petty kingdoms, which they were permitted to form in various
districts[2], a policy which was freely encouraged by all the early
kings, and which, though it served to accelerate colonisation and to
extend the knowledge of agriculture, led in after years to dissensions,
civil war, and disaster. It was at this period that Ceylon was resolved
into the three geographical divisions, which, down to a very late
period, are habitually referred to by the native historians. All to the
north of the Mahawelli-ganga was comprised in the denomination _Pihiti_,
or the Raja-ratta, from its containing the ancient capital and the
residence of royalty; south of this was _Rohano_ or _Rahuna_, bounded on
the east and south by the sea, and by the Mahawelli-ganga and
Kalu-ganga, on the north and west; a portion of this division near
Tangalle still retains the name of Roona.[3] The third was the
_Maya-ratta_, which lay between the mountains, the two great rivers and
the sea, having the Dedera-oya to the north, and the Kalu-ganga as its
southern limit.

[Footnote 1: B.C. 504.]

[Footnote 2: _Mahawanso_, ch. vii. p. 51, ix. p. 57; _Rajavali_, part i.
p. 177, 186; and TURNOUR'S _Epitome_, p. 12, 14.]

[Footnote 3: The district of Rohuna included the mountain zone of
Ceylon, and hence probably its name, _rohuno_ meaning the "act or
instrument of ascending, as steps or a ladder." Adam's Peak was in the
Maya division; but Edrisi, who wrote in the twelfth century, says, that
it was then called "El Rahoun."--_Geographie, &c_. viii, JAUBERT'S
_Transl_. vol. ii. p. 71. _Rahu_ is an ordinary name for it amongst
Mahometan writers, and in the _Raja Tarangini_, it is called "Rohanam,"
b. iii. 56, 72.]

[Sidenote: B.C. 504.]

The patriarchal village system, which from time immemorial has been one
of the characteristics of the Dekkan, and which still prevails
throughout Ceylon in a modified form, was one of the first institutions
organised by the successors of Wijayo. "They fixed the boundaries of
every village throughout Lanka;"[1] they "caused the whole island to be
divided into fields and gardens;"[2] and so uniformly were the rites of
these rural municipalities respected in after times, that one of the
Singhalese monarchs, on learning that merit attached to alms given from
the fruit of the donor's own exertions, undertook to sow a field of
rice, and "from the portion derived by him as the cultivator's share,"
to bestow an offering on a "thero."[3]