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CHAPTER I. 



POPULATION CASTE. SLAVEET AND KAJA-KAKIYA. 



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. In a civilised 

 state and in ordinary climates, artificial wants necessarily 

 impose certain limits to the increase of man. Not so, 

 however, in a tropical region, where clothing is an encum- 

 brance, the smallest shelter a home, and sustenance supplied 

 by the bounty of the soil in almost spontaneous abundance. 

 Under such propitious circumstances, in the midst of a 

 profusion of fruit-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 will be 

 readily granted that the number of the people must 

 be mainly, if not entirely, adjusted 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, indicating the sites of prodigious reservoirs that for- 

 merly fertilised 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- 



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