"\ .K'\l .■;..,.!■',•;■ II 4;,;, .»'!i!|U;i;i;i!i:ni'i,,i'| ' 'i.'iii i,i 11. .' 1;;, 1 iliii ■1 ^ ' ' ^ ^x: ■-;'i -■^^"^ ' ; ■^..'- Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2007 with funding from IVIicrosoft Corporation http://www.archive.org/deJ^ils/christianityinceOOtennrich t » C »• » * t K t 1 ! • •- /rnEtispinL The JayaUwanarama— Ruins of PoUanarua. page 33. ,^^&.mTw Sir ^ Entrance txi t±ie Great Temple of Dambool. pa^e 32. ©V ©Q[^ ^A[iia[i§ [i[jM[l[^©(o)[]^ TlRDKJiEROT. • c«. • • • ' • • • • •• ••• •••••• • • CHRISTIANITY IN CEYLON; ITS INTRODUCTION AND PROGRESS UNDER THE PORTUGUESE, THE DUTCH, THE BRITISH, AND AMERICAN MISSIONS : WITH AN HISTORICAL SKETCH OF THE BRAIIMANICAL AND BUDDHIST SUPERSTITIONS. BY SIR JAMES EMERSON TENNENT, K.G.S., IX.D., *c., Ac. aattf) EUusttations. LONDON: JOHN MUKRAY, ALBEMARLE STREET 1850. PRINTED BV W. CLOWES AND SONS, STAMFORD STHEET. TO THE RIGHT REV. ROBERT KNOX, D.D., LORD BISHOP OF DOWN AND CONNOR, AND DROMORE, ILLUSTRATIVE OF THE INFLUENCE OF EDUCATION IN THE DIFFUSION OF CHRISTIANITY, IS DEDICATED, WITH ESTEEM AND REGARD, BY THE AUTHOR. 253042 ( ix ) CONTENTS CHAPTER I. THE MIDDLE AGES AND THE PORTUGUESE PERIOD. Nestorian Christians in Ceylon in the Sixth Century — Disappearance of Christianity between the Sixth and the Sixteenth Centuries — Accounts of early Travellers — Portuguese Conquest, a.d. 1505 — -^ Their singular Expedients for converting the Singhalese — St. Francis Xavier, '* the Apostle of India " — Conversion of the Hindoos — Conversion of the Buddhists — State of Christianity on the Arrival of the Dutch, a.d. 1638 page 1 CHAPTER II. THE DUTCH PERIOD. Breach of faith with the King of Kandy — Dutch Persecution of the Roman Catholics — Present Condition of the Portuguese Descend- ants in Ceylon — Establishment of the Reformed Religion — Ex- traordinary Conformity of the Natives — Expedients to convert the Buddhists — Educational System of the Dutch — their Eccle- siastical System in Ceylon — Active Measures against Buddhism — Decline of Christianity — Increasing Influence of the Roman Catholics — Failure of the Dutch to extend the Reformed Reli- gion in Ceylon ; and its Causes 37 a 3 X CONTENTS. CHAPTER III. THE BRITISH PERIOD. Early Neglect of the Natives — General Relapse into Heathenism — Degraded Character of the " Government Christians "• — ^The Churcli of England — The Roman Catholic Church and its Progress — The Dutch Reformed Church and its Decline — The Re-establish- ment of the Protestant Religion amongst the Singhalese — First Arrival of the Missionaries — London Mission, 1804 — Baptists, 1812 — Wesleyan Methodists, 1814 — Church of England Mis- sion, 1818 — The Tamils — The American Missionaries . page 77 CHAPTER IV. THE BRAHMANICAL SYSTEM. Its Vastness, Mystery, and Power — Its Sacred Books — Its Grand Supports, Caste and Science — Hindoo Mythology — Hopeless Ritual — Worship of Shiva — False Physical Philosophy — Effects of Education by the Missionaries — Boarding Schools and Colleges — Female Seminaries — and their Singular Success — Social Elevation of the Tamils — General Results . . . . 119 CHAPTER V. BUDDHISM AND DEMON WORSHIP. National Character of the Singhalese — Indifference to all Religions — Buddhism and its Origin — Its Antiquity and Extended Influence — Story of the Life of Gotama Buddhu • — His Incarnation — His Religion — Transmigration of Souls — Physical Science of Buddhism — Its Ideas of a Future State — Its Doctrine of Fate — Necessity — Its Priesthood — Their Privileges — Various Sects of Buddhists — Demon Worship — Its Origin — Practices — Priests 191 CONTENTS. xi CHAPTER VI. MORAL AND SOCIAL CHARACTER OF THE SINGHALESE. Traced to the Influence of their Rehgion — Progress of Christianity — The Missions of the Baptists — The Wesleyan Mission — The Mission of the Church of England — Results — And future Prospects . page 249 BUDDHU. From the Gal Wihare, Euins of Pollanarua.