It must be borne in mind, however, that Ceylon is an appanage of the British Crown, and it is not an independent, self-supporting colony. Those shortcomings of administration, for which the mother country is exclusively responsible, have been hitherto a complete drag upon her development. But the English people have this advantage over all other nations, that once anything has been recognized to be useful and imperatively required, they proceed to apply it with such energy, that they are enabled to make up for any neglect with giant strides. During late years many fetters have been knocked off which formerly impeded the more active development of agriculture and commerce. The harbour of Point de Galle (also called only Galle for shortness) has become a central station for the steam-boat trade with the East Indies, the Burmese Archipelago, China, and Australia. A telegraphic wire will ere long stretch from Ceylon to England, such as even now unites the island with the Coromandel Coast and India; a railway is in course of construction between the most important commercial centres of the island, and so obvious are the fundamental benefits it must confer, that ere long the classical and incomparably beautiful island of Ceylon is destined to shine a star of the first magnitude in the azure of the Indian Ocean, one of the most prosperous, wealthy, and blest of islands!
The scientific researches of all kinds, which have in modern days been instituted in Ceylon, have been attended with the most important results, bearing upon its history and its various tribes, as well as on its natural wealth; and the masterly and marvellous work Sir Emerson Tennent lately published on the isle of Ceylon, seems intended to compensate for many instances of neglect which Ceylon and its inhabitants have experienced from the English since they seized on it.
Embracing all the three kingdoms of nature, and following up with learned accuracy the history of the inhabitants, from the obscure traditions attending their earliest settlement down to the present day, Sir Emerson Tennent's work is a perfect pattern of a monography, although upon this subject the German inquirer will involuntarily, and not without an emotion of pride, recall to mind Carl Ritter's admirable, well-digested publication upon Ceylon, in his classical work on Eastern Asia, doubly meritorious by the very fact that the German scholar never set foot in the country itself. There are, however, indeed few spots on earth which present such inexhaustible subjects for the study of the historian as well as the inquirer into physical science, of the poet and the political economist, as this romantically-beautiful island, which we have been taught to regard as the Garden of the World, as indeed the special site of the Garden of Eden, the first abode of the progenitors of the human race.
We have not to do here, as in most of the islands of southern seas, with a savage people, that have only, since the first appearance of Europeans, emerged from a state of barbarism, and been raised one step towards civilization, but rather find, as in the East Indies and China, a peculiar type of civilization, which, although widely differing from that of Europe, yet seems not less valuable and extraordinary. The whites (scarce 7000 in number, of whom 2482 are females), who live scattered over an area of 24,700 English square miles, have hitherto been too few in number to exercise any marked influence on the customs or mode of life of a native coloured population of 1,726,640 souls, and hence it is that Ceylon exhibits a more romantic and characteristic air than any other British settlement in distant parts of the globe.
A people like the Cingalese, of such ardent imaginativeness, with a splendid history, and a religion professed in the various realms of the East by more than 300 millions of people, gains in interest the more we become acquainted with them, and the more we make their traditions, their mode of life, and their customs, the object of special inquiry.
The Cingalese, or indigenous natives (so named to distinguish them from the other inhabitants of the island, belonging to other stocks and amalgamated races, who at various periods had settled here, and who call themselves Ceylonese), were entirely the offspring of Hindoo emigrants, who, about five centuries before the birth of Christ, came from Hindostan to Ceylon, and imported their own mode of government, and system of caste, as also their arts, language, and religion, from the continent into the island.
They constitute the germ of the present population, and early divided themselves into four leading castes:—1st, that of the royal family;—2nd, the Brahmins;—3rd, the merchants, peasants, and shepherds;—and 4th, the sixty inferior common castes. At present there exist in Ceylon only the two latter. The most numerous is that of the peasants, who, however, meddle but little with the cultivation of the soil, but have arrogated to themselves the exclusive and hereditary possession of all employments, lay or ecclesiastical. The dress of the Cingalese usually consists of a cloth wound turban-fashion round their head, and long white drapery. On festive occasions they wear richly-adorned tight-fitting jackets of velvet or wool, and on such occasions rank and power assert themselves by the number of garments, to such an extent that frequently a wealthy man makes his appearance in several of these habiliments, worn one above the other. The Cingalese are shorter in stature than the Europeans, their average stature being 5 feet 4 inches to 5 feet 5 inches, English. Their physique, though graceful and delicate, is powerful and muscular, with a brawny breast, broad shoulders, the muscles of the thigh strongly developed, but with disproportionately small hands and feet. Their colour is commonly a light-brown, their hair black and quite straight. The women are beautifully formed, but even when they can, like Asokamalla of historic fame, boast all the forty and six marks of the Cingalese ideal,[77] they must fall far short of the European standard of female beauty, with their bodies anointed with oil, and their mouths stained with the betel-nut. As the Cingalese girls usually marry so early as 12 years of age, they speedily lose the bloom of youth, and frequently have the appearance of crones at 20. Another especially loathsome habit of the Cingalese is the chewing the betel-nut, a custom so universally prevalent among all Indian races, that not merely the men and women, but the very children exhibit an extraordinary predilection for it. The ingredients of this masticatory consist of the green tender leaves of the Betel-pepper-shrub (Piper betle), the nut of the areca-palm (Areca catechu, or cabbage-tree), some lime made of calcined shells, and tobacco, which, according to the rank of the individual, they keep ready prepared by their side, in silver or brass boxes, resembling snuff-boxes. These corrosive substances at the same time stain the saliva so deep a red, that, after long use, the lips and teeth seem as though smeared with blood.
