habitants, the Yakkhos and Nagas, directed
by the science and skill of the conquerors. Their contributions of this
kind, though in the instance of the Buddhist converts they may have been
to some extent voluntary, were, in general, the result of compulsion.[1]
Like the Israelites under the Egyptians, the aborigines were compelled
to make bricks[2] for the stupendous dagobas erected by their
masters[3]; and eight hundred years after the subjugation of the island,
the _Rajavali_ describes vast reservoirs and appliances for irrigation,
as being constructed by the forced labour of the Yakkhos[4] under the
superintendence of Brahman engineers.[5] This, to some extent, accounts
for the prodigious amount of labour bestowed on these structures; labour
which the whole revenue of the kingdom would not have sufficed to
purchase, had it not been otherwise procurable.

[Footnote 1: In some instances the soldiers of the king were employed in
forming works of irrigation.]

[Footnote 2: _Mahawanso_, ch. xxxviii.]

[Footnote 3: _Ibid_., ch. xxvii.]

[Footnote 4: _Rajavali_, p. 237, 238. Exceptions to the extortion of
forced labour for public works took place under the more pious kings,
who made a merit of paying the workmen employed in the erection of
dagobas and other religious monuments.--_Mahawanso_, ch, xxxv.]

[Footnote 5: _Maharwanso_, ch. x.]

Under this system, the fate of the aborigines was that usually
consequent on the subjugation of an inferior race by one more highly
civilised. The process of their absorption into the dominant race was
slow, and for centuries they continued to exist distinct, as a
subjugated people. So firmly rooted amongst them was the worship both of
demons and serpents, that, notwithstanding the ascendency of Buddhism,
many centuries elapsed before it was ostensibly abandoned; from time to
time, "demon offerings" were made from the royal treasury[1]; and one of
the kings, in his enlarged liberality, ordered that for every ten
villages there should be maintained an astrologer and a "devil-dancer,"
in addition to the doctor and the priest.[2]

[Footnote 1: _Mahawanso_, ch. x.; TURNOUR'S _Epitome_. p. 23.]

[Footnote 2: TURNOUR'S _Epitome_, p. 27; _Rajaratnacari_, ch. ii.;
_Rajavali_, p. 241.]

Throughout the Singhalese chronicles, the notices of the aborigines are
but casual, and occasionally contemptuous. Sometimes they allude to
"slaves of the Yakkho tribe,"[1] and in recording the progress an