— (p.34.) INTRODUCTION. For some years past I have been engaged in the preparation of a work on Ceylon, its history, its topo- graphy, its capabilities, its productions, its government, its present condition, and its future prospects as a colony of the Crown. It will account for much that might otherwise seem abrupt or obscure in the following chapters, to state that they were originally commenced as portions XIV INTRODUCTION. of the plan which I had thus sketched for myself, and in which the religion of the people and the pro- gress of Christianity necessarily occupied a prominent place. But as the inquiry proceeded, I found it so far exceeded in interest what I had at first anticipated, that the materials I had collected became at once too important to be omitted, and too extended to form a subsidiary portion of a more comprehensive work. Hence their appearance in the present form. The sketch of the Buddhist superstition will be found to differ in many essential particulars from its aspect as described in other countries of the East, but my object has been to present the features of Buddhism as it exists in Ceylon ; and for this purpose I have availed myself largely of the obser- vation and experience of those Christian missionaries who have made the religion of the natives, and the sacred books in which it is embodied, an object of patient and profound investigation. I believe that the account which I have given will be found to be not only more copious, but more correct, than any similar notice which has hitherto been published of the popular superstitions of the Singhalese. The same observations apply to the chapter which treats of the Brahmanical system as cultivated by the Tamils of Ceylon ; though in its details it pre- sents but few variations from the tenets and practice of Hindooism generally on the continent of India. The narrative which I have compiled from INTRODUCTION. xv authentic sources as to the state and prospects of Christianity will, I trust, be read with interest by all who look on missionary labour not merely in its loftier capacity as the disseminator of immortal truth, but who regard it in its incidental influence as the great pioneer of civilization and the most powerful agent for the diffusion of intellectual and moral en- lightenment. Nor can I lay down my pen without an humble yet confident hope that this exposition of facts which have fallen under my own immediate notice as to the success of missionary toil, and the inroad which has been made, through its instrumentality, upon the ancestral and national idolatries of Ceylon, will operate as an encouragement to those by whom these exertions have been supported, as an assurance that their labours hitherto have not been in vain, and a demon- stration of the fallacy which falsely proclaims that the religions of India are inaccessible to Gospel truth, and unassailable by its influences. The Alu Wihare, Matelle. p. 31. CHAPTER I. THE MIDDLE AGES AND THE PORTUGUESE PERIOD. Nestorian Christians in Ceylon in tlie Sixth Century — Disappearance of Christianity between the Sixth and the Sixteenth Centuries — Accounts of Early Travellers — Portuguese Conquest, a.d. 1505 — Their singular Expedients for converting the Singhalese — St. Francis Xavier, " the Apostle of India " — Conversion of the Hindoos — Conversion of the Buddhists — State of Christianity on the Arrival of the Dutch, a.d. 1638. CHRISTIAmTY IN CEYLON. CHAPTER I. THE MIDDLE AGES AND THE POETUGUESE PERIOD. The earliest notice of the existence of Christianity in Ceylon is that of Cosmas Indopleustes, an Egyptian merchant, and afterwards a monk, who published his * Christian Topography ' in the reign of Justinian, in order to vindicate the cosmography of the Old Testament from what he believed to be the heresies of "the Ptolemaic system."^ Cosmas, who was The XpiariaviK^ ToTroypa^ia of Cosmas Indopleustes, or Indicopleustes, has been edited by Montfaucon, and will be found in his Collectio Nova Patrum, vol. 11., Par. 1706. The portion relative to Ceylon and the plants and animals of India was printed by Thevenot, with a French translation, in his dela- tions de divers Voyages curieux, vol. 1. There are some legends to the effect that Christianity had been preached in Ceylon by St. Thomas and St. Bartholomew ; but there is no reasonable ground for believing that India was ever visited by an apostle, although the tradition is supported by St. Jerome and Chrysos- tom, by Athanasius and Eusebius, and it was so firmly believed In the early ages of the Church that Alfred the Great sent Swithelm or Sighelm, the Bishop of Sherburn, on an embassy to India to visit the shrine of St. Thomas. (Palgrave's Anglo- Saxons, p. 185; Sharon Turner's History of the Anglo-Saxons, B COSMAS INDOPLEUSTES. Chap. I. himself a Nestorian, tells that in Taprobane ^ there existed a community of believers, with an episcopal form of discipline, priests, deacons, and a liturgy. This slender statement has afforded material for enlarged speculation as to the doctrines, the extent, and duration of an early Church in Ceylon. It has been assumed as proof of the conversion of the Singhalese prior to the fifth and sixth centuries ; and the author of the ' History of Christianity in India ' propounds it as more than probable that the Church so implanted survived till the arrival of the Portuguese in 1505, when "their buildings no doubt shared the fate of the temples of Buddhu, which they (the Portuguese) pulled down, and with the materials erected churches of their own religion on all parts of the coast." * But a reference to the original authority disposes at once of these eager conjectures.