Ceylon

Lord Holden, firstname surname

• Publisher: Taylor & Francis
• Year: 2019
• eBook ISBN: 9780429868948
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Regional Studies
• Index: Social Sciences

Published in 1939, this book provides a comprehensive observation of Ceylon and the Ceylonese people. Covering topics including the rest-house; the Lord Buddha; the Lost cities; Sigiriya, Buddhist temples and the Jungle, the book considers the human geography of the island calibrating it with the diverse archaeology of the island, religious practice, and the British occupation of Ceylon.

Chapter One
Introduction to Ceylon and the Ceylonese

The incidence that Ceylon is a country comparatively remote from all others, with the obvious exception of India, has served as a justification throughout the ages for the zealous traveller to keep a journal or to write a book. The first of these was the Chinese monk Fa-Hien, who in his pious search for traces of Buddha Gautama visited Ceylon about A.D. 400. On his return he wrote copiously about the “Master’s” activities there, although historically he never once visited the island. Fa-Hien records, however, that at Anuradhapura he saw an image of Buddha in green jade, which was more than twenty cubits high. In the palm of the right hand lay a priceless pearl, and the image had “an appearance of solemn dignity which words cannot express.” A hundred years later Sopater wrote of the famous ruby which had been erected on the tee of a Dagoba in the capital of Anuradhapura, which was like a “hyacinth, as large as a pine cone, the colour of fire …” Seven hundred years later the ubiquitous Marco Polo arrived and was fascinated by the jewels of Ceylon, noting that the King possessed “the grandest ruby that was ever seen, a span in length, the thickness of a man’s arm.”

The first Englishman to write of the island was Robert Knox in his delightful Historical Relation of Ceylon. His visit was, however, fortuitous since he was shipwrecked off Trincomalee in 1660, and its duration was determined by the King, who held him a prisoner for twenty years. A less adventurous and more ingenuous visitor to Ceylon was Mrs. Heber, the wife of the Anglican bishop who, according to tradition, having once lost his luggage in the island, expressed his aggravation in those classic lines: “What though the spicy breezes, Blow soft on Ceylon’s isle, Though every prospect pleases, And only man is vile.” This lady, who visited Ceylon in 1825, when her husband was Bishop of Calcutta, and unaccountably refrained for nineteen years from writing her inevitable Journal of a Tour to Ceylon, would appear to have possessed a credulous mind. Alone amongst visitors to the island, she frequently encountered the “flying leech,” which she wrote had “the power of springing, by means of a filament, to a considerable distance.” Fortunately these bounding insects have, up to the present day, confined their activities to Mrs. Heber’s person.

All these eminent travellers in the island, so diverse in nationality, period, and temperament, had one quality in common: they were too proud or too simple to attempt to justify their works on Ceylon. I propose, most humbly, to follow their illustrious example.

The name of the island, on the tongues of foreigners, has varied profoundly throughout the ages. To the ancient Greeks it was “Taprobane,” which is a corruption of Tamil, meaning, I am assured, “The Pond covered with the Red Lotus.” The Chinese called it “The Land without Sorrow” or “The Island of Jewels.” The Mahommedan invaders from India, or Moors as they are loosely called, devised “Serendib,” a corruption of “Sinhala Dvipa,” meaning “Lion-dwelling Place” in the Singalese language, which the island was first called by the Singalese invaders, although no trace of a lion had ever been found there. The Portuguese in the sixteenth century changed “Serendib” into “Ceilao,” although the two names appear to have no connection with each other; and the Dutch, in the following century, transformed with less imagination “Ceilao” into “Ceilon.” A hundred and fifty years later it was anglicized by the English invaders into “Ceylon.” But to the inhabitants the island has been called “Lanka” for centuries, and such is it called by them to-day.

Although Buddhist poets have sung of Ceylon as “a pearl upon the brow of India,” a cursory glance at the island on a map will show that, in geographical formation, it more resembles a liver. A liver, however, can be just as interesting as a pearl and, in the opinion of many, an even more precious possession. In area Ceylon is approximately one-third smaller than Ireland and, although lying under profoundly different climates, both islands enjoy a lush and variegated vegetation. But the historical similitude between them is even more curious and exact. Both have been oppressed for centuries by one or more alien races, and therefore they suffer the psychological consequences of having been subject races. But while the Irish have only been persecuted by the English, the Singalese have also been harried or dominated by the Portuguese and the Dutch, while the Tamils, a general name for the various marauding tribes from southern India, in a series of invasions, between the second century B.C. and the fourteenth century A.D., succeeded in dominating the northern half of the island, where they form the vast majority of the population to-day.

A further interesting comparison can be drawn between the northern and southern inhabitants of Ceylon and Ireland. The Hindu Tamils introduced an alien religion into Buddhist Ceylon, just as the Scots foisted the Protestant religion on Catholic Ireland. In both cases the natives of the invaded islands considered the imported religion an erroneous and debased form of their own faith. Here, however, the religious comparison ends, since the Hindus and Buddhists have always been tolerantly disposed towards each other.

