FATE OF THE ABORIGINES.
B.C. 104.It has already been shown, that devotion and policy combined to accelerate the progress of social improvement in Ceylon, and that before the close of the third century of the Christian era, the island to the north of the Kandyan mountains contained numerous cities and villages, adorned with temples and dagobas, and seated in the midst of highly cultivated fields. The face of the country exhibited broad expanses of rice land, irrigated by artificial lakes, and canals of proportionate magnitude, by which the waters from the rivers, which would otherwise have flowed idly to the sea, were diverted inland in all directions to fertilise the rice fields of the interior.[1]
1: Mahawanso, ch. xxxv. xxxvii.
In the formation of these prodigious tanks, the labour chiefly employed was that of the aboriginal inhabitants, the Yakkhos and Nagas, directed by the science and skill of the conquerors. Their contributions of this kind, though in the instance of the Buddhist converts they may have been to some extent voluntary, were, in general, the result of compulsion.[1] Like the Israelites under the Egyptians, the aborigines were compelled to make bricks[2] for the stupendous dagobas erected by their masters[3]; and eight hundred years after the subjugation of the island, the Rajavali describes vast reservoirs and appliances for irrigation, as being constructed by the forced labour of the
B.C. 104.Yakkhos[4] under the superintendence of Brahman engineers.[5] This, to some extent, accounts for the prodigious amount of labour bestowed on these structures; labour which the whole revenue of the kingdom would not have sufficed to purchase, had it not been otherwise procurable.
1: In some instances the soldiers of the king were employed in forming works of irrigation.
2: Mahawanso, ch. xxxviii.
3: Ibid., ch. xxvii.
4: Rajavali, p. 237, 238. Exceptions to the extortion of forced labour for public works took place under the more pious kings, who made a merit of paying the workmen employed in the erection of dagobas and other religious monuments.—Mahawanso, ch, xxxv.
5: Maharwanso, ch. x.
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]
1: Mahawanso, ch. x.; TURNOUR'S Epitome. p. 23.
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]
1: Mahawanso, ch. x.
2: Ibid., ch. xix, p. 115.
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.
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]
1: Mahawanso, ch. x.
2: Ibid., ch. x. p. 67.
3: Ibid., p. 66.
4: JOINVILLE'S Asiat. Res, vol. vii. p. 422.
For successive generations, however, the natives, although treated with partial kindness, were regarded as a separate race. Even the children of Wijayo, by his first wife Kuweni, united themselves with their maternal connexions on the repudiation of their mother by the king, "and retained the attributes of Yakkhos,"[1] and by that designation the natives continued to be distinguished down to the reign of Dutugaimunu.
1: Mahawanso, ch. vii.
B.C. 104.In spite of every attempt at conciliation, the process of amalgamation between the two races was reluctant and slow. The earliest Bengal immigrants sought wives among the Tamils, on the opposite coast of India[1]; and although their descendants intermarried with the natives, the great mass of the population long held aloof from the invaders, and occasionally vented their impatience in rebellion.[2] Hence the progress of civilisation amongst them was but partial and slow, and in the narratives of the early rulers of the island there is ample evidence that the aborigines long retained their habits of shyness and timidity.
1: Ibid., p. 53.
2: Mahawanso, ch, lxxxv.
Notwithstanding the frequent resort of every nation of antiquity to its coasts, the accounts of the first voyagers are almost wholly confined to descriptions of the loveliness of the country, the singular brilliancy of its jewels, the richness of its pearls, the sagacity of its elephants, and the delicacy and abundance of its spices; but the information which they furnish regarding its inhabitants is so uniformly meagre, as to attest the absence of intercourse; and the writers of all nations, Romans, Greeks, Arabians, Chinese and Indians, concur in their allusions to the unsocial and uncivilised customs of the islanders.[1]
1: See an account of these singular peculiarities, [Vol. I. P. IV. c. vii.]
As the Bengal adventurers advanced into the interior of the island, a large section of the natives withdrew into the forests and hunting grounds on the eastern and southern coasts.[1] There, subsisting by the bow[2] and the chase, they adhered, with moody tenacity, to the rude habits of their race; and in the Veddah of the present day, there is still to be recognised a remnant of the untamed aborigines of Ceylon.[3]
1: Hiouen Thsang, the Chinese geographer, who visited India in the seventh century, says that at that time the Yakkhos had retired to the south-east corner of Ceylon;—and here their descendants, the Veddahs, are found at the present day,—Voyages, &c., liv. iv. p. 200.
2: Mahawanso, ch. xxiv. p. 145, xxxiii. p. 204.
3: DE ALWIS, Sidath Sangara, p. xvii. For an account of the Veddahs and their present condition, see Vol. II. P. ix. ch. iii.
B.C. 104.Even those of the original race who slowly conformed to the religion and habits of their masters, were never entirely emancipated from the ascendency of their ancient superstitions. Traces of the worship of snakes and demons are to the present hour clearly perceptible amongst them; the Buddhists still resort to the incantations of the "devil dancers" in case of danger and emergency[1]; a Singhalese, rather than put a Cobra de Capello to death, encloses the reptile in a wicker cage, and sets it adrift on the nearest stream; and in the island of Nainativoe, to the south-west of Jaffa, there was till recently a little temple, dedicated to the goddess Naga Tambiran, in which consecrated serpents were tenderly reared by the Pandarams, and daily fed at the expense of the worshippers.[2]
1: For an account of Demon worship as it still exists in Ceylon, see Sir J. EMERSON TENNANT'S History of Christianity in Ceylon, ch. v. p. 236.
2: CASIE CHITTY'S Gazetteer, &c., p. 169.