The corporate character of the recipients served to neutralise the obligations by which they were severally bound; the vow of poverty, though compulsory on an individual priest, ceased to be binding on the community of which he was a member; and whilst, on his own behalf, he was constrained to abjure the possession of property, even to the extent of one superfluous cloth, the wihara to which he was attached, in addition to its ecclesiastical buildings, and its offerings in gems and gold, was held competent to become the proprietor of broad and fertile lands.[1] These were so bountifully bestowed by royal piety, by private munificence, and by mortuary gifts, that ere many centuries had elapsed the temples of Ceylon absorbed a large proportion of the landed property of the kingdom, and their possessions were not only exempted from taxation, but accompanied by a right to the compulsory labour of the temple tenants.[2]

[Footnote 1:  HARDY’S Eastern Monachism, ch. viii. p. 68.]

[Footnote 2:  The Rajaratnacari mentions an instance, A.D. 62, of eight thousand rice fields bestowed in one grant; and similar munificence is recorded in numerous instances prior, to A.D. 204.—­Rajaratnacari, p. 57, 59, 64, 74, 113, &c. Mahawanso, ch. xxxv. p. 223, 224; ch. xxxvi. p. 233.]

As the estates so made over to religious uses lay for the most part in waste districts, the quantity of land which was thus brought under cultivation necessarily involved large extensions of the means of irrigation.  To supply these, reservoirs were formed on such a scale as to justify the term “consecrated lakes,” by which they are described in the Singhalese annals.[1]

[Footnote 1:  Rajaratnacari, ch. ii. p. 37; Rajavali, p. 237.]

Where the circumstances of the ground permitted, their formation was effected by drawing an embankment across the embouchure of a valley so as to arrest and retain the waters by which it was traversed, and so vast were the dimensions of some of these gigantic tanks that many yet in existence still cover an area of from fifteen to twenty miles in circumference.  The ruins of that at Kalaweva, to the north-west of Dambool, show that its original circuit could not have been less than forty miles, its retaining bund being upwards of twelve miles long.  The spill-water of stone, which remains to the present time, is “perhaps one of the most stupendous monuments of misapplied human labour in the island."[1]

[Footnote 1:  TURNOUR, Mahawanso, p. 12.  The tank of Kalaweva was formed by Dhatu Sena, A.D. 459.—­Mahawanso, ch. xxxviii. p. 257.]

[Sidenote:  B.C. 104.]