369 



CHAP. YII. 



FATE OF THE ABORIGmES. 



It lias already been shown, that devotion and policy 

 combined to accelerate the progress of social improve- 

 ment 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, irri- 

 gated 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 fertihse the rice 

 fields of the interior.'- 



In the formation of these prodigious tanks, the 

 labour chiefly emploj^ed was that of tlie aboriginal in- 

 habitants, the Yakkhos and JSTagas, directed by the 

 science and skill of the conquerors. Their contribu- 

 tions of tliis kind, though in the instance of the Bud- 

 dhist converts they may have been to some extent 

 voluntary, were, in general, the result of compulsion.^ 

 Like the Israelites under the Eg}^tians, 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 Eajavali 

 describes vast reservoirs and appliances for miga- 

 tion, as being constructed by the forced labour of the 



B.C. 



104. 



^ 3Iahawanso, cli. xxxv. xxxvii. 



^ In some instances the soldiers of 

 the \uiv^ were employed in forming 

 works of irrigation. 



^ 3Iahaioanso, ch. xxxviii. 

 ^ Ibid., ch. xxvii. 



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