SCIENCES AND SOCIAL AETS. 



[PART IV. 



ships of mariners." ' And two centuries later, so scanty 

 was the production of native grain, that Asoka, amongst 

 the presents which he sent to his ally Devenipiatissa, 

 included " one hundred and sixty loads of hill paddi from 

 Bengal." 2 



A Singhalese narrative of the " Planting of the Bo-tree," 

 an English version of which will be found amongst the 

 translations prepared for Sir Alexander Johnston, men- 

 tions the fact, that rice was still imported into Ceylon 

 from the Coromandel coast 3 in the second century before 

 Christ. 



Irrigation. It was to the Hindu kings who succeeded 

 Wijayo, that Ceylon was indebted for the earliest know- 

 ledge of agriculture, for the construction of reservoirs, 

 and the practice of irrigation for the cultivation of rice. 4 



1 Mahawanso, ch. vii. p. 49. 

 3 Ibid., ch. xi. p. 70. 



3 UPHAM, Sacred Hooks of Ceylon, 

 vol. iii. p. 231. 



4 A very able report on irrigation 

 in some of the districts of Ceylon 

 lias been recently drawn up by Mr. 

 BAILEY, of the Ceylon Civil Service ; 

 but the author has been led into an 

 error in supposing that, " it cannot be 

 to India that we must look for the 

 origin of tanks and canals in Ceylon," 

 and that the knowledge of their con- 

 struction was derived through " the 

 Arabian and Persian merchants who 

 traded between Egypt and Ceylon." 

 Mr. Bailey rests this conclusion on 

 the assertion that the first Indian 

 canal of which we have any record 

 dates no farther back than the middle 

 of the fourteenth century. There was 

 nothing in common between the 

 shallow canals for distributing the 

 periodical inundation of the Nile over 

 the level lands of Egypt (a country 

 in which rice was little known), 

 and the gigantic embankments by 

 which hills were so connected in 

 Ceylon as to convert the valleys be- 

 tween them into inland lakes ; and 

 there was no similarity to render 

 the excavation of the one a model 

 and precedent for the construction of 



the other. Probably the lake Moeris 

 dwells in the mind of those who 

 ascribe proficiency in irrigation to 

 the ancient Egyptians ; but although 

 Herodotus asserts it to have been an 



excavation, ^tipoTrot'jjrog icai opvicrf) 

 (lib. ii. 149), geologic investigation 

 has shown that Mceris is a natural 

 lake created by the local depression 

 of that portion of the Arsinoite nome. 

 Neither Strabo nor Pliny, who be- 

 lieved it to be artificial, ascribed its 

 origin to anything connected with 

 irrigation, for which, in fact, its level 

 would render it unsuitable. Nature 

 had done so much for irrigation in 

 Egypt, that art was forestalled ; and 

 even had it been otherwise, and had 



in the science, or capable of teaching 

 it, the least qualified imparters of 

 engineering knowledge would have 

 been the Arab and Persian mariners, 

 whose lives were spent in coasting 

 the shores of the Indian Ocean. It is 

 true that in Arabia itself, at a very 

 early period, there is the tradition of 

 the great artificial lake of Aram, in 

 Yemen, about the time of Alexander 

 the Great (SALE'S Koran, Introd. p. 7); 

 and evidence still more authentic 

 serves to show that the practice of 

 artificial irrigation was one of the 