^ Cosmas ex- vol. ii. p. 148.) There is a still more curious tradition to the effect that Ceylon had been visited, and the Christian faith intro- duced, by the Eunuch of Candace, whose conversion by Philip is recorded in the Acts of the Apostles. (Hough's History of Christianity in India, vol. i. pp. 30, 32, 42 ; Baldaeus, p. 280.) * The ancient Greek name of Ceylon. * Hough's History of Christianity in India, vol. iii. b. vii., ch. 2, p. 74. The assertion is given on the authority of Cordiner (Description of Ceylon, vol. i. p. 154), but it is entirely con- jectural, and at variance with the testimony of every traveller in Ceylon during the middle ages. ^ Avo Be (iaffiXeig elaly kr rrj vr]cro)j tvavTiOL aXkifkityv. 6 eig e-)((t)v rov vaKLvBoy, kol 6 krepog to fxipog to aWo^ kv (p korTi to kfiTTopiov Koi 6 Xifxrjv . , exei ^e ^ avrrl vrjffog Kai kKKkriaiav Chap. I. ERROR AS TO HIS STATEMENTS. 3 pressly declares that the members of the church in Ceylon were Persians, and merely sojourners — a portion, no doubt, of that concourse of merchants and travellers who then resorted to the northern parts of the island as the great depot and emporium of Eastern trade ^ — but that the natives and their kings were of a different religion. As to doctrine, the probability is that they were of the same faith and form of ecclesiastical government as the Syrian churches in the southern promontory of India, which were founded in the third or fourth century by Christians from the Persian Gulf, whose successors to the present time have preserved a form of Chris- tianity, however corrupted, and maintained an un- interrupted connexion with the original Church ; first through the See of Seleucia, and since through the Patriarch of Antioch. But with the decline of Oriental commerce, and the diminished resort of merchants from Arabia and Persia, the travel- lers and adventurers who formed the members of the first Christian body in Ceylon ceased to frequent the shores of Manaar ; and Christianity, Ttjjv eindijfiovvrcjv Hepffoiv Xpiariaywy' Koi Trpeafivrepoy airo Tlep- ffiZog ytipoTOVoii/.£vov KaX ^iLaKovov koX Trdorav tyjv eKK\T)(Tia of Jaffna they took pos- session of the Eoman Catholic churches. They established one school at least in connexion with each ; and Baldseus, one of their earliest missionaries, has related, with much minuteness, the small amount of religious instruction which he found it expedient to insist on preparatory to admission into membership with the Reformed Church of Holland.^ - Records of the Dutch Consistory at Colombo, a.d. 1689. * See note B, end of this chapter. ' Baldseus, c. xliv. p. 793. 44 CONVERSION OF THE TAMILS AT JAFFNA. Chap. II. A seminary was opened at Jaffna, for the instruc- tion of teachers and catechists ; and he records that in 1663, within five years from the arrival of the Dutch, 12,387 children had been baptized, 18,000 pupils were under instruction in the schools, and 65,000 converts had become " Christian men and women in the kingdom of Jaffnapatam."^ Besides these, in 1655, there were upwards of 8000 converts in Manaar and the Wanny ; and in 1688, the number of Christians throughout the province of Jaffna was represented as exceeding 180,000.^ How imperfectly even the smallest of these numbers must have been looked after, both in regard to elementary teaching and spiritual instruction, may be inferred from the circumstance deplored by Baldaeus, that for the care of all his churches and schools he had, in 1663, but two or three clergymen of the reformed religion, where the Portuguese had formerly employed up- wards of forty Eonian Catholic ecclesiastics.^ And, as if in anticipation of a doubt as to the sincerity of the outward profession made by his converts, he candidly states, that " though Christians in name, and qualified to discourse rationally of the ten command- ments, and other doctrinal points, they still retained many of the superstitions of paganism." * Baldaeus, c. xlvi. p. 810. * Hough, Hist. Christ, in India, vol. iii. b. vii. c. ii. p. 491. ' — See note C, at the end of the chapter^ ' * Baldaeus, c. clvi. p. 811. Chap. II. CONVERSION OF THE BUDDHISTS. 