Apart from the Singalese, themselves an Indian tribe which occupied Ceylon about 500 B.C., and the Tamils, the other two important races in Ceylon are the Moors, who have traded on the coast for the last thousand years, and the Burghers, who are exclusively of Eurasian ancestry. The latter are descendants of the Portuguese or Dutch settlers who intermarried with the Singalese, and they are chiefly found in the larger towns of the island. The following figures will give the reader some idea of the races and religions of Ceylon; the figures are only approximate. Total population, 5,500,000.

• 3,500,00 Singalese. Buddhist in religion with a Christian minority.
• 1,300,000 Tamils. Hindu in religion with a similar Christian minority.
• 380,000 Moors, nearly all of whom are Muhammadans.
• 37,000 Burghers, exclusively Christian and mainly belonging to the Catholic Church.
• 555,000 Christians of all denominations, drawn from all races and including the European population. Three-quarters of the Christians are Roman Catholics.

Buddhism, which, as these statistics show, has the largest number of adherents in Ceylon, will be discussed in a later chapter, but for the convenience of the traveller I will here describe some of the salient characteristics and differences of the Singalese, Tamil, and Burgher races.

The significance of clothes in Ceylon is of primary importance, and the first thing that will strike the European visitor in this connection is the remarkable similarity between the sexes. This is principally the result of the ubiquitous “cloth,” skirt-like in form, which is common to both men and women of the Singalese and Tamil races. The cloth worn by the Singalese male is called a sarong, and it is made in a coloured silk or cotton, often with a stripe. The sarong is shaped like a very wide petticoat and, when the wearer has stepped into it, the opposite corners are crossed over each other and tucked in tightly round the waist. Pins are never used to secure it, and a European would find it very difficult even to walk across the room without the sarong descending to his feet. Drawers are never worn under the sarong, nor under the veti, the Tamil equivalent of the former, although the veti, which are wound round the body, are always white and usually shorter than the sarong.

Another common attribute of the sexes amongst the Singalese and Tamils is the konde, or bun of hair, on the back of the head, which is kept in position by a gold or silver pin called the kondekura. Unfortunately the konde is becoming rarer on men, although in the country it is still often worn. Even more rarely seen are the high tortoiseshell combs, at one time a common ornament to the men of the low country. European methods of hairdressing are causing havoc amongst the once picturesque heads of the Tamils and Singalese.

The top half of the male figure, when it is not naked, is now usually clothed with a white or coloured cloth thrown over the shoulders, while the legs and feet are always bare amongst Ceylonese of all classes who wear native costume. The reason for this, apart from climatic considerations, is suggested by Robert Knox when he writes that shoes and stockings were a royal dress and only worn by the King. A contemporary picture of King Raja Sinha in the seventeenth century supports Knox’s interesting assertion. The result in Ceylon to-day of this age-long custom is very remarkable and even comic in the case of the police. A huge Malayan constable on point duty (the police are usually drawn from Malay), dressed in pith helmet, khaki tunic and shorts, with bare legs, seems rather an incongruous figure in European eyes.

The clothes of the Singalese and Tamil female are of less importance than those of the male, since women in Ceylon, as elsewhere in the East, are far less in the public eye than men. The brightly coloured Indian sahri is worn by the more prosperous classes. This silken garment is wound round the body in the most elaborate folds with the loose end hanging over the right shoulder. If well put on over a good figure, this is a most attractive costume. The lower classes wear the ordinary cloth with a bodice, usually both of a sombre hue. Many ladies of Jaffna, however, make an exception to this rule by wearing together bright red and yellow garments. The cause of their affection for this strident combination of colours is unknown, as also its localization to the Jaffna peninsula. Some low-country women still dress in the white low-necked jacket trimmed with lace and reaching to the waist, which is a direct descendant of the indoor dress worn by Portuguese ladies in the sixteenth century. The majority of the women, however, whom the traveller will see in Ceylon will be carrying some packet or basket on their heads, usually of a domestic nature, which will remind him that in the East the first function of a woman is of a useful rather than of an ornamental character.

Burgher men, with their mixture of European and Singalese blood, all dress to-day in European clothes. But although they spurn native dress during the day, most of them sleep in the sarong rather than in pyjamas. When night falls it appears that the Eurasians of Ceylon tend to forget their Portuguese or Dutch ancestry. Burgher women are divided in their sympathies as regards Eastern and Western attire, although on the whole the sahri seems fortunately more popular than the coat and skirt. Burgher girls, however, usually wear European clothes until the age of sixteen, when with good sense they abandon them for the sahri. Except in this instance, an ever-increasing number of Ceylonese are copying the West both in clothes and hairdressing. This growing tendency is greatly to be deplored, since no coloured race gains in either dignity or comfort by imitating the customs of Europe.

