before."[1]

[Footnote 1: _Rajavali_, p. 238]

Simultaneously with the construction of works for the advancement of
agriculture, the patriarchal village system, copied from that which
existed from the earliest ages in India[1], was established in the newly
settled districts; and each hamlet, with its governing "headman" its
artisans, its barber, its astrologer and washerman, was taught to
conduct its own affairs by its village council; to repair its tanks and
watercourses, and to collect two harvests in each year by the combined
labour of the whole village community.

[Footnote 1: _Mahawanso_, ch. x. p.67.]

Between the agricultural system of the mountainous districts and that of
the lowlands, there was at all times the same difference which still
distinguishes the tank cultivation of Neuera-kalawa and the Wanny from
the hanging rice lands of the Kandyan hills. In the latter, reservoirs
are comparatively rare, as the natives rely on the certainty of the
rains, which seldom fail at their due season in those lofty regions.
Streams are conducted by means of channels ingeniously carried round the
spurs of the hills and along the face of acclivities, so as to fertilise
the fields below, which in the technical phrase of the Kandyans are
"_assoedamised_" for the purpose; that is, formed into terraces, each
protected by a shallow ledge over which the superfluous water trickles,
from the highest level into that immediately below it; thus descending
through all in succession till it escapes in the depths of the valley.

For the tillage of the lands with which the temples were so largely
endowed in all quarters of the island, the sacred communities had
assigned to them certain villages, a portion of whose labour was the
property of the wihara[1]: slaves were also appropriated to them, and an
instance is mentioned in the fifth century[2], of the inhabitants of a
low-caste village having been bestowed on a monastery by the king
Aggrabodhi, "in order that the priests might derive their service as
slaves."[3] Sharing in a prerogative of royalty, some of the temples
had, moreover, a right to the compulsory labour of the community; and in
one of the inscriptions carved on the rock at Mihintala, the
"Raja-kariya writer" is enumerated in the list of temple officers.[4]
The temple lands were occasionally let to tenants whose rent was paid
either in "land-fees," or in kind.[5]

[Footnote 1: _Ibid_., ch. xxxvii. p. 247.]

[Footnote