CHAPTER II.
KANDY AND PEASANT LIFE.
Ernst Haeckel in his book about Ceylon says that the Cinghalese, though a long civilised race, are as primitive as savages in their dress, cabins, etc.; and this remark strikes me as very true. As soon as you get off the railways and main roads you find them living in their little huts under their coco-palms in the most primitive fashion, and probably much as they did when they first came to Ceylon, 2,000 or 3,000 years ago.
On the 4th of this month (December), my friend “Ajax” landed at Colombo from England. He is on his way to Assam, in the tea-planting line, and is staying a week in the island to break the journey. He is a thorough Socialist in feeling, and a jolly fellow, always bright and good-natured, and with a great turn for music. We came up here to Kandy, and shortly after our arrival went to call on a Cinghalese peasant whose acquaintance I had lately made—Kalua by name—and found him in his little cabin, about a mile out of the town among the hills, where he lives with his brother Kirrah. Leaving Kandy by footpaths and alongside hedgerows overrun by a wild sunflower, and by that extraordinary creeper, with a verbena-like blossom, the lantana, which though said to have been introduced only about fifty years ago now runs in masses over the whole island, we came at last to a lovely little glen, with rice-lands laid out in terraces at the bottom, and tangles of scrub and jungle up the sides, among which were clumps of coco-nut and banana, indicating the presence of habitations. Under one of these groves, in a tiny little mud and thatch cabin, we found Kalua; in fact he saw us coming, and with a shout ran down to meet us. We were soon seated in the shade and talking such broken English and Tamil as we could respectively command. The brothers were very friendly, and brought us coco-nut milk and chágeri beer (made by cutting the great flower-bud off the chágeri palm, and letting the sap from the wounded stem flow into a jar, where it soon ferments; it has a musty flavor, and I cannot say that I care for it). Then their father, hearing of our arrival, came from half a mile off to have a look at us—a regular jolly old savage, with broad face and broad belly—but unfortunately, as we could not speak Cinghalese, there was no means of communicating with him, except by signs. This little valley seems to be chiefly occupied by the brothers and their kindred, forming a little tribe, so to speak. Kalua and his father both own good strips of rice-land, and are perhaps rather better off than most Cinghalese peasants, though that is not saying much. Married sisters and their children, and other relatives, also occupy portions of the glen; but Kalua and Kirrah are not married yet. It seems to be a point of honor with the Cinghalese (and indeed with most of the East Indian races) not to marry till their sisters are wedded. Like the Irish, the brothers work to provide a dowry for their sisters; and generally family feeling and helpfulness are very strong among them. To strike a father or a mother is, all over Ceylon (and India), a crime of almost unheard-of atrocity. Kalua gives a good deal of his earnings to his parents, and buys additions to the family rice-lands—which as far as I can make out are held to a considerable extent as common property.
KALUA.
There was a native king and kingdom of Kandy till about eighty years ago (1814), when the British overthrew it; and it is curious that the old Kandian law—which was recognised for some time by the British—contains very evident traces of the old group-marriage which is found among so many races in their pre-civilisation period. There were two kinds of marriage treated of in the Kandian law—the Deega marriage, in which the wife went (as with us) to the house of her husband, and became more or less his property; and the Beena marriage, in which he came to live with her among her own people, but was liable to expulsion at any time! The latter form is generally supposed to be the more primitive, and belongs to the time when heredity is traced through the woman, and when also polygamous and polyandrous practices prevail. And this is confirmed by a paragraph of the Kandian law, or custom, which forbade intermarriage between the children of two brothers, or between the children of two sisters, but allowed it between the children of a brother and a sister—the meaning of course being that two brothers might have the same wife, or two sisters the same husband, but that a brother and sister—having necessarily distinct wives and husbands—would produce children who could not be more nearly related to each other than cousins. It is also confirmed by the fact that a kind of customary group-marriage still lingers among the Cinghalese—e.g. if a man is married, his brothers not uncommonly have access to the wife—though owing to its being discountenanced by Western habits and law, this practice is gradually dying out.
Kalua has seen rather more of the world than some of his people, and has had opportunities of making a little money now and then. It appears that at the age of twelve or thirteen he took to “devil-dancing”—probably his father set him to it. He danced in the temple and got money; but now-a-days does not like the priests or believe in the temples. This devil-dancing appears to be a relic of aboriginal Kandian demon-worship: the evil spirits had to be appeased, or in cases of illness or misfortune driven away by shrieks and frantic gestures. It is a truly diabolical performance. The dancers (there are generally two of them) dress themselves up in fantastic array, and then execute the most extraordinary series of leaps, bounds, demivolts, and somersaults, in rhythmical climaxes, accompanied by clapping of hands, shrieks, and tomtomming, for about twenty minutes without stopping, by the end of which time the excitement of themselves and spectators is intense, and the patient—if there is one—is pretty sure to be either killed or cured! When the Buddhists came to the island they incorporated these older performances into their institutions. Some two or three years ago however Hagenbeck, of circus celebrity, being in Ceylon engaged a troupe of Kandians—of whom Kalua was one—to give a native performance for the benefit of the Europeans; and since that time the old peasant life has palled upon our friend, and it is evident that he lives in dreams of civilisation and the West. Kalua is remarkably well-made, and active and powerful. He is about twenty-eight, with the soft giraffe-like eyes of the Cinghalese, and the gentle somewhat diffident manner which they affect; his black hair is generally coiled in a knot behind his head, and, with an ornamental belt sustaining his colored skirt, and a shawl thrown over his shoulder, he looks quite handsome. Kirrah is thinner and weaker, both mentally and physically, with a clinging affectionateness of character which is touching. Then there are two nephews, Pinha and Punjha, whom I have seen once or twice—bright nice-looking boys, anxious to pick up phrases and words of English, and ideas about the wonderful Western world, which is beginning to dawn on their horizon—though alas! it will soon destroy their naked beauty and simplicity. To see Punjha go straight up the stem of a coco-nut tree fifty feet high is a caution! He just puts a noose of rope round his two feet to enable him to grasp the stem better with his soles, clasps his hands round the trunk, brings his knees up to his ears, and shoots up like a frog swimming!
The coco-nut palm is everything to the Cinghalese: they use the kernel of the nut for food, either as a curry along with their rice, or as a flavoring to cakes made of rice and sugar; the shell serves for drinking cups and primeval spoons; the husky fibre of course makes string, rope, and matting; the oil pressed from the nut, in creaking antique mills worked by oxen, is quite an article of commerce, and is used for anointing their hair and bodies, as well as for their little brass lamps and other purposes; the woody stems come in for the framework of cabins, and the great leaves either form an excellent thatch, or when plaited make natural screens, which in that climate often serve for the cabin-walls in place of anything more substantial. When Ajax told Kirrah that there were no coco-palms in England, the latter’s surprise was unfeigned as he exclaimed, “How do you live, then?”
PLOUGHING IN THE RICE-FIELDS, WITH BUFFALOS.