The Anuradhapura Kingdom - VII

The Anuradhapura Kingdom - VII

Contiued with part six   here to go privious one

An Irrigation Civilisation 'No people in any age or country had so great practice and experience in the construction of works for irrigation.'Tennent, Ceylon (1859) 'It is possible that in no other part of the world are there to be found within the same space, the remains of so many works for irrigation, which are at the same time, of such great antiquity and of such vast magnitude as in Ceylon.'

In Egypt, Syria, Persia, and in India, there are remnants of far greater works, and in these countries, works of far greater antiquity, as well as magnitude, but probably no other country can exhibit works so numerous, and at the same time so ancient and extensive, within the same limited area, as this Island.. . Bailey, Report on Irrigation in Uva (1859)

Thus did two awe-struck British officials of the nineteenth century view the most distinctive achievement of the people of the Anuradhapura kingdom their masterly organisation and maintenance of an irrigation network spread over the dry zone, which was remarkably attuned to coping with its geological and geographical peculiarities: ‘Problems of intermittent streams, gross yearly variations, undulating relief, high evaporation some 8° from the Equator, poor ground-water resources, in different soils and marked seasonal concentration of rainfall with its risk of disastrous floods.J1 The dry zone afforded excellent conditions for the cultivation of rice: the high constant tem¬peratures and received solar radiation, as well as the comparatively gentle relief of the region in contrast to the more rugged terrain of the wet zone of the south-west quadrant. But as against this, the rainfall was largely restricted to the period September to January, less reliable and less 'effective' than in the wet zone. The topography of the dry zone with its gently undulating plains, the succession of small shallow stream valleys and low interfluves made irrigation more difficult than in a single great river basin or on a really flat plain. Besides, ‘the irrigation problem is much more formidable in an area with alternately

Murphey, 'The Ruin of Ancient Ceylon', Journal of Asian Studies, XVI (2), !957 wet and dry periods and a vanishing water table than in one with perennial streams and wells and a more even rainfall pattern. The earliest projects were no doubt directed more at conserving than at diverting water on any large scale. But by the first century AD, large-scale irrigation works were being built. The construction of tanks, canals, and channels which this involved exhibited an amazing knowledge of trigonometry, and the design of the tanks a thorough grasp of hydraulic principles. The tanks had broad bases which could withstand heavy pressures, and at suitable points, in the embankment, there were outlets for the discharge of water.

The Sinhalese were the 'first inventors of the valve pit (bisokotuva),' counterpart of the sluice which regulates the flow of water from a modern reservoir or tank. The engineers of the third century bg or earlier who invented it had done their work with a sophistication and mastery that enabled their successors of later centuries merely to copy the original device with only minor adaptations or changes, if any.3 Sri Lanka owes more to the unknown inventors of this epoch-making device than to all but a handful of kings whose virtues are extolled in the Mahdvamsa and Culavamsa. Without the technological breakthrough which the bisokotuva signified, irrigation works on the scale required to maintain the civilisation of ancient Sri Lanka the construction of artificial lakes of outsize dimensions like Minneriya and Kalavava, where vast expanses of water were held back by massive dams would have been all but impossible. Without the agricultural surplus made available by the multitude of irrigation tanks scattered in rich profusion over much of Sri Lanka's dry zone, the enormous investment which the architectural and sculptural splendors of the Anuradhapura kingdom called for would scarcely have been possible.

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