45 Whilst matters were proceeding thus triumphantly amongst the Hindoos in the north of the island, the progress of the Dutch ministers was not quite so rapid or remarkable in the Buddhist districts of the South. The Singhalese exhibited by no means the same alacrity as the Tamils in accepting in suc- cession the conflicting doctrines of the Church of Rome at the hands of the Portuguese, and those of the Church of Holland from their successors ; and it was soon found expedient to exert, if not open co- ercion, at least some gentle violence to quicken their apprehension. With this view proclamation was publicly made that no native could aspire to the rank of modliar, or be even permitted to farm land or hold office under the government, who had not first under- gone the ceremony of baptism, become a member of the Protestant church, and subscribed to the doctrines contained in the Helvetic confession of faith. The operation of this announcement was such as may be readily anticipated. Many of the lowland chiefs who had been recently baptized by the Por- tuguese, and who still bore the family names which had been conferred upon them by their Catholic sponsors, came forward to abjure the errors of Rome. The landowners, and those who aspired to be petty headmen, and police vidahns of their villages, were equally prompt to exhibit themselves possessed of the necessary qualifications for office; and even Brah- mans of Jaff'na and Manaar, unwilling to forego 46 DUTCH EDUCATIONAL SYSTEM. Chap. II. the prospects of dignity and emolument, which were attainable upon such easy conditions, made a ready profession of Christianity, although they forbore to lay aside the beads and other symbols of heathenism/ Education^ in the proceedings of the Dutch clergy, was in almost every instance made available for pioneering the way for the preaching of Christianity. The school-house in each village became the nucleus of a future congregation \^ and here, whilst the children received elementary instruction, they and the adults were initiated in the first principles of Christianity. Baptism was administered and mar- riages solemnized in the village school-houses, and, in order to confer every possible importance on these rural institutions, the schoolmasters appointed by the scholarchal commission had charge of the thombos or registers of the district in which these events were recorded, and thus became the depositaries of the evidence on which the rights and succession to property were mainly dependent. The course of education in the village schools was limited and the instruction gratuitous, but the most remarkable feature in the system was that the attend- ance of the pupils was compulsory^ and enforced by * Baldgeus, c. xlvii. p. 814. * From an Account of the Dutch Church in Ceylon, collected from the Records of the Consistory, preserved in the Wolfendahl Church at Colombo. By the Rev. J. D. Palm. Journal of the Ceylon Asiatic Society, No. 2, p. 134. Chap. IL ITS SUCCESS. 47 the imposition of fines upon the parents. These fines were the cause of continued refractoriness amongst the natives, dishonesty amongst the teachers, and annoyance to the commission; but experience had demonstrated that their rigid enforcement was the only effective expedient for maintaining attendance at the schools.^ For nearly thirty years matters wore the appear- ance of proceeding successfully under this combined system of encouragement and compulsion ; but about the year 1670 the records of the Consistory begin to exhibit evidences of uneasiness on the part of the labouring clergy, and contain complaints of the stubborn opposition of idolaters and the hostile inter- ference of the Roman Catholics and their priests. As to education, where religious prejudices did not intervene, the natives in general exhibited a desire to secure it for their boys; but it required many years to overcome the aversion even of nominal Christians to the education of their daughters, and, above all, their unwillingness that females should be taught to write. In the southern parts of the island, and especially at Matura, which has always been pre-eminent as the stronghold of Buddhism and the residence of its * An Account of the Educational Establishment of the Dutch in Ceylon. By the Kev. J. D. Palm, Colonial Chaplain of the Dutch Church in Colombo. Journal of the Ceylon Asiatic Society, No. 2, p. 107. 