Under this system, the fate of the aborigines was that usually consequent on the subjugation of an inferior race by one more highly civilised.  The process of their absorption into the dominant race was slow, and for centuries they continued to exist distinct, as a subjugated people.  So firmly rooted amongst them was the worship both of demons and serpents, that, notwithstanding the ascendency of Buddhism, many centuries elapsed before it was ostensibly abandoned; from time to time, “demon offerings” were made from the royal treasury[1]; and one of the kings, in his enlarged liberality, ordered that for every ten villages there should be maintained an astrologer and a “devil-dancer,” in addition to the doctor and the priest.[2]

[Footnote 1:  Mahawanso, ch. x.; TURNOUR’S Epitome. p. 23.]

[Footnote 2:  TURNOUR’S Epitome, p. 27; Rajaratnacari, ch. ii.; Rajavali, p. 241.]

Throughout the Singhalese chronicles, the notices of the aborigines are but casual, and occasionally contemptuous.  Sometimes they allude to “slaves of the Yakkho tribe,"[1] and in recording the progress and 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.]