4i8 
THE TROPICAL AGRICULTURIST. [December I, 1888, 
vated, and in abundance, it is very strange that she 
should have had to resort to a wrecked vessel in 
order to get rice to feed her guests. As regards the 
race and the language of the pre-existing race, 
I think there is a great deal to be said for '.he Kev. 
Spence Hardy's theory. Mr. Wall has forgotten to 
mention one most important point on which Mr. 
Hardy dwells, and that is that nearly every 
important mountain, river and locality has a name 
of Sanskrit origin, and those names must have 
been given by a race which pre-existed the 
landing of Wijayo. Then comes the extraordinary 
problem that a Sanskrit-speaking race should be 
away at the Southern end of India and the difficulty 
also that Wijayo and his followers did not come 
amongst friends but amongst a foreign people whom 
they conquered. There is no suggestion in the 
narrative that they were of the same race. Quite the 
contrary ; and there are great difficulties concerning 
the whole subject. I was surprized to hear Mr. 
Wall state that in the best poets of the Sinhalese 
female virtue is especially dwelt on. Mr. Wall 
must have read more largely than I have had the 
opportunity of doing. The specimens we have of 
Sinhalese poetry in the work of the accomplished 
Forbes would seem to point rather in the opposite 
direction. One of his chapters is headed by a verse 
in which the poet says that he has seem such wonders 
as a straight coconut tree, a white crow and an Indian 
fig — which, as Doctor Trimen knows, bears fruit 
without having had blossom on it — that they had seen 
that tree in blossom, but a virtuous woman I never' 
saw. (Laughter.) That is the most prominent point 
in Sinhalese poetry as quoted by Forbes. As re- 
gards the wealth of the country, it may be con- 
sistent with the fact that agriculture was not 
carried on to any extent that they should have what 
represented wealth. To this day the soil of Ceylon 
in some parts is largely permeated by gems, and 
gems had a_ great value always on the opposite 
continent of India, and 2,400 years ago, or so, 
the soil contained immensly larger quantities of 
rich gems than is now the case, so that they 
had an immense quanity of what represented 
wealth in the shape of gems, and it is quite 
probable that the pearl fisheries may have 
yielded treasures also. In any case there is not 
sufficient proof, and I must confess that although it 
is quite true that the non-mention of a thing in 
the native records is not strong negative proof of 
the non-existence of the thing, yet the fact that 
40 years after Wijayo's appearance in Ceylon, we 
have a record of the first tank that was built, 
combined with the fact that we know that we have no 
record of any tank made before Wijayo's era, would 
seem to show, that, whether the people grew rice 
or not, they certainly could not have known much of 
irrigation. (Hear, hear, and applause.) I think the 
balance of evidence is against the people whom Wijayo 
conquered having had large irrigation works. I 
have simply thrown out these few 'remarks, as 
members were expected to say something, and I 
can only say that having thrown out these few 
suggestions, I cannot sit down without expressing 
my deep sense of the great research, ingenuity and 
acuteneSB with which Mr. Wall has treated his 
important subject. 
Mr. Thomab Berwick :— Might I be allowed to 
say one word in corroboration of the very cogent 
remarks which havo just been made by Mr, Ferguson 
as to the inconsistency of the fact that the earliest 
record we have of any of our tanks, dates subsequent 
to the arrival of Wijayo with the idea that the agricul- 
ture of Ceylon was in the high condition that Mr. 
Wall would Beem to imagine. Not only is that theory 
inconsistent with what haw just been pointed out 
by Mr. FergUBOfi, but there bs another little point on 
which I am somewhat at issue with Mr. Wall and 
that is when he refers to the neighbouring country 
of India, and contrasts the condition of ancient 
agriculture there with that in Ceylon. There is one 
circumstance which I might perhaps refer to, in the 
first instance, which has struck me very forcibly 
indeed, and that is that in all my travels in the South 
of India I was impressed with the fact that every — if 
I may so speak— item of agricultural civilization 
which Ceylon possesses has been borrowed from our 
neighbours in the South of India. I was exceedingly 
struck with that fact, clearly proving as it does that 
our agriculture here is the child of a parent which 
came from the other side of the water. I mention that 
merely as a preliminary to another circumstance. 
Mr. Wall has told us that there is no record in 
India of any tank earlier than the fourteenth cen- 
tury. But it should be remembered in the first place 
that the south of India overflows with tanks, that 
those huge tanks to which ours are rather a contrast 
in point of magnitude, thtn existed and that the re- 
cords of India have always been in a more imperfect 
condition than those of Ceylon. It is, I believe, a 
fact that Ceylon has the proud advantage of being in 
possession of records older and more authentic than 
any that are to be found on the continent, and, that 
may well account — in fact must necessarily account 
— for the absence of records in India of tanks older 
than the fourteenth century. When we see the 
whole of the South-East especially of India covered 
with tanks of the most enormous magnitude, and 
when we see that the only civilization that ever has 
existed in Ceylon, namely, agricultural civilization 
has been evidently borrowed from our neighbors, I 
think these facts suggest a considerable amount of 
modification of the theory which Mr. Wall has so 
ably endeavored to put forward. 
Mr. Keishnan Menon (of the Madras Agricultural 
Department) remarked that Mr. Wall had attempted 
to show by an elaborate process of induction that 
there was a great development of national indus- 
try in Ceylon before Wijayo's conquest. To those 
who had been accustomed to accept the traditions 
and histories written by Sir James Emerson 
Tennent and writers of the same stamp, the theory 
propounded by Mr. Wall, that there were industry 
and civilization in Ceylon before the W T ijayoan 
conquest was startling ; but to one who comes from 
India, who has been nursed in the legendary tales 
and folklore of his native country, who has had 
opportunities of studying the great epic poems 
in the vernaculars, the theory suggested by 
Mr. Wall will not be startling. Both the great epic 
poems of the Hindus — the Kamayana and Maha 
Bharat — were composed long before Wijayan period, 
and they contained references to Ceylon, which 
show that the inhabitants had at that period 
already attained a high digree of civilization. He 
agreed with the leoturer in thinking that Ceylon had 
a civilization before the Wijayan conquest. As re- 
gards the tanks, he did not believe that Wijayo 
and his followers brought with them the genius 
for tank-building because Wijayo belonged to the 
kingdom of Bengal which is inundated by the 
Ganges. He could not, however, agree with the 
lecturer in thinking that the ancient Indians were 
ignorant of tank building. The Aryan races were 
probably ignorant of it because they had no neces- 
sity for tanks, but the Dravidians, who included 
the vast majority of the Tamil population, knew 
a great deal about tank building, and the ancient 
kings encouraged and multiplied the building of 
tanks all over Southern India. It is therefore quite 
probable owing to the close proximity of Ceylon 
to the South of India that tho Ceylonose 
learned the art from the Dravidians. (Applause.) 
