Ceylon; an Account of the Island Physical, Historical, and Topographical with Notices of Its Natural History Part 86

[Footnote 3: Rock-inscription at Dambool, A.D. 1200. The _Rajavali_ mentions the _ridis_ as in circulation in Ceylon at the period of the arrival of the Portuguese, A.D. 1505.--P. 278.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: HOOK MONEY.]

In India they are called _larins_, and money in imitation of them, struck by the princes of Bij.a.pur and by Sivaji, the founder of the Mahrattas, was in circulation in the Dekkan as late as the seventeenth century.[1]

[Footnote 1: Prof. WILSON'S _Remarks on Fish-hook Money, Numism.

Chronic._ 1854, p. 181.]

CHAP. VI.

ENGINEERING.

It has already been shown[1] that the natives of Ceylon received their earliest instruction in engineering from the Brahmans, who attached themselves to the followers of Wijayo and his immediate successors.[2]

But whilst astonished at the vastness of conception observable in the works executed at this early period, we are equally struck by the extreme simplicity of the means employed by their designers for carrying their plans into execution; and the absence of all ingenious expedients for husbanding or effectively applying manual labour. The earth which forms their prodigious embankments was carried in baskets[3] by the labourers, in the same primitive fas.h.i.+on which prevails to the present day. Stones were detached in the quarry by the slow and laborious process of wedging, of which they still exhibit the traces; and those intended for prominent positions were carefully dressed with iron tools.

For moving them no mechanical contrivances were resorted to[4], and it can only have been by animal power, aided by ropes and rollers, that vast blocks like the great tablet at Pollanarrua were dragged to their required positions.[5]

[Footnote 1: See Vol. I. Part IV. chap. ii. p. 430.]

[Footnote 2: King Pandukabhaya, B.C. 437, "built a residence for the Brahman Jotiyo, the chief engineer."--_Mahawanso_, ch. x. p. 66.]

[Footnote 3: _Mahawanso_, ch. xxiii. p. 144.]

[Footnote 4: The only instance of mechanism applied in aid of human labour is referred to in a pa.s.sage of the _Mahawanso_, which alludes to a decree for "raising the water of the Abhaya tank by means of machinery," in order to pour it over a dagoba during the solemnisation of a festival, B.C. 20.--_Mahawanso_, ch. x.x.xiv. p. 211; _Rajaratnacari_, p. 51.]

[Footnote 5: No doc.u.ment is better calculated to Impress the reader with a due appreciation of the indomitable perseverance of the Singhalese in works of engineering than the able report of Messrs. ADAMS, CHURCHILL, and BAILEY, on the great _Ca.n.a.l from Ellahara to Gantalawa_, appended to the Ceylon Calendar for 1857.]

_Fortifications_.--Of military engineering the Singhalese had a very slight knowledge. Walled towns and fortifications are frequently spoken of, but the ascertained difficulty of raising, squaring, or carrying stones, points to the inference which is justified by the expressions of the ancient chronicles, that the walls they allude to, must have been earthworks[1], and that the strength of their fortified places consisted in their inaccessibility. The first recorded attempt at fortification was made by the Malabars in the second century before Christ for the defence of Wijitta-poora, which is described as having been secured by walls, a fosse, and a gate.[2] Elala about the same period built "thirty-two bulwarks" at Anaraj.a.poora[3]; and Dutugaimunu, in commencing to besiege him in the city, followed his example, by throwing up a "fortification in an open plain," at a spot well provided with wood and water.[4]

[Footnote 1: Makalantissa, who reigned B.C. 41, "built a rampart seven cubits high, and dug a ditch round the capital."--_Mahawanso_, ch.

x.x.xiv. p. 210.]

[Footnote 2: _Rajavali_, p. 212; _Mahawanso_, ch. xxv. p. 151.]

[Footnote 3: _Rajavali_, p. 187.]

[Footnote 4: _Rajavali_, p. 216; _Mahawanso_ ch. xxv. p. 152.]

