e elk and
the boar was one of the amusements of the early princes; the "Royal
Huntsmen" had a range of buildings erected for their residence at
Anarajapoora, B.C. 504[2], and the laws of the chase generously forbade
to shoot the deer except in flight.[3] Dogs were trained to assist in
the sport[4] and the oppressed aborigines, driven by their conquerors to
the forests of Rohuna and Maya, are the subjects of frequent
commendation in the pages of the _Mahawanso_, from their singular
ability in the use of the bow.[5]

[Footnote 1: _Mahawanso_, ch. x. p. 59; ch, xiv. p. 78; ch. xxiii. p.
142. The hunting of the hare is mentioned 161 B.C. _Mahawanso_, ch.
xxiii. p. 141.]

[Footnote 2: Ibid., ch. x. p. 66.]

[Footnote 3: Ibid., ch. xiv. p. 78. King Devenipiatissa, when descrying
the elk which led him to the mountain where Mahindo was seated,
exclaimed, "It is not fair to shoot him standing!" he twanged his
bowstring and followed him as he fled, See ante, p. 341, n.]

[Footnote 4: Ibid., ch. xxviii p. 166.]

[Footnote 5: Ibid., ch. xxxiii. pp. 202, 204, &c.]

Before the arrival of Wijayo, B.C. 543, agriculture was unknown in
Ceylon, and grain, if grown at all, was not systematically cultivated.
The Yakkhos, the aborigines, subsisted, as the Veddahs, their lineal
descendants, live at the present day, on fruits, honey, and the products
of the chase. Rice was distributed by Kuweni to the followers of Wijayo,
but it was "rice procured from the wrecked ships of mariners."[l] And
two centuries later, so scanty was the production of native grain, that
Asoca, amongst the presents which he sent to his ally Devenipiatissa,
included "one hundred and sixty loads of hill paddi from Bengal."[2]

[Footnote 1: _Mahawanso_, ch. vii. p. 49.]

[Footnote 2: Ibid., ch. xi. p. 70.]

A Singhalese narrative of the "Planting of the Bo-tree," an English
version of which will be found amongst the translations prepared for Sir
Alexander Johnston, mentions the fact, that rice was still imported into
Ceylon from the Coromandel coast[1] in the second century before Christ.

[Footnote 1: UPHAM, _Sacred Books of Ceylon,_ vol. iii. p. 231.]

_Irrigation_.--It was to the Hindu kings who succeeded Wijayo, that
Ceylon was indebted for the earliest knowledge of agriculture, for the
construction of reservoirs, and the practice of irrigation for the
cultivation of rice.[1]

[Footnote 1: A very able report on irrigation in some of the districts
of Ceyl