interior, is one of unceasing astonishment at the
inconceivable multitude of deserted tanks, the hollows of which are
still to be traced; and the innumerable embankments, overgrown with
timber, which indicate the sites of vast reservoirs that formerly
fertilised districts now solitary and barren. Every such tank is the
landmark of one village at least, and such are the dimensions of some of
them that in proportion to their area, it is probable that hundreds of
villages may have been supported by a single one of these great inland
lakes.

The labour necessary to construct one of these gigantic works for
irrigation is in itself an evidence of local density of population; but
their multiplication by successive kings, and the constantly recurring
record of district after district brought under cultivation in each
successive reign[1], demonstrate the steady increase of inhabitants, and
the multitude of husbandmen whose combined and sustained toil was
indispensable to keep these prodigious structures in productive
activity.

[Footnote 1: The practice of recording the formation of tanks for
irrigation by the sovereign is not confined to the chronicles of Ceylon.
The construction of similar works on the continent of India has been
commemorated in the same manner by the native historians. The memoirs of
the Rajas of Orissa show the number of tanks made and wells dug in every
reign.]

The _Rajavali_ relates that in the year 1301 A.D. King Prakrama III, on
the eve of his death, reminded his sons, that having conquered the
Malabars, he had united under one rule the three kingdoms of the island,
Pihiti with 450,000 villages, Rohuna with 770,000, and Maya with
250,000.[1] A village in Ceylon, it must be observed, resembles a "town"
in the phraseology of Scotland, where the smallest collection of houses,
or even a single farmstead with its buildings is enough to justify the
appellation. In the same manner, according to the sacred ordinances
which regulate the conduct of the Buddhist priesthood, a "solitary
house, if there be people, must be regarded as a village,"[2] and all
beyond it is the forest.

[Footnote 1: _Rajavali_ p. 262. A century later in the reign or
Prakrama-Kotta, A.D. 1410, the _Rajaratnacari_ says, there then were
256,000 villages in the province of Matura, 495,000 in that of Jaffna,
and 790,000 in Oovah.--P. 112.]

[Footnote 2: Hardy's _Eastern Monachism_, ch. xiii. p. 133.]

Even assuming that the figures e