No. 11.— 1858-9.] PUBLIC WORKS EXPENDITURE. 355 



by the records of the various Governments that have at 

 different periods ruled in Ceylon. 



The Sinhalese Monarchs, jealous of foreign intruders within 

 their domains, so far from opening up their Territories by 

 roads, carefully closed up all access to the interior from the 

 sea-bord, leaving nothing but the most difficult and steepest 

 bullock paths. On the other hand, their utmost efforts, the 

 united labour of their people, was directed to the construction 

 of Buddhist structures of colossal magnitude, and Tanks 

 of vast extent. In almost every Chapter of the translated 

 and untranslated portions of that great Historical work, 

 the " Mahawansa," we meet with notices more or less brief, 

 but still explicit enough, of the many great public works 

 undertaken by the various Monarchs whose reigns and whose 

 characters are therein chronicled. 



Deeply impressed with the importance of and even necessity 

 for a careful and extensive utilising of the water supply of 

 large tracts of country, if those regions were to be made per- 

 manently productive, the religious code of their faith enjoined 

 the construction and upkeep of tanks, canals and water- 

 courses, as a sacred duty, and one that should go far to obtain 

 for them hereafter the greatest reward of their existence. 



Upon the details connected with Sinhalese Public Works, 

 I cannot now enter ; but must content myself with merely 

 observing, that the existence of the great tanks and water- 

 courses now in ruins, or in partial restoration, were the means, 

 in those remote days, of feeding a much larger population 

 than Ceylon can now boast of, and rendered her perfectly 

 independent of India for her supplies of Grain. Even more 

 than this ; it is on record, that so late as the Portuguese period, 

 • rice was exported from Ceylon. What the extent and cost 

 of some of those works must have been, may be gathered from 

 one of our present Governor's Minutes, in which, speaking of 

 Irrigation works in the North-east of the Island, he says of 

 one of them, that it must have occupied a million of men for 

 ten or twelve years in its construction. 



