CIIAP. II.] IEEIGATIOK. 433 



droughts are of frequent occurrence and of long con- 

 tinuance ; and vegetation in the low and scarcely undu- 

 lated plains is mainly dependent on dews and whatsoever 

 damp is distributed by the steady sea-breeze. In some 

 places the sandy soil rests upon beds of madrepore and 

 coral rock, through which the scanty rain percolates 

 too quickly to refresh the soil ; and thus the husbandman 

 is entirely dependent upon wells and village tanks for 

 the means of irrigation. 



In a region exposed to such climatic vicissitudes the risk 

 would have been imminent and incessant, had the popu- 

 lation been obliged to rely on supplies of dry grain alone, 

 the growth of which must necessarily have been precarious, 

 owing to the possible failure or deficiency of the rains. 

 Hence frequent famines would have been inevitable in 

 those seasons of prolonged dryness and scorching heat, 

 when " the sky becomes as brass and the earth as iron." 

 What an unspeakable blessing that against such calami- 

 ties a security should have been found by the introduc- 

 tion of a grain calculated to germinate under water; 

 and that a perennial supply of the latter, not only 

 adequate for all ordinary purposes, but sufficient to guard 

 against extraordinary emergencies, should have been pro- 

 vided by the ingenuity of the people, aided by the 

 bounteous solicitude of their sovereigns. It is no 

 matter of surprise that the kings who devoted their 

 treasures and their personal energies to the formation of 

 tanks and canals have entitled their memory to traditional 

 veneration, as benefactors of their race and country. And 

 in striking contrast to them, it is the pithy remark of the 

 author of the Rajavali, mourning over the extinction 

 of the Great Dynasty and the decline of the country, 

 that " because the fertility of the land was decreased the 

 kings who followed were no longer of such consequence 

 as those who went before." 1 



1 Rajavali, p. 238. 

 VOL. I. F F 



