424 SCIENCES AND SOCIAL ARTS. [PART IV. 



sion, to resume possession of the lands and their village 

 tank. 1 



The desolation which now reigns over the plains 

 which the Singhalese formerly tilled, was precipitated 

 by the reckless domination of the Malabars, in the four- 

 teenth and following centuries. The destruction of 

 reservoirs and tanks has been ascribed to defective con- 

 struction, and to the absence of spill-waters, and other 

 facilities for discharging the surplus-water, during the 

 prevalence of excessive rains ; but independently of the 

 fact that vast numbers of these tanks, though utterly 

 deserted, remain, in this respect, almost uninjured to 

 the present day, we have the evidence of their own 

 native historians, that for upwards of fifteen centuries, 

 the reservoirs, when duly attended to, successfully defied 

 all the dangers to be apprehended from inundation. 

 Their destruction and abandonment are ascribable, not 

 so much to any engineering defect, as to the disruption 

 of the village communities, by whom they were so long 

 maintained. The ruin of a reservoir, when neglected 

 and permitted to fall into decay, was speedy and inevi- 

 table ; and as the destruction of the village tank involved 

 the flight of all dependent upon it, the water, once per- 

 mitted to escape, carried pestilence and miasma over the 

 plains they had previously covered with plenty. After 

 such a calamity any partial return of the villagers, even 

 where it was not prevented by the dread of malaria, 

 would have been impracticable ; for the obvious reason, 

 that where the whole combined labour of the commu- 

 nity was not more than sufficient to carry on the work 

 of conservancy and cultivation, the diminished force of 

 a few would have been utterly unavailing, either to 

 effect the reparation of the watercourses, or to restore 

 the system on which the culture of rice-land depends. 

 Thus the process of decay, instead of a gradual decline as 



1 SeooNfeVol. I. p. 361. w. 



