s, and fruit trees shall be
cultivated, and that on the roads wells shall be dug and trees planted
for the enjoyment of men and animals." In apparent conformity with these
edicts, one of the kings of Ceylon, Addagaimunu, A.D. 20, is stated in
the _Mahawanso_ to have "caused to be planted throughout the island
every description of fruit-bearing creepers, and interdicted the
destruction of animal life,"[2] and similar acts of pious benevolence,
performed by command of various other sovereigns, are adverted to on
numerous occasions.

[Footnote 1: It is curious that one of these edicts of Asoca, who was
contemporary with Devenipiatissa, is addressed to "all the conquered
territories of the raja, even unto the ends of the earth; as in Chola,
in Pida, in Keralaputra, _and in Tambapanni_ (or Ceylon)." This license
of speech, reminding one of the grandiloquent epistles "from the
Flaminian Gate," was no doubt assumed in virtue of the recent
establishment of Buddhism, or, as it is called in the _Mahawanso_ "the
religion of the Vanquisher," and Asoca, as its propagator, thus claims
to address the converts as his "subjects."]

[Footnote 2: _Mahawanso_, ch. xxxv. p. 215. The king Upatissa, A.D. 368,
in the midst of a solemn ceremonial, "observing ants, and other insects
drowning in an inundation, halted, and having swept them towards the
with the feathers of a peacock's tail, and enabled them to save a
themselves, he continued the procession."--_Mahawanso_, ch. xxxvii p.
249; _Rajaratnacari_, p. 49, 52; _Rajavali_, p. 228.]

CHAP. VII

FATE OF THE ABORIGINES.

[Sidenote: B.C. 104.]

It has already been shown, that devotion and policy combined to
accelerate the progress of social improvement in Ceylon, and that before
the close of the third century of the Christian era, the island to the
north of the Kandyan mountains contained numerous cities and villages,
adorned with temples and dagobas, and seated in the midst of highly
cultivated fields. The face of the country exhibited broad expanses of
rice land, irrigated by artificial lakes, and canals of proportionate
magnitude, by which the waters from the rivers, which would otherwise
have flowed idly to the sea, were diverted inland in all directions to
fertilise the rice fields of the interior.[1]

[Footnote 1: _Mahawanso_, ch. xxxv. xxxvii.]

[Sidenote: B.C. 104.]

In the formation of these prodigious tanks, the labour chiefly employed
was that of the aboriginal in