Ceylon; an Account of the Island Physical, Historical, and Topographical with Notices of Its Natural History Part 72

[Footnote 1: TURNOUR, _Mahawanso_, p. 12. The tank of Kalaweva was formed by Dhatu Sena, A.D. 459.--_Mahawanso_, ch. x.x.xviii. p. 257.]

[Sidenote: B.C. 104.]

The number of these stupendous works, which were formed by the early sovereigns of Ceylon, almost exceeds credibility. Kings are named in the native annals, each of whom made from fifteen to thirty[1], together with ca.n.a.ls and all the appurtenances for irrigation. Originally these vast undertakings were completed "for the benefit of the country," and "out of compa.s.sion for living creatures;"[2] but so early as the first century of the Christian era, the custom became prevalent of forming tanks with the pious intention of conferring the lands which they enriched on the church. Wide districts, rendered fertile by the interception of a river and the formation of suitable ca.n.a.ls, were appropriated to the maintenance of the local priesthood[3]; a tank and the thousands of acres which it fertilised were sometimes a.s.signed for the perpetual repairs of a dagoba[4], and the revenues of whole villages and their surrounding rice fields were devoted to the support of a single wihara.[5]

[Footnote 1: _Rajaratnacari_, p. 41, 45, 54, 55; King Saidaitissa B.C.

137, made "eighteen lakes" (_Rajavali_, p. 233). King Wasabha, who ascended the throne A.D. 62, "caused sixteen large lakes to be enclosed"

(_Rajaratnacari_, p. 57). Detu Tissa, A.D. 253, excavated six (_Rajavali_, p. 237), and King Maha Sen, A.D. 275, seventeen (_Mahawanso_, ch, x.x.xviii. p. 236).]

[Footnote 2: _Mahawanso_, ch, x.x.xvii. p. 242.]

[Footnote 3: _Mahawanso_, ch. x.x.xiv. p. 210; x.x.xv. p. 221; x.x.xviii. p.

237, _Rajaratnacari_, ch. ii. p. 57, 59, 64, 69, 74.]

[Footnote 4: _Mahawanso_, ch. x.x.xv. p. 215, 218, 223; ch. x.x.xvii. p.

234; _Rajaratnacari_, ch. ii. p. 51. TURNOUR'S _Epitome_, p. 21.]

[Footnote 5: _Mahawanso_, ch. x.x.xv. p. 218, 221; _Rajaratnacari_, ch.

ii. p. 51; _Rajaviai_, p. 241.]

So lavish were these endowments, that one king, who signalised his reign by such extravagances as laying a carpet seven miles in length, "in order that pilgrims might proceed with unsoiled feet all the way from the Kadambo river (the Malwatte oya) to the mountain Chetiyo (Mihintala)," awarded a priest who had presented him with a draught of water during the construction of a wihara, "land within the circ.u.mference of half a yoyana (eight miles) for the maintenance of the temple."[1]

[Footnote 1: _Mahawanso_, ch. x.x.xiv, p. 3.]

[Sidenote: B.C. 104.]

It was in this manner that the beautiful tank at Mineri, one of the most lovely of these artificial lakes, was enclosed by Maha Sen, A.D. 275; and, together with the 80,000 amonams of ground which it waters, was conferred on the Jeytawana Wihara which the king had just erected at Anaraj.a.poora.[1]

[Footnote 1: _Rajaratnacari_, ch. ii. p. 69.]

To identify the crown still more closely with the interests of agriculture, some of the kings superintended public works for irrigating the lands of the temples[1]; and one more enthusiastic than the rest toiled in the rice fields to enhance the merit of conferring their produce on the priesthood.[2]

[Footnote 1: TURNOUR'S _Epitome_, p. 33.]

[Footnote 2: _Mahawanso_, ch. x.x.xiv. The Buddhist kings of Burmah are still accustomed to boast, almost in the terms of the _Mahawanso_, of the distinction which they have earned, by the mult.i.tudes of tanks they have constructed or restored. See YULE'S _Narrative of the Mission to Ava in 1855_, p. 106.]

