IRRIGATION.

13

percolates too quickly to refresh the soil ; and the husbandman
 is entirely dependent upon wells and village tanks for
the means of irrigation.
“In a region exposed to such vicissitudes the risk would
have been imminent and incessant had the population been
obliged to rely on supplies of dry grain alone, the growth of
which must necessarily have been precarious owing to the
Possible failure or deficiency of the rains. Hence frequent
famines would have been inevitable in those seasons of
Prolonged dryness and scorching heat, when ‘the sky
becomes as brass and the earth as iron.’
“Whatan unspeakable blessing that against such calamities
a security should have been found by the introduction of a
grain calculated to germinate under water; and that a
perennial supply of the latter, not only adequate for all
ordinary purposes, but sufficient to guard against extraordinary
 emergencies of the seasons, should have been provided
by the ingenuity of the people aided by the bounteous care
of their sovereigns.
“Simultaneously with the construction of works for the
advancement of agriculture the patriarchal village system,
copied from that which existed from the earliest ages in
India, was established in the newly settled districts; and
sach hamlet, with its governing ‘headman,’ its artisans, its
barber, its astrologer, and washerman, was taught to conduct
its own affairs by its village council, to repair its tanks and
water-courses, and to collect two harvests in each year by
the combined labour of the whole village community.”
The same author is drawn upon for the following account
of four typical works of irrigation -—
“ Giant's Tank,—Our party passed the Taikum, the immense
causeway of cut granite, 250 yards in length and upwards of
15 feet high, by which it was attempted to divert the waters
of the river into the canal that was designed to supply the
Giant’s tank. None of the great reservoirs of Ceylon have
attracted so much attention as this stupendous work. The
retaining bund of the reservoir, which is 300 feet broad at
the base, can be traced for more than 15 miles, and, as the
country is level, the area which its waters were intended to
cover would have been nearly equal to that of the lake of
Geneva.*
‘“ Kalawewa, in the North-Central Province, was formed by
King Dhatu Sen about the year 460 A.D. by driving an
embankment across the Kala-ova, which flowing from the

* This tank has been recently restored and is capable of irrigating
20,000 acres of land.