Eight Years' Wanderings in Ceylon. Samuel White Baker
immense figure in the recumbent posture, which is about fifty-six feet in length, or, as I measured it, not quite nineteen paces.
These figures are of a far superior class of sculpture to the idols usually seen in Ceylon, especially that in the reclining posture, in which the impression of the head upon the pillow is so well executed that the massive pillow of gneiss rock actually appears yielding to the weight of the head.
This temple is supposed to be coeval with the city, which was founded about three hundred years before Christ, and is supposed to have been in ruins for upward of six hundred years. The comparatively recent date of its destruction renders its obscurity the more mysterious, as there is no mention made of its annihilation in any of the Cingalese records, although the city is constantly mentioned during the time of its prosperity in the native history of Ceylon. It is my opinion that its destruction was caused by famine.
In those days the kings of Ceylon were perpetually at war with each other. The Queen of the South, from the great city of Mahagam in the Hambantotte district, made constant war with the kings of Pollanarua. They again made war with the Arabs and Malabars, who had invaded the northern districts of Ceylon; and as in modern warfare the great art consists in cutting off the enemy's supplies, so in those days the first and most decisive blow to be inflicted was the cutting off the "water." Thus, by simply turning the course of a river which supplied a principal tank, not only would that tank lose its supply, but the whole of the connected chain of lakes dependent upon the principal would in like manner be deprived of water.
This being the case, the first summer or dry season would lay waste the country. I have myself seen the lake of Minneria, which is twenty-two miles in circumference, evaporate to the small dimensions of four miles circuit during a dry season.
A population of some millions wholly dependent upon the supply of rice for their existence would be thrown into sudden starvation by the withdrawal of the water. Thus have the nations died out like a fire for lack of fuel. This cause will account for the decay of the great cities of Ceylon. The population gone, the wind and the rain would howl through the deserted dwellings, the white ants would devour the supporting beams, the elephants would rub their colossal forms against the already tottering houses, and decay would proceed with a rapidity unknown in a cooler clime. As the seed germinates in a few hours in a tropical country, so with equal haste the body of both vegetable and animal decays when life is extinct. A perpetual and hurrying change is visible in all things. A few showers, and the surface of the earth is teeming with verdure; a few days of drought, and the seeds already formed are falling to the earth, springing in their turn to life at the approach of moisture. The same rapidity of change is exhibited in their decay. The heaps of vegetable putridity upon the banks of rivers, when a swollen torrent has torn the luxuriant plants from the loosened soil, are but the effects of a few hours' change. The tree that arrives at maturity in a few years rots in as short a time when required for durability: thus it is no mystery, that either a house or a city should shortly fall to decay when the occupant is gone.
In like manner, and with still greater rapidity, is a change effected in the face of nature. As the flowers usurp the place of weeds under the care of man, so, when his hand is wanting, a few short weeks bury them beneath an overwhelming mass of thorns. In one year a jungle will conceal all signs of recent cultivation. Is it, therefore, a mystery that Ceylon is covered with such vast tracts of thorny jungle, now that her inhabitants are gone?
Throughout the world there is a perpetual war between man and nature, but in no country has the original curse of the earth been carried out to a fuller extent than in Ceylon: "thorns also and thistles shall it bring forth to thee." This is indeed exemplified when a few months neglect of once-cultivated land renders it almost impassable, and where man has vanished from the earth and thorny jungles have covered the once broad tracts of prosperous cultivation.
A few years will thus produce an almost total ruin throughout a deserted city. The air of desolation created by a solitude of six centuries can therefore be easily imagined. There exists, however, among the ruins of Pollanarua a curious instance of the power of the smallest apparent magnitude to destroy the works of man. At some remote period a bird has dropped the seed of the banian tree (ficus Indicus) upon the decaying summit of a dagoba. This, germinating has struck its root downward through the brickwork, and, by the gradual and insinuating progress of its growth, it has split the immense mass of building into two sections; the twisted roots now appearing through the clefts, while the victorious tree waves in exultation above the ruin: an emblem of the silent growth of "civilization" which will overturn the immense fabric of heathen superstition.
It is placed beyond a doubt that the rice-growing resources of Ceylon have been suffered to lie dormant since the disappearance of her ancient population; and to these neglected capabilities the attention of government should be directed.
An experiment might be commenced on a small scale by the repair of one tank—say Kandellai, which is only twenty-six miles from Trincomalee on the highroad to Kandy. This tank, when the dam and sluices were repaired, would rise to about nine feet above its present level, and would irrigate many thousand acres.
The grand desideratum in the improvement of Ceylon is the increase of the population; all of whom should, in some measure, be made to increase the revenue.
The government should therefore hazard this one experiment to induce the emigration of the industrious class of Chinese to the shores of Ceylon. Show them a never-failing supply of water and land of unlimited extent to be hid on easy terms, and the country would soon resume its original prosperity. A tax of five per cent. upon the produce of the land, to commence in the ratio of 0 per cent. for the first year, three per cent. for the second and third, and the full amount of five for the fourth, would be a fair and easy rent to the settler, and would not only repay the government for the cost of repairing the tank, but would in a few cars become a considerable source of revenue, in addition to the increased value of the land, now worthless, by a system of cultivation.
Should the first experiment succeed, the plan might be continued throughout Ceylon, and the soil of her own shores would produce a supply for the island consumption. The revenue would be derived direct from the land which now produces nothing but thorny jungle. The import trade of Ceylon would be increased in proportion to the influx of population, and the duties upon enlarged imports would again tend to swell the revenue of the country.
The felling and clearing of the jungle, which cultivation would render necessary, would tend, in a great measure, to dispel the fevers and malaria always produced by a want of free circulation of air. In a jungle-covered country like Ceylon, diseases of the most malignant character are harbored in these dense and undisturbed tracts, which year after year reap a pestilential harvest from the thinly-scattered population. Cholera, dysentery, fever and small-pox all appear in their turn and annually sweep whole villages away. I have frequently hailed with pleasure the distant tope of waving cocoa-nut trees after a long day's journey in a broiling sun, when I have cantered toward these shady warders of cultivation in hopes of a night's halt at a village. But the palms have sighed in the wind over tenantless abodes, and the mouldering dead have lain beneath their shade. Not a living soul remaining; all swept away by pestilence; huts recently fallen to decay, fruits ripening, on the trees, and no hand left to gather them; the shaddock and the lime falling to the earth to be preyed upon by the worm, like their former masters. All dead; not one left to tell the miserable tale.
The decay of the population is still progressing, and the next fifty years will see whole districts left uninhabited unless something can be done to prevent it. There is little doubt that if land and water could be obtained from government in a comparatively healthy and populous neighborhood, many would migrate to that point from the half-deserted districts, who might assist in the cultivation of the country instead of rotting in a closing jungle.
One season of pestilence, even in a large village, paves the road for a similar visitation in the succeeding year, for this reason:
Say that a village comprising two hundred men is reduced by sickness to a population of one hundred. The remaining one hundred cannot keep in cultivation the land formerly open; therefore, the jungle closes over the surface and rapidly encroaches upon the village. Thus the circulation of air is impeded and disease again halves the population. In each successive year the wretched inhabitants are thinned out, and disease becomes