The Rajavali relates that in the year 1301 A.D.  King Prakrama III, on the eve of his death, reminded his sons, that having conquered the Malabars, he had united under one rule the three kingdoms of the island, Pihiti with 450,000 villages, Rohuna with 770,000, and Maya with 250,000.[1] A village in Ceylon, it must be observed, resembles a “town” in the phraseology of Scotland, where the smallest collection of houses, or even a single farmstead with its buildings is enough to justify the appellation.  In the same manner, according to the sacred ordinances which regulate the conduct of the Buddhist priesthood, a “solitary house, if there be people, must be regarded as a village,"[2] and all beyond it is the forest.

[Footnote 1:  Rajavali p. 262.  A century later in the reign or Prakrama-Kotta, A.D. 1410, the Rajaratnacari says, there then were 256,000 villages in the province of Matura, 495,000 in that of Jaffna, and 790,000 in Oovah.—­P. 112.]

[Footnote 2:  Hardy’s Eastern Monachism, ch. xiii. p. 133.]

Even assuming that the figures employed by the author of the Rajavali partake of the exaggeration common to all oriental narratives, no one who has visited the regions now silent and deserted, once the homes of millions, can hesitate to believe that when the island was in the zenith of its prosperity, the population of Ceylon must of necessity have been at least ten times as great as it is at the present day.

The same train of thought leads to a clearer conception of the means by which this dense population was preserved, through so many centuries, in spite of frequent revolutions and often recurring invasions; as well as of the causes which led to its ultimate disappearance, when intestine decay had wasted the organisation on which the fabric of society rested.

Cultivation, as it existed in the north of Ceylon, was almost entirely dependent on the store of water preserved in each village tank; and it could only be carried on by the combined labour of the whole local community, applied in the first instance to collect and secure the requisite supply for irrigation, and afterwards to distribute it to the rice lands, which were tilled by the united exertions of the inhabitants, amongst whom the crop was divided in due proportions.  So indispensable were concord and union in such operations, that injunctions for their maintenance were sometimes engraven on the rocks, as an inperishable exhortation, to forbearance and harmony.[1]

[Footnote 1:  See the inscription on the rock of Mihintala, A. D. 262, TURNOUR’S Epitome, Appendix, p. 90; and a similar one on a rock at Pollanarrua, ibid., p, 92.]

Hence, in the recurring convulsions which overthrew successive dynasties, and transferred the crown to usurpers, with a facile rapidity, otherwise almost unintelligible, it is easy to comprehend that the mass of the people had the strongest possible motives for passive submission, and were constrained to acquiescence by an instinctive dread of the fatal effects of prolonged commotion.