422 



SCIENCES AND SOCIAL AKTS. 



[Part IV. 



tion to their area, it is probable that hundreds of villages 

 may have been supported by a single one of these great 

 inland lakes. 



The labour necessary to construct one of these gigan- 

 tic works for irrigation is in itself an evidence of local 

 density of population ; but thek multiphcation by suc- 

 cessive kings, and the constantly recurring record of 

 district after district brought under cultivation in each 

 successive reign ^ , demonstrate the steady increase 

 of inhabitants, and the midtitude of husbandmen 

 whose combined and sustained toil was indispensable 

 to keep these prodigious structures in productive 

 activity. 



The Rajavali relates that in the year 1301 a.d. 

 King Prakrama III., on the eve of his death, reminded 

 his sons, that having conquered the Malabars, he had 

 united under one rule the three kingdoms of the island, 

 Pihiti with 450,000 villages, Eohuna with 770,000, 

 and Maya with 250,000.^ A village in Ceylon, it must 

 be observed, resembles a " town " in the phraseology of 

 Scotland, where the smallest collection of houses, or 

 even a single farmstead with its buildings is enough to 

 justify the appellation. In the same manner, according 

 to the sacred ordinances wliich regulate the conduct of 

 the Buddhist priesthood, a "sohtary house, if there be 

 people, must be regarded as a village," ^ and all beyond 

 it is the forest. 



Even assuming that the figures employed by the 

 author of the Rajavali partake of the exaggeration 



^ The practice of recording the 

 foi'ination of tanks for irrigation by 

 the sovereigTi is not confined to the 

 chronicles of Ceylon. The construc- 

 tion of similar works on the continent 

 of India has been commemorated in 

 the same manner by the native histo- 

 rians. The memoirs of the Rajas of 

 Orissa show the number of tanks 

 made and wells dug in every reign. 



* Rajavali. p. 2G2. A centuiy later 

 in the reign of Prakrama-Kotta, a.d. 

 1410, the Rajaratnacari says, there 

 then were 256,000 villages in the 

 province of Matura, 495,000 in that ot 

 Jaffiia, and 790,000 in Oovah.— 

 P. 112. 



3 Hardy's Eastern Monachism, ch, 

 xiii. p. 133. 