At a later time, the Malabars, when in possession of the northern portion of the island, formed a chain of strong "forts" from the eastern to the western coast, and the Singhalese, in imitation of them, occupied similar positions. The most striking example of mediaeval fortification which still survives, is the imperishable rock of Sigiri, north-east of Dambool, to which the infamous Ka.s.syapa retired with his treasures, after the a.s.sa.s.sination of his father, King Dhatu Sena, A.D. 459; when having cleared its vicinity, and surrounded it by a rampart, the figures of lions with which he decorated it, obtained for it the name of Sihagiri, the "Lion-rock." But the real defences of Sigiri were its precipitous cliffs, and its naturally scarped walls, which it was not necessary to strengthen by any artificial structures.

Their rocky hills, and the almost impenetrable forests which enveloped them, were in every age the chief security of the Singhalese; and so late as the 12th century, the inscription engraved on the rock at Dambool, in describing the strength of the national defences under the King Kirti Nissanga, enumerates them as "strongholds in the midst of forests, and those upon steep hills, and the fastnesses surrounded by water."[1]

[Footnote 1: TURNOUR'S _Epitome and Appendix_, p. 95.]

_Thorn-gates._--The device, retained down to the period of the capture of Kandy by the British, when the pa.s.ses into the hill country were defended by thick plantations of formidable th.o.r.n.y trees, appears to have prevailed in the earliest times. The protection of Mahelo, a town a.s.sailed by Dutugaimunu, B.C. 162, consisting in its being "surrounded on all sides with the th.o.r.n.y _dadambo_ creeper, within which was a triple line of fortifications."[1]

[Footnote 1: _Mahawanso_, ch. xxv. p. 153. When Albuquerque attacked Malacca in A.D. 1511, the chief who defended the place "covered the streets with poisoned thorns, to gore the Portuguese coming in" FARIA Y SOUZA, vol. i. p. 180. VALENTYN, in speaking of the dominions of the King of Kandy during the Dutch occupation of the Low Country, describes the density of the forests, "which not only serve to divide the earldoms one from another, but, above all, tend to the fortification of the country, on which account no one dare, on pain of death, to thin or root out a tree, more than to permit a pa.s.sage for one man at a time, it being impossible to pa.s.s through the rest thereof."--VALENTYN, _Oud en Nieuw Oost-Indien, &c._, ch. i. p. 22. KNOX gives a curious account of these "thorn-gates." (Part ii. ch. vi. p. 45.)]

_Bridges_.--As to bridges, Ceylon had none till the end of the 13th century[1], and Turnour conjectures that even then they were only formed of timber, like the Pons Sublidus at Rome. At a later period stone pillars were used in pairs, on which beams or slabs were horizontally rested, in order to form a roadway [2], in the same manner that Herodotus describes the most ancient bridge on record, which was constructed by Queen Nitocris, at Babylon; the planks being laid during the day and lifted again at night, for the security of the city.[3] The principle of the arch appears never to have been employed in bridge building. Ferries, and the taxes on crossing by them, are alluded to down to a very late period amongst other sources of revenue.[4]

[Footnote 1: TURNOUR'S _Epitome_ and _Notes_, p. 72. Major Forbes says, however, there is reason to believe that the remains of stone piers across the Kalawa-oya, on the line between Kornegalle and Anaraj.a.poora, are the ruins of the bridge erected by King Maha Sen, A.D. 301.]

[Footnote 2: _Mahawanso_, ch. lx.x.xv. UPHAM'S translation, pp. 340,349; _Rajaratnacari_, pp. 104, 131. The bridge on the Wanny hereafter described (see vol. ii p. 474) was thus constructed.]

[Footnote 3: Herodotus, i. 186.]

[Footnote 4: _Mahawanso_, ch. xxiii. pp. 136, 138, ch. xxv. p. 150; _Rajaratnacari_, p. 112.]

In forming the bunds of their reservoirs and of the stone dams which they drew across the rivers that were to supply them with water, they were accustomed, with incredible toil, infinitely increased by the imperfection of tools and implements, to work a raised moulding in front of the blocks of stone, so that each course was retained in position, not alone by its own weight, but by the difficulty of forcing it forward by pressure from behind.

