538* Sir A. Johnston's Account of an Inscription found near Trincomalee. 



As the general history and local traditions of Ceylon, confirmed as to this 

 fact by the remains of four of the most stupenduous tanks or artificial lakes 

 that were ever constructed in India, prove beyond a doubt that the immense 

 tracts of cultivable land in the noi'thern and eastern provinces of the island, 

 which are now completely waste and depopulated, were at a foi'mer period of 

 history most highly cultivated and veiy densely peopled, and as one great 

 object of the System of government, which I proposed to Sir Thomas Mait- 

 land, was to restore those tracts of land to their former state of cultivation, I 

 caused, while I was on the above circuit, surveys to be made of some of these 

 tanks, and of the extent of tlie lands which could be irrigated by them ; esti- 

 mates to be formed of the expense of putting them into repair, and copies 

 to be taken of all the inscriptions, ancient or modern, which could be found 

 in their neiglibourhood ; and I urged the natives of the coimtry, by every 

 motive which could stimulate their activity, to collect for me on the spot 

 such local information, as might ex])lain to his Majesty's Government the 

 causes both of the former prosperity and of the present desolation of those 

 extensive provinces. 



In the course of this inquiry all the best-informed men of the island, ap- 

 proving highly of its object, zealously co-operated with me in eliciting local 

 information from every partof tlieir respective districts; and the native chiefs 

 of the province of Trincomalee laid before me, together witli many other 

 valuable inscriptions, the one of which the fac-simile accompanies this letter, 

 and which they described as the most ancient and the most curious in their 

 province. 



I was informed by those chiefs, that the late French Admiral Sufirein, 

 when he was at Trincomalee with the French fleet in 1781, tliinking that a 

 translation of this inscription would throw much light upon the ancient his- 

 tory and upon the ancient state of cultivation of the province of Trinco- 

 malee, sent a copy of it to the late Mons. Anquetil du Perron, then in France, 

 with an offer of a considerable reward to any person wlio could decj'pher it, 

 but which, so far as I can learn, has never been accomplished. 



The race of people who at present inhabit the province of Trincomalee 

 and the adjacent province, are completely ignorant of the character in which 

 it is written : they however believe, from the traditions which are preserved 

 amongst them, that it is the character which was in use tlnoughout the whole 



