NO. 42. — 1891.] ANCIENT INDUSTRIES. 



61 



He ventured to think that the point which Mr. Wall 

 had established — and which he had undoubtedly proved — 

 would be further strengthened if he relied less exclu- 

 sively upon the language of the Mahdwansa. He was not 

 one of those who thought that that history was altogether 

 unauthentic : yet he could not but perceive the events 

 chronicled, concerning the period under review, by the 

 historical writer were not written by him until 950 years 

 after. Nor were they aware of earlier documents from 

 which the alleged events could have been obtained. There- 

 fore, what was known as an historical setting was absent. 

 Besides such passages as that Wijayo was said to be the son 

 of a lion, there were many statements which they must 

 doubt. It was natural to conclude that the writer could 

 only clothe his record of circumstances in accordance with 

 the conditions of life within the knowledge of the historian. 

 Recently a different spirit had arisen, but the author of the 

 Mahdwansa could not be expected to have done more than 

 infer the surroundings of the ancient events he was recording 

 from the circumstances of his own day. It was quite 

 impossible for him many centuries later to describe accu- 

 rately the order of things 500 years B.C. 



To strengthen the argument as opposed to Sir Emerson 

 Tennent's statement, which seemed no longer tenable, he (the 

 Chairman) would look a little outside and see the condition of 

 the neighbouring countries. The Buddhist books of the 

 Pitaka bore good testimony to the state of the country to 

 which they referred, and by 250 A.D, these made it clear what 

 was the condition of Ceylon, and also who were the people who 

 had authority in the Island. There was little room for doubt, 

 owing to these sources of information, that in the earliest 

 part of the third century B.C. rice was the principal product. 



Another form of evidence was, he thought, the existence 

 of Buddhism in Ceylon. That religion, if he might say so, 

 was an agricultural religion. It was clearly impossible that 

 it could be the religion of those who lived by hunting, He 

 remembered on one occasion when he was at a resthouse on 

 the borders of Bintenna, he was engaged in conversation 

 with an intelligent native and was referring to the people 

 living on the other side of the river, when his companion 

 replied that those poor people could not be Buddhists — they 

 could not grow paddy, but had to live by the chase. 

 Buddhism always favoured, and was productive of an agri- 

 cultural condition of society. 



His Lordship, reverting to the earlier portions of the 

 Mahdwayisa, spoke of the similarity therein of the descriptions 

 of sculptures and various scenes depicted with those referring 

 to Northern India in the Pitakas. 