In a later paragraph, when discussing climatic conditions, I hope to make a general and I hope not invidious comment on the Ceylonese character, but here I would like to particularize on one aspect: the strength of superstition in the island, some manifestations of which the traveller is sure to encounter. Both Buddhists and Hindus are greatly influenced by omens. The cry of the lizard, commonly called the ghekko, they regard as most unlucky, and it deters them from making a decision. Sneezing is regarded in the same light. Deformed or invalided people are said to bring bad luck, but certainly in the seventeenth century, according to Robert Knox, the Singalese regarded “a white man or a big-bellied woman” as a most fortunate omen. Although both Singalese and Tamils are very clean people, they have a curious superstition regarding their ablutions. Every evening at sundown they wash themselves from head to foot, with the invariable exceptions of Tuesdays and Fridays. To wash on those days is thought most unlucky. I heard no explanation of the strange ban on these two days.

There are also various superstitions regarding food, of which the most remarkable is the widespread belief that it is essential to drink water after eating meat, in order to expel the devil lurking in all flesh. Although this was originally a Hindu superstition, many Buddhists and Christians have long adopted it. It is also regarded as fatal to take fried meat on a journey up Adam’s Peak, the famous mountain of pilgrimage in the south-west of the island. I have even been assured by an earnest Singalese Christian that on one occasion twelve Tamil men, who ignored this injunction, all died on the mountain. But I cannot vouch for the truth of this story, nor indeed explain the basis of this strange belief.

There is one superstition, however, which cannot be lightly dismissed as unworthy of European credence. I refer to the healing properties connected with “devil-dances.” The dance which is staged for the benefit of the traveller is usually an empty, and always an expensive, ceremony. But when at night the tom-tom is heard in an adjacent village, mingled with the weird rhythmic singing of the inhabitants, it will probably signify a ceremony of healing. A well-known Tamil doctor, educated in Europe, once assured me of his reasoned belief in the possibility of cures effected through the medium of “devil-dancing,” and he said that often these had been substantiated after all Western methods of doctoring had failed. He even admitted that in some cases he allowed the relatives to remove a patient from hospital, with the avowed object of him being subjected to these occult practices. The authorities, he added, were aware of this custom but ignored it, unless the patient died outside hospital, when the doctor was held responsible. Many examples were given me by this distinguished physician of cures effected in his presence, and of these one in particular has remained in my memory. A male child, at the point of death with malarial fever, was taken from hospital by his mother and a “devil-dance” was organized for his benefit. During the ceremony the mother drove a skewer right through the boy’s tongue. From that moment the fever rapidly subsided, and on inspection the doctor could find no mark of the skewer on the child’s tongue, although he himself had witnessed its penetration. There are many such well-authenticated cures at “devil-dances,” which bewilder Western understanding.

Such are some of the peculiarities and customs of the main Ceylonese races but, as climate is a dominating factor in human character, which largely moulds history, as also in vegetation which makes scenery, it is now necessary to understand something of the extreme and monotonous climate which rules in the island. Those gentle variations of the seasons which form the principal topic of conversation in this country are unknown in Ceylon, where perpetual summer prevails in so far as the temperature is concerned, except in the isolated hill country round Nuwara Eliya, where it is in general comparatively cool.

The climate of the island is regulated by two monsoons or winds: the south-west which arrives in May, and the north-east which brings torrential rains in October. But there is nothing in these rains, which last about two months, to stimulate either interest or anxiety. They are as inevitable as the sun which shines when the rains cease. But if these fixed periods of sunshine and rain—since in Ceylon a “drizzle” is unknown—account for the remarkable fertility of the soil and the grandeur and variety of the vegetation, they are also partly responsible for many qualities and defects in the Ceylonese character. The fixed seasons, ruled by the monsoons, and the perennial heat in a country where daylight and darkness divide with unvarying precision the twenty-four hours of the day, must necessarily produce in the character of the inhabitants a sense of monotony which they themselves are unable to appreciate. Sunshine is liable to make a race happy, kindly, and irresponsible; but monotony destroys initiative and creates fatalism which, in the case of the Ceylonese, has been emphasized by the tenets of Buddhism. Most humbly I would suggest that such, in short, are the principal characteristics of the inhabitants of Ceylon; characteristics which in the main are the direct results of their agreeable but monotonous climate.

Fortunately for the sake of art, the deadening results of religion and weather were not effective for many hundreds of years after the arrival of the Singalese in Ceylon. Indeed, it was largely owing to the first-fruits of Buddhism in the island that about 200 B.C. the magnificent city of Anuradhapura was built, the ruins of which are the first archaeological interest of Ceylon to-day. For many centuries the city was rebuilt after successive Tamil raids, but it would appear from excavations always in a homogeneous style until, about A.D. 900, it was abandoned to the depredations of the invaders and the encroachment of the jungle. When Polonnaruwa was built in the twelfth century, to take the place of the older capital, the original architectural genius which had infused Anuradhapura was dead, since the ruins of Polonnaruwa, beautiful as they are, clearly indicate that where the style is not derivative it is inspired by the so-called “Dravidian” architecture of southern India. Traces of later originality may occasionally be discovered, but these cannot alter the remarkable incidence that the architectural and sculptural genius of the Singalese race reached its zenith approximately two thousand years ago.

The r...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Original Title
• Original Copyright
• PREFACE
• CONTENTS
• LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
• Part One
• Part Two PLEASANT JOURNEYS
• INDEX