To drive away insects from the growing rice, charm-lamps are lighted at the four corners of the field or a worm is enclosed in a charmed orange and buried there or a fly or grub is fumigated with charmed resin smoke and bidden to depart or a cultivator sounds a charmed bell metal plate with a kaduru stick crying to the flies “yan yanta” (please go).
When the reaping time comes the portion of rice dedicated to the gods is first reaped by some person who is not a member of the proprietor’s family. It is kept apart on an elevated place till the reaping of the rest of the field is done when it is cooked and ceremonially offered to the kapurâla.
The threshing is done on a floor specially prepared; when the crop is ripe a small pit is made in the centre of the threshing floor in which are placed a margosa plant, and a conch shell containing a piece of the tolabu plant (crinum asiaticum) and of the hiressa (vitis cissus quadrangularis), a piece of metal, charcoal and a small grain sheaf. Besting on these is an ellipsoidal luck stone (arakgala), round which are traced with ashes three concentric circles bisected by lines and in the segments are drawn representations of a broom, a scraper, a flail, a measure, agricultural implements and Buddha’s foot print.
At the lucky hour the cultivator walks three times round the inner circles of the threshing floor with a sheaf on his head, bowing to the centre stone at east, north, west and south and casts down the sheaf on the centre stone prostrating himself. The rest of the sheaves are then brought in and the threshing begins.
The harvest is brought down on a full moon day and some of the new paddy is husked, pounded, boiled with milk and offered to the gods in a dêvala or on a temporary altar under a tree by the field, and followed by a general feasting.
Persons cultivating their fields with their own cattle, implements, seed paddy and the like receive the whole produce less the payments of the watchers (waravêri) and the perquisites of the headman.
When the fields are given out to be cultivated for a share of the produce, if the field owner supplies the cultivator with the cattle, implements of labour, and seed paddy the produce is divided equally by the owner and the cultivator; if the field owner supplies nothing he only gets 1\4 of the produce.
When an allotment of field is owned by several co-owners, it is cultivated alternately on a complicated system called tattumâru[8].
There is a jargon used in Ceylon by hunters and pilgrims travelling in forests[9], by the outcaste rodiyas who go about begging and thieving[10]; and by cultivators while working in their fields[11]. This jargon has many words used by the Veddahs[12].