d
completion of the tanks and other stupendous works, the _Mahawanso_ and
the _Rajaratnacari_, in order to indicate the inferiority of the natives
to their masters, speak of their conjoint labours as that of "men and
snakes,"[2] and "men and demons."[3]

[Footnote 1: _Mahawanso_, ch. x.]

[Footnote 2: Ibid., ch. xix, p. 115.]

[Footnote 3: The King Maha-Sen, anxious for the promotion of
agriculture, caused many tanks to be made "by men and
devils."--_Mahawanso_, ch. xxxvii.; UPHAM'S _Transl.; Rajaratnacari_, p.
69; _Rajavali_, p. 237.]

[Sidenote: B.C. 104.]

Notwithstanding the degradation of the natives, it was indispensable to
"befriend the interests" of a race so numerous and so useful; hence,
they were frequently employed in the military expeditions of the Wijayan
sovereigns[1], and the earlier kings of that dynasty admitted the rank
of the Yakkho chiefs who shared in these enterprises. They assigned a
suburb of the capital for their residence[2], and on festive occasions
they were seated on thrones of equal eminence with that of the king.[3]
But every aspiration towards a recovery of their independence was
checked by a device less characteristic of ingenuity in the ascendant
race, than of simplicity combined with jealousy in the aborigines. The
feeling was encouraged and matured into a conviction which prevailed to
the latest period of the Singhalese sovereignty, that no individual of
pure Singhalese extraction could be elevated to the supreme power, since
no one could prostrate himself before one of his own nation.[4]

[Footnote 1: _Mahawanso,_ ch. x.]

[Footnote 2: _Ibid.,_ ch. x. p. 67.]

[Footnote 3: _Ibid.,_ p. 66.]

[Footnote 4: JOINVILLE'S _Asiat. Res,_ vol. vii. p. 422.]

For successive generations, however, the natives, although treated with
partial kindness, were regarded as a separate race. Even the children of
Wijayo, by his first wife Kuweni, united themselves with their maternal
connexions on the repudiation of their mother by the king, "and retained
the attributes of Yakkhos,"[1] and by that designation the natives
continued to be distinguished down to the reign of Dutugaimunu.

[Footnote 1: _Mahawanso,_ ch. vii.]

[Sidenote: B.C. 104.]

In spite of every attempt at conciliation, the process of amalgamation
between the two races was reluctant and slow. The earliest Bengal
immigrants sought wives among the Tamils, on the opposite coast of
India[1]; and although their descendants inte