The Tamil women are, like their lords, generally of a slighter build than the Cinghalese of the same sex, some indeed are quite diminutive. Among both races some very graceful and good-looking girls are to be seen, up to the age of sixteen or so, fairly bright even in manner; especially among the Cinghalese are they distinguished for their fine eyes; but at a later age, and as wives, they lose their good looks and tend to become rather heavy and brutish.
The contrast between the Cinghalese and the Tamils is sufficiently marked throughout, and though they live on the island on amicable terms there is as a rule no love lost between them. The Cinghalese came to Ceylon, apparently from the mainland of India, somewhere in the 6th century B.C., and after pushing the aborigines up into the woods and mountains (where some of them may yet be found), occupied the whole island. It was not long however before the Tamils followed, also from India; and since then, and through a long series of conflicts, the latter have maintained their position, and now form the larger part of the population in the north of the island, while the Cinghalese are most numerous in the south. Great numbers of Tamil peasants—men, women, and children—still come over from the mainland every year, and go up-country to work in the tea-gardens, where there is a great demand for coolie labour.
CINGHALESE GIRL.
In character the Cinghalese are more like the Italians, easy-going, reasonably idle, sensitive, shrewd, and just a bit romantic. Their large eyes and tortoise-shell combs and long hair give them a very womanly aspect; and many of the boys and youths have very girlish features and expressions. They have nearly always grace and dignity of manner, the better types decidedly handsome, with their well-formed large heads, short beards, and long black hair, composed and gentle, remindful of some pictures of Christ. In inferior types you have thick-featured, morbidly sensitive, and at the same time dull-looking persons. As a rule their frames are bigger and more fleshy than those of the Tamils, and their features less cleanly cut. Captain R. Knox, in his “Nineteen Years’ Captivity in the Kingdom of Conde Uda” (1681), says of them:—“In carriage and behaviour they are very grave and stately, like unto Portuguese; in understanding quick and apprehensive; in design, subtle and crafty; in discourse, courteous, but full of flatteries; naturally inclined to temperance both in meat and drink, but not to chastity; near and provident in their families, commending good husbandry.”
The Cinghalese are nearly all Buddhists, while the Tamils are Hindus. Buddhism was introduced into Ceylon about the 4th century B.C., and has flourished here ever since; and Buddhist rock-temples are to be found all over the island. The Tamils have a quite extensive literature of considerable antiquity, mostly philosophical or philosophical poetical; and their language is very rich in vocabulary as well as in its grammatical forms and inflexions—though very terse, with scanty terms of courtesy (“thank you,” “good-morning,” and such like), and a little harsh in sound, k’s and r’s flying through the teeth at a great rate. Cinghalese is much more liquid and pleasant in sound, and has many more Aryan words in it. In fact it is supposed to be an offshoot of Sanskrit, whereas Tamil seems to have no relation to Sanskrit, except that it has borrowed a good many words. The curious thing is that, so little related as races, the Tamils should have taken their philosophy, as they have done, from the Sanskrit Vedas and Upanishads, and really expressed the ideas if anything more compactly and systematically than the Sanskrit books do. Though poor in literature I believe, yet the Cinghalese has one of the best books of chronicles which exist in any language—the Mahawanso—giving a very reliable history of the race (of course with florid adornment of stupendous miracles, which can easily be stripped off) from their landing in Ceylon down to modern times. The Mahawanso was begun by Mahanamo, a priest, who about 460 A.D. compiled the early portion comprising the period from B.C. 543 to A.D. 301, after which it was continued by successive authors right down to British times, i.e., A.D. 1758!
There are two newspapers in Colombo printed in the Cinghalese language, one of which is called The Buddhist World; there is also a paper printed in Tamil; and there are three English newspapers. In “places of entertainment” Colombo (and the same is true of the towns in India) is very wanting. There is no theatre or concert-hall. It can be readily understood that though the population is large (120,000), it is so diverse that a sufficiently large public cannot be found to support such places. The native races have each their own festivals, which provide for them all they require in that way. The British are only few—5,000 in all Ceylon, including military, out of a population of over three millions; and even if the Eurasian population—who of course go in for Western manners and ideals—were added, their combined numbers would be only scanty. An occasional circus or menagerie, or a visit from a stray theatrical company on its way to Australia, is all that takes place in that line.