The conduits by which the acc.u.mulated waters were distributed, required to be constructed under the bed of the lake, so that the egress should be certain and equal[1], as long as any water remained in the tank. To effect this, they were cut in many instances through solid granite; and their ruins present singular ill.u.s.trations of determined perseverance, undeterred by the most discouraging difficulties, and unrelieved by the slightest appliance of ingenuity to diminish the toil of excavation.

[Footnote 1: The Lake of Albano presents an example of a conduit or "emissary" of this peculiar construction to draw off the water. It is upwards of 6000 feet in length. A similar emissary serves a like purpose at Lake Nemi.]

It cannot but exalt our opinion of a people, to find that, under disadvantages so signal, they were capable of forming such a work as the Kalaweva tank, between Anaraj.a.poora and Dambool, which TURNOUR justly says, is the greatest of the ancient works in Ceylon. This enormous reservoir was forty miles in circ.u.mference, with an embankment twelve miles in extent, and the spill-water, ineffectual for the purpose designed, is "one of the most stupendous monuments of misapplied human labour."[1]

[Footnote 1: TURNOUR'S _Mahawanso_, Index, p. xi. This stupendous work was constructed A.D. 459. _Mahawanso_, ch. x.x.xviii. p. 256.]

When to such inherent deficiencies were added the alarms of frequent invasion and all the evils of almost incessant occupation by a foreign enemy, it is only surprising that the Singhalese preserved so long the degree of expertness in engineering to which they had originally attained. No people in any age or country had so great practice and experience in the construction of works for irrigation; and so far had the renown of their excellence in this branch reached, that in the eighth century, the king of Kashmir, Djaya-pida, "sent to Ceylon for engineers to form a lake."[1] But after the reign of Prakrama I., the decline was palpable and progressive. No great works, either of ornament or utility, no temples nor inland lakes, were constructed by his successors; and it is remarkable, that even during his own reign, artificers were brought from the coast of India to repair the monuments of Anaraj.a.poora.[2] The last great work attempted for irrigation was probably the Giant's Tank, north-east of Aripo; but so much had practical science declined, that after an enormous expenditure of labour in damming up the Moeselley river, whose waters were to have been diverted to the lake, it was discovered that the levels were unsuitable, and the work was abandoned in despair.[3]

[Footnote 1: A.D. 745. _Rajataringini_, b. iv. sl. 502, 505.]

[Footnote 2: _Mahawanso_, UPHAM'S transl., ch. lxxv. p. 294. This pa.s.sage in the _Mahawanso_ might seem to imply that it was as an act of retribution that Malabars, by whom the monuments had been injured, were compelled to restore them. But in ch. lxxvii. it is stated that they were brought from India for this purpose, because it "had been found impracticable by other kings to renew and repair them."--P. 305.]

[Footnote 3: For an account of the present condition of the Giant's Tank, see Vol. II. Part x. ch. ii.]

The talents of the civil engineer were likewise employed in providing for the health and comfort of their towns and the _Dipawanso_, a chronicle earlier in point of date than the _Mahawanso_, relates that Wasabha, who reigned between A.D. 66 and 110, constructed a tunnel ("um-maggo") for the purpose of supplying Anaraj.a.poora with water.[1]

[Footnote 1: _Journ. Asiat. Soc. Beng._ vol. vii. p. 933.]

CHAP. VII.

THE FINE ARTS.

MUSIC.--The science and practice of the fine arts were never very highly developed amongst a people whose domestic refinement became arrested at a very early stage; and whose efforts in that direction were almost wholly confined to the exaltation of the national faith, and the embellishment of its temples and monuments.

Their knowledge of music was derived from the Hindus, by whom its study was regarded as of equal importance with that of medicine and astronomy; and hence amongst the early Singhalese, along with the other "eighteen sciences,"[1] music was taught as an essential part of the education of a prince.[2]

[Footnote 1: This fact is curious, seeing that at the present day the cultivation of music belongs to one of the lowest castes in Ceylon.]

[Footnote 2: _Mahawanso_, ch. lxiv.; UPHAM'S version, p. 256. An ingenious paper on _Singhalese Music_, by Mr. Louis Nell, is printed in the _Journ._ of the Ceylon branch of the _Roy. Asiat. Soc._ for 1856-8; p. 200.]