These broad possessions, the church, under all vicissitudes and revolutions, has succeeded in retaining to the present day. Their territories, it is true, have been diminished in extent by national decay; the destruction of works for irrigation has converted into wilderness and jungle plains once teeming with fertility; and the mild policy of the British government, by abolis.h.i.+ng _raja-kariya_[1], has emanc.i.p.ated the peasantry, who are no longer the serfs either of the temples or the chiefs. But in every district of the island the priests are in the enjoyment of the most fertile lands, over which the crown exercises no right of taxation; and such is the extent of their possessions that, although their precise limits have not been ascertained by the local government, they have been conjectured with probability to be equal to one-third of the cultivated land of the island.

[Footnote 1: Compulsory labour.]

[Sidenote: B.C. 104.]

One peculiarity in the Buddhist ceremonial served at all times to give a singular impulse to the progress of horticulture. Flowers and garlands are introduced in its religious rites to the utmost excess. The atmosphere of the wiharas and temples is rendered oppressive with the perfume of champac and jessamine, and the shrine of the deity, the pedestals of his image, and the steps leading to the temple are strewn thickly with blossoms of the nagaha and the lotus. At an earlier period the profusion in which these beautiful emblems were employed in sacred decorations appears almost incredible; the _Mahawanso_ relates that the Ruanwelle dagoba, which was 270 feet in height, was on one occasion "festooned with garlands from pedestal to pinnacle till it resembled one uniform bouquet;" and at another time, it and the lofty dagoba at Mihintala were buried under heaps of jessamine from the ground to the summit.[1] Fa Hian, in describing his visit to Anaraj.a.poora in the fourth century, dwells with admiration and wonder on the perfumes and flowers lavished on their wors.h.i.+p by the Singhalese[2]; and the native historians constantly allude as familiar incidents to the profusion in which they were employed on ordinary occasions, and to the formation by successive kings of innumerable gardens for the floral requirements of the temples. The capital was surrounded on all sides[3] by flower gardens, and these were multiplied so extensively that, according to the _Rajaratnacari_, one was to be found within a distance of four leagues in any part of Ceylon.[4] Amongst the regulations of the temple built at Dambedinia, in the thirteenth century, was "every day an offering of 100,000 flowers, and each day a different flower."[5]

[Footnote 1: _Mahawanso_, ch. x.x.xiv.; _Rajaratnacari_, p. 52, 53.]

[Footnote 2: FA HIAN. _Foe Koue Ki_, ch. x.x.xviii. p. 335.]

[Footnote 3: _Rajavali_, p. 227; _Mahawanso_, ch. xi. p. 67.]

[Footnote 4: _Rajaratnacari_, p. 29, 49. Amongst the officers attached to the great establishments of the priests in Mihintala, A.D. 246, there are enumerated in an inscription engraven on a rock there, a secretary, a treasurer, a physician, a surgeon, a painter, twelve cooks, twelve thatchers, ten carpenters, six carters, and _two florists_.]

[Footnote 5: _Rajaratnacari_, p. 103. The same book states that another king, in the fifteenth century, "offered no less than 6,480,320 sweet smelling flowers" at the shrine of the Tooth.--_Ib._, p. 136.]

[Sidenote: B.C. 104.]

Another advantage conferred by Buddhism on the country was the planting of fruit trees and esculent vegetables for the gratuitous use of travellers in all the frequented parts of the island. The historical evidences of this are singularly corroborative of the genuineness of the Buddhist edicts engraved on various rocks and monuments in India, the deciphering of which was the grand achievement of Prinsep and his learned coadjutors. On the pillars of Delhi, Allahabad, and other places, and on the rocks of Girnar and Dhauli, there exist a number of Pali inscriptions purporting to be edicts of Asoca (the Dharmasoca of the _Mahawanso_), King of Magadha, in the third century before the Christian era, who, on his conversion to the religion of Buddha, commissioned Mahindo, his son, to undertake its establishment in Ceylon.

In these edicts, which were promulgated in the vernacular dialect, the king endeavoured to impress both upon his subjects and allies, as well as those who, although aliens, were yet "united in the law" of Buddha, the divine precepts of their great teacher; prominent amongst which are the prohibition against taking animal life[1], and the injunction that, "everywhere wholesome vegetables, roots, and fruit trees shall be cultivated, and that on the roads wells shall be dug and trees planted for the enjoyment of men and animals." In apparent conformity with these edicts, one of the kings of Ceylon, Addagaimunu, A.D. 20, is stated in the _Mahawanso_ to have "caused to be planted throughout the island every description of fruit-bearing creepers, and interdicted the destruction of animal life,"[2] and similar acts of pious benevolence, performed by command of various other sovereigns, are adverted to on numerous occasions.