48 DUTCH ECCLESIASTICAL SYSTEM IN CEYLON. Chap. IL most learned professors, the hostility of the people was more intense than around Colombo ; their oppo- sition to education was more openly and forcibly avowed, and the evil was aggravated by an edict of the Dutch to prohibit the marriages of those pro- fessing Christianity with the unconverted worshippers of Buddhu. But notwithstanding these discourage- ments the success of the educational system exceeded what might have been reasonably expected ; the gross number of pupils in the Singhalese districts varied from 30,000 to 40,000, and, at the close of the Dutch government in Ceylon, the number of children under instruction in all parts of the island was little short of 85,000. For ecclesiastical purposes^ as for educational, the Dutch divided Ceylon into the three divisions of Colombo, Jaffna, and Galle. There were congrega- tions of Europeans amongst the military and civilians at the forts, and upwards of one hundred native churches throughout the coast and interior. But notwithstanding the facilities and encouragement thus held out by the Civil Government for the extension of Christianity, the history of its progress was but the history of its struggles with inherent difficulties and opposition, before which the energies of its promoters were gradually exhausted, and the result of the labours eventually disappeared. Fore- most amongst these was the resistance offered by the genius and influence of the national idolatry of the Chap. II. UNSATISFACTORY RESULTS. 49 Singhalese. In the southern province, above all, the contest was unequally sustained by the Dutch ; and nothing but coercion and pecuniary fines served to keep up a show of pupils in their schools and enforce attendance on their instructions in the principles of Christianity. According to the Report of the Chaplain of Galle in 1680, "idolatry was then on the increase: so much so as to render him doubtful of the propriety of baptizing the children of natives, lest that which is holy be given unto dogs." Every thing was '-^ pro forma^ and by constraint ;" and though the authority of the Government led the Singhalese to adopt the name of Christianity, they were utterly ignorant of its power, and not only refused to seild their children for instruction, but declined themselves to attend the preaching of the Gospel.^ Their teachers, too, with but three or four exceptions, only laboured from the motive of gain, without the slightest regard either for their own souls or those committed to their care, and some were even reported to the Consistory as being professional devil-dancers.^ At a still later period ^ the Dutch ministers of Colombo, apparently disheartened by the deceptive results of their labours, and embarrassed by a multitudinous assemblage * Records of the Consistory of Colombo, a.d. 1730. * The Rev. Mr. Palm's Account of the Dutch Church in Ceylon, pp. 16, 17. « A.D. 1684. 50 REVIVAL OF ROMAN CATHOLIC INFLUENCE. Chap. II. of converts in name but idolaters at heart, repre- sented to the Governor in council that the reason why they designated the natives only as " nominal or baptized Christians " was, because many made a profession only from considerations of personal ad- vantage; and that native Christianity throughout Ceylon was in an unsound and critical condition, notwithstanding the peremptory orders of the Govern- ment " for the prevention of devil-worship and other heathen superstitions, as well as against the practices of Popery, to which som^ are still strongly in- clined." ' This latter allusion was not without its foundation in fact ; for as the influence of the Protestant clergy declined, that of the Roman Catholic priesthood had risen into unexpected importance. Their worship, notwithstanding every discouragement, had main- tained its hold on the natives by its gaudy cere- monial ; whilst the less attractive teaching and sterner discipline of the Dutch could only be sus- tained by prospects of personal advantage or enforced by pecuniary fines. At Jaffna, in particular, and amongst the Tamils and Fisher caste along the western coast, its ascendency was neither weakened by per- secution nor undermined by corruption. From Kandy, where they had been alternately invited and proscribed by the kings, the Roman Catholic priests made their way into the low country, ^ The Rev. Mr. Palm's Account, &c., p. 27. Chap. II. STORY OF FATHER VAZ. 51 visiting in secret their scattered flocks, and admin- istering the Sacraments in defiance of the plakaats and prohibitions of the Government^ Amongst the most distinguished of these preachers was Joseph Vaz, of the Oratory of St. Philippo Neri, at Goa, whose adventurous journeys and imprisonments, and his extraordinary zeal in the service of his Church, have obtained for his memory amongst