[Footnote 5:  Ibid., p. 52.]

[Sidenote:  B.C. 504.]

Leaving no issue to inherit the throne, he was succeeded by his nephew[1], who selected a relation of Gotama Buddha for his queen; and her brothers having dispersed themselves over the island, increased the number of petty kingdoms, which they were permitted to form in various districts[2], a policy which was freely encouraged by all the early kings, and which, though it served to accelerate colonisation and to extend the knowledge of agriculture, led in after years to dissensions, civil war, and disaster.  It was at this period that Ceylon was resolved into the three geographical divisions, which, down to a very late period, are habitually referred to by the native historians.  All to the north of the Mahawelli-ganga was comprised in the denomination Pihiti, or the Raja-ratta, from its containing the ancient capital and the residence of royalty; south of this was Rohano or Rahuna, bounded on the east and south by the sea, and by the Mahawelli-ganga and Kalu-ganga, on the north and west; a portion of this division near Tangalle still retains the name of Roona.[3] The third was the Maya-ratta, which lay between the mountains, the two great rivers and the sea, having the Dedera-oya to the north, and the Kalu-ganga as its southern limit.

[Footnote 1:  B.C. 504.]

[Footnote 2:  Mahawanso, ch. vii. p. 51, ix. p. 57; Rajavali, part i. p. 177, 186; and TURNOUR’S Epitome, p. 12, 14.]

[Footnote 3:  The district of Rohuna included the mountain zone of Ceylon, and hence probably its name, rohuno meaning the “act or instrument of ascending, as steps or a ladder.”  Adam’s Peak was in the Maya division; but Edrisi, who wrote in the twelfth century, says, that it was then called “El Rahoun.”—­Geographie, &c. viii, JAUBERT’S Transl. vol. ii. p. 71. Rahu is an ordinary name for it amongst Mahometan writers, and in the Raja Tarangini, it is called “Rohanam,” b. iii. 56, 72.]

[Sidenote:  B.C. 504.]

The patriarchal village system, which from time immemorial has been one of the characteristics of the Dekkan, and which still prevails throughout Ceylon in a modified form, was one of the first institutions organised by the successors of Wijayo.  “They fixed the boundaries of every village throughout Lanka;"[1] they “caused the whole island to be divided into fields and gardens;"[2] and so uniformly were the rites of these rural municipalities respected in after times, that one of the Singhalese monarchs, on learning that merit attached to alms given from the fruit of the donor’s own exertions, undertook to sow a field of rice, and “from the portion derived by him as the cultivator’s share,” to bestow an offering on a “thero."[3]

[Footnote 1:  It was established by Pandukabhaya, A.D. 437.—­Mahawanso, ch. x. p. 67, Rajaratnacari, ch. i.]