Mediaeval Sinhalese Art c7.53

c7.53

It cannot be too well realised that the Sinhalese society was a community based on rice. Land was not the luxury of a few, but the daily occupation and livelihood of the majority; not to own land is still felt to be scarcely respectable. Every man from the King down had an immediate interest in the cultivation of the land; almost every man cultivated the soil with his own hands. How markedly the same conditions still persist is shown by the census of 1901; out of a thousand persons in the Central Province nine hundred and six subsist by agriculture, thirty-two by the preparation and supply of material substances, eighteen by personal service, ten by some profession, and nine by trade; in this tale craftsmen are included partly in the thirty-two who live by the supply of material substances and partly in the ten professional, forming thus less than the 4·2 per cent. of the whole people which these two classes represent; the proportion was probably higher in the eighteenth century when artistic and literary production was more appreciated.