422 



SCIENCES AND SOCIAL ARTS. 



[PART IV. 



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

 may have been supported by a single one of these 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 their multiplication by suc- 

 cessive kings, and the constantly recurring record of 

 district after district brought under cultivation in each 

 successive reign 1 , demonstrate the steady increase 

 of population, and the multitude of husbandmen whose 

 combined and sustained toil was indispensable to keep 

 these prodigious structures in productive activity. 

 The Eajavali relates that in the year 1301 A.D. 

 King Prakrama ILL, 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, OOO. 2 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 that appellation. In the same manner, according 

 to the sacred ordinances which regulate the conduct of 

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

 people, must be regarded as a village," 3 and all beyond 

 it is the forest. 



Even assuming that the figures employed by the 

 author of the Eajavali partake of the exaggeration 

 common to all oriental narratives, no one who has 

 visited the silent and deserted regions, which were 



1 The practice of recording the 

 formation of tanks for irrigation by 

 the sovereign 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. 



8 Eajavali. p. 262. A century 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 of 

 Jaflha, and 790,000 in Oovah. 

 P. 112. 



3 HABDT'S Eastern Monachism, ch. 

 xiii. p. 133. 



