The table of nationality gives the principal groups as follows:—
| Europeans | 9,509 |
| Burghers and Eurasians | 23,539 |
| Low-country Sinhalese | 1,458,320 |
| Kandyan Sinhalese | 872,487 |
| Tamils | 953,535 |
| Moors (Mahommedan) | 228,706 |
| Malays | 11,963 |
| Veddahs (Aborigines) | 3,971 |
Altogether there are representatives of some seventy races in Ceylon. The Veddahs, who run wild in the woods, are the aborigines of the island.
Language.—The language of nearly 70% of the population is Sinhalese, which is nearly allied to Pali (q.v.); of the remaining 30%, with the exception of Europeans, the language is Tamil. A corrupt form of Portuguese is spoken by some natives of European descent. The Veddahs, a small forest tribe, speak a distinct language, and the Rodiyas, an outcast tribe, possess a large vocabulary of their own. The Sinhalese possess several original poems of some merit, and an extensive and most interesting series of native chronicles, but their most valuable literature is written in Pali, though the greater portion of it has been translated into Sinhalese, and is best known to the people through these Sinhalese translations.
Religion.—The principal religions may be distributed as follows:—Christians, 349,239; Buddhists, 2,141,404; Hindus, 826,826; Mahommedans, 246,118. Of the Christians, 287,419 are Roman Catholics, and 61,820 are Protestants of various denominations; and of these Christians 319,001 are natives, and 30,238 Europeans. The Mahommedans are the descendants of Arabs (locally termed Moormen) and the Malays. The Tamils, both the inhabitants of the island and the immigrants from India, are Hindus, with the exception of 93,000 Christians. The Sinhalese, numbering 70% of the whole population, are, with the exception of 180,000 Christians, Buddhists. Ceylon may properly be called a Buddhist country, and it is here that Buddhism is found almost in its pristine purity. Ceylon was converted to Buddhism in the 3rd century B.C. by the great Augustine of Buddhism, Mahinda, son of the Indian king Asoka; and the extensive ruins throughout Ceylon, especially in the ancient cities of Anuradhapura and Polonnaruwa, bear witness to the sacrifices which kings and people joined in making to create lasting monuments of their faith. The Buddhist temples in the Kandyan country possess valuable lands, the greater portion of which is held by hereditary tenants on the tenure of service. These lands were given out with much care to provide for all that was necessary to maintain the temple and its connected monastery. Some tenants had to do the blacksmiths’ work, others the carpenters’, while another set of tenants had to cultivate the land reserved for supplying the monastery; others again had to attend at the festivals, and prepare decorations, and carry lamps and banners. In course of time difficulties arose; the English courts were averse to a system under which the rent of lands was paid by hereditary service, and a commission was issued by Sir Hercules Robinson (afterwards Lord Rosmead) when governor, to deal with the whole question, to define the services and to enable the tenants to commute these for a money payment. The result of the inquiry was to show that the services, except in a few instances, were not onerous, and that almost without an exception the tenants were willing to continue the system. The anomaly of an ecclesiastical establishment of Anglican and Presbyterian chaplains with a bishop of Colombo paid out of the general revenues has now been abolished in Ceylon, and only the bishop and two or three incumbents remain on the list for life, or till they retire on pension.
Education.—There has been a great advance in public instruction since 1875, through the multiplication of vernacular, Anglo-vernacular and English schools by government, by the different Christian missions and by the Buddhists and Hindus who have come forward to claim the government grant. The government has also started a technical college, and an agricultural school has been reorganized. An agricultural department, recommended by a commission, should profit by the services of the entomologist, mycologist and chemical analyst added by the governor to the staff of the royal botanic gardens at Peradeniya. There are industrial and reformatory schools, which are partially supported by government. In spite of the great advance that has been made, however, at the census of 1901 no fewer than 2,790,235 of the total population were entered as unable to read or write their own tongue. Of this number 1,553,078 were females, showing a very unsatisfactory state of things.