[Footnote 1: It is curious that one of these edicts of Asoca, who was contemporary with Devenipiatissa, is addressed to "all the conquered territories of the raja, even unto the ends of the earth; as in Chola, in Pida, in Keralaputra, _and in Tambapanni_ (or Ceylon)." This license of speech, reminding one of the grandiloquent epistles "from the Flaminian Gate," was no doubt a.s.sumed in virtue of the recent establishment of Buddhism, or, as it is called in the _Mahawanso_ "the religion of the Vanquisher," and Asoca, as its propagator, thus claims to address the converts as his "subjects."]

[Footnote 2: _Mahawanso_, ch. x.x.xv. p. 215. The king Upatissa, A.D. 368, in the midst of a solemn ceremonial, "observing ants, and other insects drowning in an inundation, halted, and having swept them towards the with the feathers of a peac.o.c.k's tail, and enabled them to save a themselves, he continued the procession."--_Mahawanso_, ch. x.x.xvii p.

249; _Rajaratnacari_, p. 49, 52; _Rajavali_, p. 228.]

CHAP. VII

FATE OF THE ABORIGINES.

[Sidenote: B.C. 104.]

It has already been shown, that devotion and policy combined to accelerate the progress of social improvement in Ceylon, and that before the close of the third century of the Christian era, the island to the north of the Kandyan mountains contained numerous cities and villages, adorned with temples and dagobas, and seated in the midst of highly cultivated fields. The face of the country exhibited broad expanses of rice land, irrigated by artificial lakes, and ca.n.a.ls of proportionate magnitude, by which the waters from the rivers, which would otherwise have flowed idly to the sea, were diverted inland in all directions to fertilise the rice fields of the interior.[1]

[Footnote 1: _Mahawanso_, ch. x.x.xv. x.x.xvii.]

[Sidenote: B.C. 104.]

In the formation of these prodigious tanks, the labour chiefly employed was that of the aboriginal inhabitants, the Yakkhos and Nagas, directed by the science and skill of the conquerors. Their contributions of this kind, though in the instance of the Buddhist converts they may have been to some extent voluntary, were, in general, the result of compulsion.[1]

Like the Israelites under the Egyptians, the aborigines were compelled to make bricks[2] for the stupendous dagobas erected by their masters[3]; and eight hundred years after the subjugation of the island, the _Rajavali_ describes vast reservoirs and appliances for irrigation, as being constructed by the forced labour of the Yakkhos[4] under the superintendence of Brahman engineers.[5] This, to some extent, accounts for the prodigious amount of labour bestowed on these structures; labour which the whole revenue of the kingdom would not have sufficed to purchase, had it not been otherwise procurable.

[Footnote 1: In some instances the soldiers of the king were employed in forming works of irrigation.]

[Footnote 2: _Mahawanso_, ch. x.x.xviii.]

[Footnote 3: _Ibid_., ch. xxvii.]

[Footnote 4: _Rajavali_, p. 237, 238. Exceptions to the extortion of forced labour for public works took place under the more pious kings, who made a merit of paying the workmen employed in the erection of dagobas and other religious monuments.--_Mahawanso_, ch, x.x.xv.]

[Footnote 5: _Maharwanso_, ch. x.]

Under this system, the fate of the aborigines was that usually consequent on the subjugation of an inferior race by one more highly civilised. The process of their absorption into the dominant race was slow, and for centuries they continued to exist distinct, as a subjugated people. So firmly rooted amongst them was the wors.h.i.+p both of demons and serpents, that, notwithstanding the ascendency of Buddhism, many centuries elapsed before it was ostensibly abandoned; from time to time, "demon offerings" were made from the royal treasury[1]; and one of the kings, in his enlarged liberality, ordered that for every ten villages there should be maintained an astrologer and a "devil-dancer,"

in addition to the doctor and the priest.[2]

[Footnote 1: _Mahawanso_, ch. x.; TURNOUR'S _Epitome_. p. 23.]

[Footnote 2: TURNOUR'S _Epitome_, p. 27; _Rajaratnacari_, ch. ii.; _Rajavali_, p. 241.]