12 CEYLON AND ITS ADMINISTRATION.

No better description of the initiation of irrigation in Ceylon
exists than is given in Sir Emerson Tennent’s celebrated
work :—
“It was to the Hindu kings who succeeded Wijayo that
Ceylon was indebted for the earliest kno wledge of agriculture,
for the construction of reservoirs, and the practice of irrigation
 for the cultivation of rice.
“The first tank in Ceylon was formed by the successor of
Wijayo, 504 B.C., and their subsequent extension to an almost
incredible number is ascribable to the influence of the
Buddhist religion, which, abhorring the destruction of animal
life, taught its multitudinous votaries to subsist exclusively
upon vegetable food. Hence the planting of gardens, the
diffusion of fruit trees and leguminous vegetables, the
sowing of dry grain, the formation of reservoirs and canals,
and the reclamation of land in situations favourable for
irrigation.
“It is impossible to over-estimate the importance of this
system of water cultivation in a country like the north of
Ceylon subject to periodical droughts. From physical and
geological causes the mode of cultivation in that section of
the Island differs essentially from that practised in the
southern division; and whilst in the latter the frequency of
the rains and abundance of rivers afford a copious supply of
water, the rest of the country is mainly dependent upon
artificial irrigation and on the quantity of rain collected in
tanks or of water diverted from streams and directed into
reservoirs.
“The mountain ranges, which tower along the southwestern
 coast and extend far towards the eastern, serve in
both monsoons to intercept the trade winds and condense the
vapours with which they are charged, thus ensuring to those
regions a plentiful supply of rain. Hence the harvests in
those portions of the Island are regulated by the two monsoons,
 the yale in May and the maha in November; and
seed time is adjusted so as to take advantage of the copious
showers which fall at those periods.
“But in the northern portions of Ceylon, owing to the
absence of mountains, this natural resource cannot be relied
on. The windsin both monsoons traverse the Island without
parting with a sufficiency of moisture; droughts are of
frequent occurrence and of long continuance, and vegetation
in the low and scarcely undulated plains is mainly dependent
on dews and whatever damp is distributed by the steady sea
breeze. In some places the sandy soil rests upon beds of
madrepore and coral rock, through which the scanty rain