ial lake. (_Raja-Tarangini_, Book iv. sl. 505.) If it were
necessary to search beyond India for the origin of cultivation in
Ceylon, the Singhalese, instead of borrowing a system from Egypt, might
more naturally have imitated the ingenious devices of their own
co-religionists in China, where the system of irrigation as pursued in
the military colonies of that country has been a theme of admiration in
every age of their history. (See _Journal Asiatique,_ 1850, vol. lvi.
pp. 341, 346.) And as these colonies were planted not only in the centre
of the empire but on its north-west extremities towards Kaschgar and the
north-east of India, where the new settlers occupied themselves in
draining marshes and leading streams to water their arable lands, the
probabilities are that their system may have been known and copied by
the people of Hindustan.]

The first tank in Ceylon was formed by the successor of Wijayo, B.C.
504, and their subsequent extension to an almost incredible number is
ascribable to the influence of the Buddhist religion, which, abhorring
the destruction of animal life, taught its multitudinous votaries to
subsist exclusively upon vegetable food. Hence the planting of gardens,
the diffusion of fruit-trees and leguminous vegetables[1], the sowing of
dry grain[2], the formation of reservoirs and canals, and the
reclamation of land "in situations favourable for irrigation."

[Footnote 1: Beans, designated by the term of _Masa_ in the _Mahawanso_,
were grown in the second century before Christ, ch, xxiii. p, 140,]

[Footnote 2: The "cultivation of a crop of hill rice" is mentioned in
the _Mahawanso_ B.C. 77, ch. xxxiv. p. 208.]

It is impossible to over-estimate the importance of this system of water
cultivation, in a country like the north of Ceylon, subject to
periodical droughts. From physical and geological causes, the mode of
cultivation in that section of the island differs essentially from that
practised in the southern division; and whilst in the latter the
frequency of the rains and abundance of rivers afford a copious supply
of water, the rest of the country is mainly dependent upon artificial
irrigation, and on the quantity of rain collected in tanks; or of water
diverted from streams and directed into reservoirs.

As has been elsewhere[1] explained, the mountain ranges which tower
along the south-western coast, and extend far towards the eastern, serve
in both monsoons to intercept the trade winds a