourteenth century. There was nothing in common between the shallow canals for distributing the periodical inundation of the Nile over the level lands of Egypt (a country in which rice was little known), and the gigantic embankments by which hills were so connected in Ceylon as to convert the valleys between them into inland lakes; and there was no similarity to render the excavation of the one a model and precedent for the construction of the other. Probably the lake Moeris is what dwells in the mind of those who ascribe proficiency in irrigation to the ancient Egyptians; but although Herodotus asserts it to have been an excavation, χειροποίητός και ορυκτη (lib. ii. 149), geologic investigation has shown that Moeris is a natural lake created by the local depression of that portion of the Arsinoite nome. Neither Strabo nor Pliny, who believed it to be artificial, ascribed its origin to anything connected with irrigation, for which, in fact, its level would render it unsuitable. Nature had done so much for irrigation in Egypt, that art was forestalled; and even had it been otherwise, and had the natives of that country been adepts in the science, or capable of teaching it, the least qualified imparters of engineering knowledge would have been the Arab and Persian mariners, whose lives were spent in coasting the shores of the Indian Ocean. It is true that in Arabia itself, at a very early period, there is the tradition of the great artificial lake of Aram, in Yemen, about the time of Alexander the Great (SALE's Koran, Introd. p. 7); and evidence still more authentic shows that the practice of artificial irrigation was one of the earliest oc The first tank in Ceylon was formed by the successor of Wijayo, B.C. 504, and their subsequent extension to an almost incredible number is ascribable to the influence of the Buddhist religion, which, abhorring cupations of the human race. The Scriptures, in enumerating the descendants of Shem, state that "unto Eber were born two sons, and the name of one was Peleg, for in his days the earth was divided." (Genesis, ch. x. ver. 25.) In this passage, according to CYRIL C. GRAHAM, the term Peleg has a profounder meaning, and the sentence should have been translated "for in his days the earth was cut into canals." (Cambridge Essays, 1858.) But historical testimony exists which removes all obscurity from the inquiry as to who were the instructors of the Singhalese. The most ancient books of the Hindus show that the practice of canal-making was understood in India at as early a period as in Egypt. Canals are mentioned in the Ramayana, the story of which belongs to the dimmest antiquity; and when Baratha, the half-brother of Rama, was about to search for him in the Dekkan, his train is described as including " labourers, with carts, bridge-builders, carpenters, and diggers of canals." (Ramayana, CARY'S Trans., vol. iii. p. 228.) The Mahawanso removes all doubt as to the person by whom the Singhalese were instructed in forming works for irrigation, by naming the Brahman engineer contemporary with the construction of the earliest tanks in the fourth century before the Christian era. (Mahawanso, ch. x.) Somewhat later, B.C. 262, the inscription on the rock at Mihintala ascribes to the Malabars the system of managing the water for the rice lands, and directs that " cording to the supply of water in the lake, the same shall be distributed to the lands of the wihara in the manner formerly regulated by the Tamils." (Notes to TURNOUR'S Epitome, p. 90.) To be convinced of the Tamil origin of the tank system which subsists to the present day in Ceylon, it is only necessary to see the ac The tanks of the Southern Dekkan. innumerable excavated reservoirs or colams of Ceylon will be found to correspond with the culams of Mysore; and the vast erays formed by drawing a bund to intercept the water flowing between two elevated ridges, exhibit the model which has been followed at Pathavie, Kandelai, Menery, and all the huge constructions of Ceylon. But whoever may have been the original instructors of the Singhalese in the formation of tanks, there seems every reason to believe that from their own subsequent experience, and the prodigious extent to which they occupied themselves in the formation of works of this kind, they attained a facility unsurpassed by the people of any other country. It is a curious circumstance in connection with this inquiry, that in the eighth century after Christ, the King of Kashmir despatched messengers to Ceylon to bring back workmen, whom he employed in constructing an artificial lake. (Raja-Tarangini, Book iv. sl. 505.) If it were necessary to search beyond India for the origin of cultivation in Ceylon, the Singhalese, instead of borrowing a system from Egypt, might more naturally have imitated the ingenious devices of their own co-religionists in China, where the system of irrigation as pursued in the military colonies of that country has been a theme of admiration in every age of their history. (See Journal Asiatique, 1850, vol. lvi. pp. 341, 346.) And as these colonies were planted not only in the centre of the empire, but on its north-west extremities towards Kaschgar and the north-east of India, where the new settlers occupied themselves in draining marshes and leading streams to water their arable lands, the probabilities are that their system may have been known and copied by the people of Hindustan. the destruction of animal life, taught its multitudinous votaries to subsist exclusively upon vegetable food. Hence the planting of gardens, the diffusion of fruittrees and leguminous vegetables1, the sowing of dry grain, the formation of reservoirs and canals, and the reclamation of land in situations favourable for irrigation." It is impossible to over-estimate the importance of this system of water cultivation, in a country like the north of Ceylon, subject to periodical droughts. From physical and geological causes, the mode of cultivation in that section of the island differs essentially from that practised in the southern division; and whilst in the latter the frequency of the rains and abundance of rivers afford a copious supply of water, the rest of the country is mainly dependent upon artificial irrigation, and on the quantity of rain collected in tanks; or of water diverted from streams and directed into reservoirs. 3 As has been elsewhere explained, the mountain ranges which tower along the south-western coast, and extend far towards the eastern, serve in both monsoons to intercept the trade winds and condense the vapours with which they are charged, thus ensuring to those regions a plentiful supply of rain. Hence the harvests in those portions of the island are regulated by the two monsoons, the yalla in May and the maha in November; and seed-time is adjusted so as to take advantage of the copious showers which fall at those periods. But in the northern portions of Ceylon, owing to the absence of mountains, this natural resource cannot be relied on. The winds in both monsoons traverse the island without parting with a sufficiency of moisture; 1 Beans, designated by the term of Masa in the Mahawanso, were grown in the second century before Christ, ch. xxiii. p. 140. 2 The "cultivation of a crop of hill rice" is mentioned in the Mahawanso, B.C. 77, ch. xxxiv. p. 208. 3 See Vol. I. Part 1. ch. ii. p. 67. |