421 



CHAPTER I. 



POPULATION. — CASTE. — SLAVERY AND EAJA-KARIYA. 



Population. — In no single instance do the chronicles of 

 Ceylon mention the precise amount of the population of 

 the island, at any particular period ; but there is a suffi- 

 ciency of evidence, both historical and physical, to show 

 that it must have been prodigious and dense, especially in 

 the reigns of the more prosperous kings. Whatever 

 limits to the increase of man artificial wants may interpose 

 in a civilised state and in ordinary chmates are unknown 

 in a tropical region, where clothing is an encumbrance, 

 the smallest shelter a home, and sustenance supplied by 

 the bounty of the soil in almost spontaneous abundance. 

 Under such propitious ckcumstances, in the midst of a 

 profusion of frmt-bearing-trees, and in a country reple- 

 nished by a teeming harvest twice, at least, in each year, 

 with the least possible application of labour ; it may 

 readily be conceived that the number of the people will 

 be adjusted mainly, if not entirely, by the extent of arable 

 land. 



The emotion of the traveller of the present time, as day 

 after day he traverses the northern portions of the island, 

 and penetrates the deep forests of the interior, is one of 

 unceasing astonishment at the inconceivable multitude of 

 deserted tanks, the hollows of which are still to be traced ; 

 and the innumerable embankments, overgrown with tim- 

 ber, which indicate the sites of vast reservoirs that for- 

 merly fertihsed districts now solitary and barren. Every 

 such tank is the landmark of one village at least, and 



such are the dimensions of some of them that in propor- 



ee3 



