A guest of equal social status is received at the entrance by the host and is led inside by the hand; on a wedding day the bridegroom’s feet are washed by the bride’s younger brother before he enters the house. Kissing is the usual form of salutation among females and near relatives and among friends the salutation is by bringing the palms together.
When inferiors meet a superior they bend very low with the palms joined in front of the face or prostrate themselves on the ground; when they offer a present it is placed on a bundle of 40 betel leaves and handed with the stalks towards the receiver.
A guest always sends in advance a box of eatables as a present; when the repast is ready for him he is supplied with water to wash his face, feet and mouth; and the host serves him with rice and curry, skins the plantains for him, and makes his chew of betel. The males always eat first and the females afterwards; and they drink water by pouring it into their mouths from a spouted vessel (kotale).
At the guest’s departure, the host accompanies him some distance—at least as far as the end of the garden. When a person of distinction, a Buddhist priest or a chief visits a house, the rooms are limed and the seats are spread with white cloth.
An inferior never sits in the presence of a superior, and whenever they meet, the former removes the shade over his head, gets out of the way and makes a very low obeisance.
Seven generations of recognised family descent is the test of respectability, and each ancestor has a name of his own: appa, âtâ, muttâ, nattâ, panattâ, kittâ, kirikittâ (father, grand father, great grand father, etc.)
The system of kinship amongst the Sinhalese is of the classificatory kind where the kin of the same generation are grouped under one general term.
The next of kin to a father or mother and brother or sister are the fathers’ brothers and the mothers’ sisters, and the mothers’ brothers and the fathers’ sisters; of these the first pair has a parental rank and is called father (appa) or mother (amma) qualified by the words big, intermediate or little, according as he or she is older or younger than the speaker’s parents; their children are brothers (sahodarya) and sisters (sahodari) to the speaker and fathers and mothers to the speaker’s children.
The second pair becomes uncle (mamâ) and aunt (nenda) to the speaker qualified as before; their children are male cousins (massina) and female cousins (nêna) to the speaker, and uncles and aunts to the speaker’s children.
Those who are related as brothers and sisters rarely marry, and a husband’s relations of the parental class are to his wife, uncles, aunts and cousins of the other class and vice versâ.