corrected; the letters where they occur have been shown to be not Singhalese or Sanscrit, but Persian, and the tokens themselves have been proved to belong to Laristan on the Persian Gulf, from the chief emporium of which, Gambroon, they were brought to Ceylon in the course of Indian commerce; chiefly by the Portuguese, who are stated by VAN CARDAEN to have introduced them in great quantities into Cochin and the ports of Malabar.1 There they were circulated so freely that an edict of Pakrama enumerates the ridi amongst the coins in which the taxes were assessed on land.2

HOOK MONEY.

In India they are called larins, and money in imitation of them, struck by the princes of Bijapur and by Sivaji, the founder of the Mahrattas, were in circulation in the Dekkan as late as the seventeenth century.3

1 "Les larins sont tout-à-fait commodes et necessaires dans les Indes, surtout pour acheter du poivre à Cochin, où l'on en fait grand état."Voyage aux Indes Orientales. Amsterdam, A.D. 1716, vol. vi. p. 626.

2 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.

3 Prof. WILSON's Remarks on Fishhook Money, Numism. Chronic. 1854, p. 181.

CHAP. VI.

ENGINEERING.

It has already been shown1 that the natives of Ceylon received their earliest instruction in enginering from the Brahmans, who attached themselves to the followers of Wijayo and his immediate successors. 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 by the labourers, in the same primitive fashion 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 to1, and it can only have been by animal power, aided by ropes and rollers, that vast

1 See Vol. I. Part 1v. chap. ii. p.

430.

2 King Paudukábayo, в.c. 437, "built a residence for the Brahman Jótiyo, the chief engineer."-- Mahawanso, c. x. p. 66.

3 Mahawanso, ch. xxiii. p. 144. 4 The only instance of mechanism applied in aid of human labour is

referred to in a passage of the Mahawanso, which alludes to a decree for "raising the water of the Abhayo tank by means of machinery," in order to pour it over a dagoba during the solemnisation of a festival, nc. 20.-Mahawanso, ch. xxxiv. p. 211; Rujaratnacari, p. 51.

blocks like the great tablet at Pollanarua were dragged to their required positions.1

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 2, 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.3 Elala about the same period built "thirty-two bulwarks" at Anarajapoora1; 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." 5

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 mediæval fortification which still survives, is the imperishable rock of Sigiri, north-east of Dambool, to which the infamous Kassyapo retired with his treasures, after the assassination 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

Thorn-gates. -The device, retained down to the period of the capture of Kandy by the British, when the passes into the hill country were defended by thick plantations of formidable thorny trees, appears to have prevailed in the earliest times. The protection of Mahelo, a town assailed by Dutugaimunu, B.C. 162, consisting in its being "surrounded on all sides with the thorny dadambo creeper, within which was a triple line of fortifications." 2

Bridges. As to bridges, Ceylon had none till the end of the thirteenth century3, and Turnour conjectures that even then they were only formed of timber.

TURNOUR'S Epitome and Appen- | earldoms one from another, but, above dix, p. 95.

2 Mahawanso, ch. xxv. p. 153. When Albuquerque attacked Malacca in 1511 A.D., 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

|

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 passage for one man at a time, it being impossible to pass 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. chap. vi. p. 45.)

3 TURNOUR'S Epitome and Notes, p. 72. Major Forbes says, however,

At a later period stone pillars were used in pairs, on which slabs were horizontally rested, in order to form a roadway, but 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.2

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 their 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 accumulated waters were distributed, required to be constructed under the bed of the lake, so that the egress should be certain and equal, as long as any water remained in the tank. To effect this, they were sunk in many instances through solid granite; and their ruins present singular illustrations of determined perseverance, undeterred by the most discouraging difficulties, and unrelieved by the slightest appliance of ingenuity to diminish the toil of excavation.

It cannot but exalt our opinion of a people, who, under disadvantages so signal, were capable of forming such a work as the Kalaweva tank, between Anaraja