Agriculture.—The natural soils of Ceylon are composed of quartzose gravel, felspathic clay and sand often of a pure white, blended with or overlaid by brown and red loams, resulting; from the decay of vegetable matter, or the disintegration of the Soil. gneiss and hornblende formations. The whole of the great northern extremity of the island consists of a sandy and calcareous admixture, made to yield productive crops of grain, tobacco, cotton and vegetables by the careful industry of the Tamil population, who spare no pains in irrigating and manuring their lands. Between the northern districts and the elevated mountain ranges which overlook the Bintenne and Uva countries are extensive plains of alluvial soil washed down from the table-lands above, where once a teeming population produced large quantities of grain. The remains of ancient works of irrigation bear testimony to the bygone agriculture of these extensive regions now covered by swamps or dense jungle.
The general character of the soil in the maritime provinces to the east, south and west is sandy. Large tracts of quartzose sand spread along the whole line of sea-coast, some of which, of a pure white, and very deficient in vegetable matter, is admirably adapted to the growth of the cinnamon plant. In the light sandy districts where the soil is perfectly free, and contains a portion of vegetable and mineral loam, the coco-nut palm flourishes in great luxuriance. This is the case along the entire coast line from Kalpitiya to Point de Galle, and farther eastward and northward to Matara, stretching to a distance inland varying from 100 yds. to 3 m. From this light sandy belt as far as the mountain-zone of the Kandyan country the land is mainly composed of low hilly undulations of sandstone and ferruginous clay, incapable of almost any cultivation, but intersected in every direction with extensive valleys and wide plains of a more generous soil, not highly fertile, but still capable, with a little industry, of yielding ample crops of rice.
The soil of the central province, although frequently containing great quantities of quartzose sand and ferruginous clay, is in many of the more elevated districts of a fine loamy character. Sand sufficiently vegetable and light for rice culture may be seen at all elevations in the hill districts; but the fine chocolate and brown loams overlying gneiss or limestone formations, so admirably adapted for coffee cultivation, are only to be found on the steep sides or along the base of mountain ranges at an elevation varying from 2000 to 4000 ft. Such land, well-timbered, contains in its elements the decomposed particles of the rocks above, blended with the decayed vegetable matter of forests that have for centuries scattered beneath them the germs of fertility. The quantity of really rich coffee land in these districts is but small as compared with the extent of country—vast tracts of open valleys consisting of an indifferent yellow tenacious soil interspersed with many low ranges of quartz rock, but tea is a much hardier plant than coffee, and grows on poorer soil.
Irrigation.—The native rulers covered the whole face of the country with a network of irrigation reservoirs, by which Ceylon was enabled in ancient times to be the great granary of southern Asia. Wars, and the want of a strong hand to guide the agriculture of the country, led to the decay of these ancient works, and large tracts of land, which were formerly highly productive, became swampy wastes or dense forests. The remains of some of the larger irrigation works are amongst the most interesting of the memorials of Ceylon’s former greatness. Some of the artificial lakes were of great size. Minneri, formed by damming across the valleys between the low hills which surround it with an embankment 60 ft. wide at the top, is at this day 20 m. in circumference. It has recently been restored by government, and is capable of irrigating 15,000 acres; while the Giant’s Tank, which has also been restored, irrigates 20,000 acres. Another lake, with an embankment several miles in length, the Kalawewa, was formed by damming back the waters of the Kalaoya, but they have forced their way through the embankment, and in the ancient bed of the lake, or tank, are now many small villages. In connexion with these large tanks were numerous canals and channels for supplying smaller tanks, or for irrigating large tracts of fields. Throughout the district of Nuwarakalawiya every village has its tank. The embankments have been formed with great skill, and advantage has been taken to the utmost of the slightest fall in the land; but they in common with the larger works had been allowed to fall into decay, and were being brought to destruction by the evil practice of cutting them every year to irrigate the fields. The work of restoring these embankments was undertaken by the government, and 100 village tanks were repaired every year, besides eighteen larger works. In 1900 a sum of five million rupees was set apart for these larger undertakings.