NO. 37.— 1888.] INDUSTRIES OF CEYLON. 361 



sarily have been, by a numerous and imposing cortege, must 

 have involved a very heavy outlay. Even greater still must 

 that have been which was prepared to receive and convey to 

 Wijayo's court the bride and her noble suite. Add to all 

 these items that of the wedding festivities and the inaugura- 

 tion of the Queen Consort, and the sum total will represent 

 an amount which would have taxed severely the resources of 

 any but a rich country. This costly occasion, moreover, 

 occurred but a very few years after the conquest. 



2. The formation of a tank for irrigation at Anuradhapura 

 by Wijayo's immediate successor, Panduwasa, less than 

 forty years after Wijayo's landing. 



This tank was not a mere pokuna, or bath, but a wewa for 

 agricultural purposes, and is the first recorded of those 

 useful works which form so striking a feature of Sinha- 

 lese history, and which afford, by their interesting ruins, 

 irrefragable proof of the ancient wealth of the Island. These 

 great structures, the mere repairing of which strains modern 

 resources, both of skill and finance, must have required for 

 their construction an immense force of labourers, and they 

 prove incontestably therefore that the country must have 

 possessed great wealth at the time each was executed. 

 Whether the labour employed was locally supplied, or was, 

 as some authors imagine, imported from the continent, is 

 immaterial as a proof of the wealth of the builders, for it 

 would cost more to import and to pay foreign labourers 

 than to avail of the local supply. Whencesoever the labourers 

 came, and whether or not remunerated otherwise, they must, 

 at the least, have been fed and maintained at the cost of those 

 who employed them. 



The same may be said of capital, material, or other form of 

 contribution from abroad ; therefore the supposition that 

 Ceylon was indebted to foreign aid for the means of executing 

 the stupendous public works and religious edifices implies 

 that such aid, whatever its form, would have to be paid for, 

 and would therefore require a greater degree of national 

 wealth and resource than the more natural and probable 



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