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JOURNAL, R.A.S. (CEYLON). [VOL. XII. 



national works, nor could the new religion be formally 

 inaugurated as that of the whole Island. 



It follows that the national industry — the cultivation of 

 rice — must have been pursued up to the time we are review- 

 ing by comparatively primitive methods. The essential 

 feature of the enterprise, even in its simplest form, was that 

 of collecting-tanks, which were indispensable, especially in 

 the places above specified, where the sparse rainfall required 

 always to be husbanded with the greatest care for the use of 

 the cultivators. These necessary works must have had small 

 beginnings, such as each village could compass for itself, and 

 have gradually assumed larger proportions, requiring the 

 combined forces of several villages or of a district ; they 

 must also have been collateral in number and in the area 

 over which they were spread with the growth of the culti- 

 vation itself, and with the increase of the population engaged 

 in it. Each of these works, however simple, having to serve 

 a number of people, the dependence of each community 

 upon a common supply of the primary necessity of their 

 living would be likely to beget an accommodating habit and 

 a spirit of union amongst them. This circumstance may 

 •probably have fostered, if it did not actually engender, the 

 pacific disposition that characterised the people, and was so 

 essential to the success of their labours and the progress of 

 the country. 



Reading the pages of the national history of that period— 

 the smooth progress of events ; the ready acceptance of the 

 new rule ; the facility with which the Buddhist religion 

 obtained the homage of the whole population ; — all seem 

 rather like a fiction than the history of a revolution, for 

 such, in truth, the new regime really was. The only parallel 

 within our knowledge is that of the Tartars in China, whose 

 dynasty, though first established by force against a show of 

 resistance, was quietly accepted by the Chinese people. 



It will be observed that the political situation, as we have 

 endeavoured to show it, though forming an incidental feature 

 of the history that is not even once specially mentioned, is 