For the rest there is a Salvation Army, with thriving barracks, a Theosophist Society, a branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, and various other little clubs representing different sections. Society is of course very much broken up into sections. Even the British, few as they are, are sadly divided by cliques and jealousies; the line between the official English and the “second-class” English is terribly severe (as indeed all over India); and between these again and the Eurasians. Even where Cinghalese or Tamil or Eurasian families of old standing attain important official positions, an insuperable stiffness still marks the intercourse between them and the British. “Ah!” said a planter to a young friend of mine who had just shaken hands rather cordially with a native gentleman, “Ah! my boy, you won’t do that when you’ve been here three years!” Thus a perfect social amalgamation and the sweetness of brethren dwelling together in unity are things still rather far distant in this otherwise lovely isle.
Talking about the beauty of the island, I was very much struck, even on my first landing, with its “spicy gales.” The air is heavy with an aromatic fragrance which, though it forced itself on my attention for three or four weeks before I got fairly accustomed to it, I have never been able to trace to any particular plant or shrub. It is perhaps not unlike the odor of the cinnamon leaf when bruised, but I don’t think it comes from that source. I am never tired of looking at the coco-nut palms; they grow literally by the million all along this coast to the north and south of Colombo. To the south the sea-shore road is overshadowed by them. I have been some miles along the road, and the belt of land, a hundred yards or so wide, between it and the sea, is thick with their stems right down to the water’s edge, over which they lean lovingly, for they are fond of the salt spray. On the other side of the road too they grow, and underneath them are little villas and farmsteads and tiny native cabins, with poultry and donkeys and humped cows and black pigs and brown children, in lively confusion; while groups of peasant men and women in bright-colored wraps travel slowly along, and the little bullock gigs, drawn by active little brahmin bulls with jingling bells, trot past at a pace which would do credit to an English pony—a scene which they say continues much the same the whole way to Galle (80 miles). These palms do not grow wild in Ceylon; they are all planted and cared for, whether in huge estates, or in the rood of ground which surrounds a Cinghalese cabin. The Cinghalese have a pretty saying that they cannot grow afar from the sound of the human voice. They have also a saying to the effect that a man only sees a straight coco-palm once in a lifetime. Many of the other kinds of palms grow remarkably straight, but this kind certainly does not. In a grove of them you see hundreds of the grey smooth stems shooting upwards in every fantastic curve imaginable, with an extraordinary sense of life and power, reminding one of the way in which a volley of rockets goes up into the air. Then at the height of 50 or 60 feet they break into that splendid crown of green plumes which sparkles glossy in the sun, and waves and whispers to the lightest breeze.
Along this palm-fringed and mostly low and sandy shore the waves break—with not much change of level in their tides—loudly roaring in the S.W. monsoon, or with sullen swell when the wind is in the N.E., but seldom altogether calm. A grateful breeze tempers the 90° of the thermometer. A clumsy-hulled lateen-sailed fishing boat is anchored in the shelter of a sandy spit; two or three native men and boys are fishing with rod and line, standing ankle-deep at the water’s edge. The dashing blue waves look tempting for a bathe, but the shore is comparatively deserted; not a soul is to be seen in the water, infested as it is by the all-dreaded shark. Only, 300 or 400 yards out, can be discerned the figure of a man—also fishing with a line—apparently standing up to his middle in water, but really sitting on a kind of primitive raft or boat, consisting of three or four logs of wood, slightly shaped, with upturned ends, and loosely tied together—the true catamaran (kattu maram, tied tree). The water of course washes up and around him, but that is pleasant on a hot day. He is safe from sharks; there is a slender possibility of his catching something for dinner; and there he sits, a relic of pre-Adamite times, while the train from Kalutara rushes by with a shriek to Colombo.