[77] Of these forty-six perfections of womanly beauty we extract the following by way of example, from a Cingalese author:—hair, glossy as the tail of a peacock, and hanging in ringlets to the knee, eye-brows like the rainbow, eyes like sapphire, and the leaves of the manilla flower, a hawk nose, lips lustrous and red as coral, teeth small and regular, like the buds of the jasmine, neck thick and round, haunches broad, breast firm, and conical like the cocoa-nut, the figure slight, capable of being spanned by the hand, the limbs spindle-shaped, the sole of the foot without any hollow, the skin free from any prominence of the bones, sweeping in rounded curves, soft and tender.
The language is an offshoot of the Sanscrit, copious, harmonious, and full of expression, with threefold grammar, and as many vocabularies, viz. for the royal tongue, the official or court tongue, and that of society at large. To these there must be added the Pali, the learned, but obsolete written language of the priestly caste, which the Cingalese have in common with the kingdoms of Siam and Ava, in the further Indies. In this language, itself but a dialect of the Sanscrit, all their sacred books, traditions, and poetry are written. In many parts of the island the knowledge of language and written lore are held in such high honour, that grammar and literature form the entire study of the inhabitants. Reading and writing are as common among the Cingalese as in England, except that in Ceylon the women take no part therein. They do not write as we do, with quill or steel pen upon paper, but engrave the characters with a fine-pointed iron graver, or stylus, upon the leaves of the Talipot palm-tree (Corypha umbraculifera), from which they slice a broad strip for the purpose about 2 feet long, and several inches broad. These require no further preparation than that they must be well smoothed beforehand, and all inequalities removed. In order to render the writing more clear and legible, the Cingalese rub it with a mixture of cocoa-nut oil and fine pulverized wood-ashes, which imparts to it durability and prevents obliteration. Great numbers, however, use the leaves of another species of palm for writing upon, viz. the Palmyra palm (Borassus flabelliformis), but those of the Talipot are preferred to all others for their closeness of texture, and are alone used in important records and other documents.
The religion of the Cingalese is Buddhism, which in Ceylon still flourishes in these times in all its pristine vigour. Buddha is not the name of the founder of this belief, who is called Gautama, or Sakja-Muni, but is only one of the numerous titles of honour invented by that personage, who in the Sanscrit figures so conspicuously as a sage. Gautama was born in the province of Maghada (now known as Reha), in Northern Hindostan, b. c. 624. His parents were Suddhodana, King of Magadha, and his consort Maja. Contemplating the degeneracy and misery of man, sunk in deepest woe, Gautama attacked the doctrine of Brahma, rejected the Vedas, or holy books, and founded the new faith, which consists of the following fundamental propositions:—The Creator and Ruler of the world is a supreme, invisible, purely spiritual (and for that reason obviously impossible to be figured) Being, almighty, wise, just, beneficent, and merciful. Man most fitly recognizes and honours the Deity by silent contemplation: by the practice of chastity, temperance, and virtue he attains to happiness. The complete fulfilment of all his duties confers on him here on earth the dignity of a Buddha, or sage, and after death consigns him to the beatific repose of non-existence[78] (Nirwana). Condemned souls are born again in the forms of wild animals. According to Gautama's teaching a fresh Buddha always appears at certain epochs, whose existence is manifested by his extraordinary spiritual powers, by his deeds, and by his prophecies, selected by destiny for the purpose of enlightening the world as to the decrees of the Supreme Being, and to restore religion to her pristine purity. The death of a Buddha is also the commencement of a new reckoning of time. Gautama, who died about b. c. 542, or some 2400 years since, was the forty-fifth and last Buddha that appeared to the Cingalese; his doctrine must continue to operate for 5000 years, when, according to the Cingalese traditions, the next Buddha, or Purifier, will appear. Gautama's belief, bequeathed by him to his disciple, the Brahmin Mahakaja, was immediately translated into Sanscrit, and speedily spread. Several hundred temples and monuments dedicated to him are scattered in various parts of the island, and remain to this day an evidence of the extent and influence of Buddhism.