5IO 



NATURE 



[Oct. II, 1877 



Ceylon is capable of supporting, according to official 

 calculation, 1,000 persons to the square mile. In 1855 

 there was not a single inhabited village, although a few 

 patches of land were occasionally cultivated by people 

 from a distance. The contrast between the remote past 

 and the present condition of this half of the island is a 

 piinful one to contemplate, but it is to be hoped that the 

 Colonial Government will never stay its hand until all 

 the useful works of ancient times have been restored and 

 improved — but this will be a work of centuries. 



Long before the Christian era the main ambition of the 

 kings of Ceylon appears to have manifested itself in the 

 formation of tanks, and many kings are mentioned in the 

 Mahawanso who, "for the benefit of the country," and "out 

 of compassion of living creatures," built a dozen or more 

 of these splendid, but absolutely necessary, irrigation works. 

 The Minery tank, some twenty miles in circumference, 

 and irrigating an enormous area of fertile land now 

 entirely barren, owed its origin, along with sixteen others, 

 to Maha Sen, who reigned about the year 250 A.D. It is 

 now merely a swamp, resorted to by enormous numbers 

 of wild fowl. Up to the twelfth and thirteenth centu/ies 

 Ceylon produced her own supplies of food, but in the 

 fourteenth it appears that the island was obliged to im- 

 port a poition of it from India. In 1301, it is related 

 that there were 1,470,000 villages in Ceylon. In 1410, as 

 many as 1.540,000, the term village implying hamlet, or 

 even a single house where there are people resident. Of 

 the vast majority of these, if they ever really existed, not 

 a vestige is left except the ruined tanks, which show 

 unmistakably where the foci of population formerly 

 were. This was shortly after the conquest of the island 

 by the Malabars, who are believed not to have actually 

 destroyed the fabric of the embinkments, but by their 

 system of government to have disorganised the village 

 communities to such an extent that the works connected 

 with the tanks fell into disrepair through neglect, the land 

 became imperfectly irrigated, and the population gradu- 

 ally died out. That this process was a perfectly natural 

 one seems evident from the fact that the tanks do not 

 show any traces of wilful damage, and also from the con- 

 sideration of the almost innumerable evils resulting in 

 death, of which a scarcity of water in a tropical country 

 like Ceylon is productive. Indeed one of the most 

 Irighful diseases that have ever scourged the human race 

 is believed to have been developed in these very localities 

 chiefly through the want of proper food, caused by the 

 absence of a system of irrigation. It is believed, too, and 

 there is strong evidence, based on experience, for the Ijelief 

 that the disease entirely disappears wherever irrigation is 

 restored. It will naturally be asked, " If the advantages 

 of a plentiful supply of water are so enormous, why have 

 not the tanks been restored before this, and what hinders 

 their immediate restoration at the present time?" The 

 reply is, that the creation of this magnificent system of 

 irrigation was not the work of a decade, or even of a cen- 

 tury, but of a thousand years of successful national 

 development, and that therefore the restoration of it must 

 be also a work of time. 



The object of this paper is to araw attention to the fact 

 that the experiment of restoration is at the present mo- 

 ment in process of being tried, and bids fair, after the 

 lapse of half a century or so, to alter entirely the character 

 of the island. The most remarkable success has already 

 attended the efforts to afford irrigation facilities to the 

 Singhalese on the East Coast. Where but a few years ago 

 the natives where half-starved and the land apparently in a 

 hopeless condition, the re-introduction of irrigation through 

 the assistance of the Government, has transformed not 

 only the people, but the country, as if by magic. Rice- 

 fields, palms, and other fruit-trees abound, and the popu- 

 lation is increasing at a rapid rate. Of this particular 

 district the present Governor of Ceylon (Sir William 

 Gregory), reported some four years ago to the Legislative 



Council of the island in the following terms :—'• In th; 

 month of April I visited the rice-growing regions of the 

 Eastern Province, which are the creation of the irrigation 

 works carried out by the Government. 1 never before 

 saw such an unbroken sheet of grain. Save where some 

 isolated trees, part of a recent forest broke the view, the 

 eye wandered over some 20,000 acres of green paddy. I 

 saw, wherever I went, a sleek, vigorous, well-fed, and 

 thoroughly healthy population. Up to 1864 the lands 

 tinder cultivation in this province were 54 000 acres, 

 t'le chief impetus to the irrigation scheme having 

 been given in 1857. In 1871 the lands in culti- 

 vation were 77,000 acres. The Crown lands to be 

 additionally reclaimed under works already completed or 

 in course of completion, amount to 15,900 acres, equal to 

 the support of 23,850 persons." Again, speaking in the 

 same report on the subject of the Great Tank already 

 mentioned, he says : " I am most anxious to put the full 

 strength of the department at work in restoring irriga- 

 tion to Nuwara Kalawia. This magnificent district has 

 the strongest claims upon us. It was once the granary of 

 the island. It is now utterly neglected. It has a popula- 

 tion of 60,000 persons and over 1,600 villages, which have 

 each of them their tank. There are at least 1,700 of 

 these tanks, and I am credibly informed not one of them 

 has a sluice in order. I trust that a few years hence the 

 population may present the same vigorous and thriving 

 appearance as the population of the Eastern Province, 

 and from the same causes— namely, good and plentiful 

 food." Of this same district a gentleman of very great 

 experience told the writer that in travelling through it 

 many years ago he came to a village where, of the thirty 

 inhabitants, only one of them was able to carry water, all 

 the others having been stricken down by hunger or 

 disease. This destitution was caused by the failure of three 

 successive rice-crops, and was not specially exceptional, 

 but fairly representative of what takes place frequently 

 in the district. If we compare the scenes of plenty and 

 contentment as they exist in the Eastern Province at the 

 present moment with what meets us in the Wanni, or in 

 any of the northern districts, where tanks ha\ e not been 

 extensively repaired, the contrast is most striking. We 

 find an almost depopulated country, with here and there 

 a wretched village peopled by a few miserable and more 

 than half-starved inhabitants, who, in times of scarcity, 

 which are not infrequent, are obliged to live on roots and 

 wild herbs, who are periodically decimated by a frightful 

 disease, yet who seem bound to the spot where they were 

 born, and prefer to die there rather than move away to a 

 more fertile and healthy district. It is, indeed, this disin- 

 clination which possesses the agricultural Singhalese to 

 move more than aday'sjourney from his homethat presents 

 the greatest of all diiificulties to the scheme for the restora- 

 tion of the tanks. It is on this account that the process of 

 restoration is always in advance of the supply of natives 

 to take up the new land, unless the works happen to be 

 in the immediate neighbourhood of population. The 

 only plan, therefore, that has proved really successful 

 under present conditions is to restore the tanks in the 

 vicinity of villages, and induce the population to creep 

 slowly onwards step by step, cultivating the more fertile 

 pieces of ground as it advances, until the depopulated 

 districts shall have been partially reclaimed, when the 

 completion of the work will be a matter of comparative 

 ease. Two typical instances of this mode of procedure 

 have been mentioned to me by an official high in the 

 Government service, as showing the effect of a well- 

 regulated expenditure of labour and money in restoring 

 irrigation works. In the year 1S54 Mr. Bailey, whose 

 name will ever be associated with this scheme for bene- 

 fiting the natives, spent less than 100/ on a canal some 

 miles to the north of Matal^, a country town a few miles 

 north of Kandy. The village thus supplied with water 

 had previously dwindled away until only three houses 