the E-oman Catholics of Ceylon a veneration little short of that accorded to the name of St. Francis Xavier in India. He prevailed on the King of Kandy, in 1694, to permit him to rebuild the churches of the Eoman Catholics in the Bogambra suburb which his prede- cessor had directed to be destroyed ; and having been appointed by the Bishop of Cochin his Vicar-General for Ceylon, he prosecuted his labours with such vigour and success that in an incredibly short space of time he had re-established the Catholic com- munion in its former strongholds at Jaffna and Manaar, extended its influence in the maritime provinces, and added to the Church upwards of 30,000 converts from the heathen.^ Father Vaz died at Kandy in 1711, but the impulse which his fervour and toil had communicated to the advance- ^ Lecture? on the Roman Catholic Church. By N. Wise- man, D.D., Bishop of Melipotamus. Sect. vii. p. 231. * The Life of Father Joseph Vaz, founder of the Catholic Mission of St. Philippo Neri in Ceylon. Abridged from Dorego's Work, by S. Casie Chitty, Esq., Ceylon Civil Service. Colombo, 1848, pp. 16, 25. E 2 52 DUTCH PERSECUTION. Chap. II. ment of his religion underwent no apparent diminu- tion after his decease ; and at length the Dutch Government, abandoning whatever portion of prac- tical moderation may have characterized the earlier years of their rule, were persuaded by the Protestant ministers to adopt a more active, but, as it eventually proved, an equally ineffectual policy for the forcible suppression of Popery. The Dutch clergy and their consistories appear at all times to h^ve been inclined to religious coercion ; ^ but it was only when alarmed by the increasing pressure of the Roman Catholics that the Government yielded to their solicitations, and ventured to enforce the series of measures which have already been enumerated, and which were designed, not merely for the restraint of the priests, but the actual extinction of the Roman Catholic religion in Ceylon. The priests thus proscribed were, however, far from being silenced; they aban- doned their open residence in the territories of the Dutch, and retired to villages and towns on the Kandyan frontier, whence they returned, in various disguises, to visit their congregations throughout the maritime districts.^ The proclamations of the * The Rev. Mr. Palm*s Account of the Dutch Church in Ceylon, pp. 35, 50. * Bishop Wiseman, quoting from the Peregrinacion del Mundo of Don Pedro Cabrero Sebastian, Predicador Apostolico (Naples, 1682, p. 277), relates in his Lectures some extra- ordinary exploits of that missionary in administering the sacra- ments by stealth to the Roman Catholics in all parts of Ceylon. Ghap. II. MEASURES AGAINST ROMAN CATHOLICS. 53 Government were either too late to be effectual, or too tyrannical to be carried into force ; and in 1717, only two years after their renewed promulga- tion, the Roman Catholics were in possession of upwards of 400 churches in all parts of Ceylon, whilst the Dutch Presbyterians had barely one- fourth the number either of congregations or converts. Other measures equally unwise and abortive followed those of 1715. Roman Catholic marriages were at first heavily taxed, ^ then ordered to be solemnized only by ministers of the Reformed Church, or by the officers of the Court of Justice ; ^ and all this proving ineffectual, their celebration by a Roman Catholic priest was at last absolutely prohibited, and their registration declared void.^ Their burials were forbidden in cemeteries of their own, and ex- travagant fees were exacted on their interment in those attached to the Protestant churches.* Roman Catholics were declared equally with heathens to be ineligible to office ; and freedom was conferred upon the children of all slaves born of Protestant parents, whilst those of Roman Catholics were condemned to Lecture vii. p. 232. Dorego, in his Life of Father Vaz, records similar escapes and persecutions. ^ Dutch Government Proclamation, 15th Sept., 1758. * Ibid., 24th Dec, 1776. 2 Ibid., dated 19th Dec, 1776. * Philalethes, p. 182. Lord Valentia's Travels, vol. i., p. 309. 54 COERCION OF THE SINGHALESE BUDDHISTS. Chap. II. perpetual servitude ^ — a device so short-sighted as to counteract the intentions of its framers by giving every slave-holder an interest in preventing the extension of Protestantism. Measures of a similar nature were, about the same period, resorted to for the suppression of Buddhism, but with no better ultimate success. In 1682 the Governor Lourensz Van Pyl, yielding to the en- treaties of the consistory, issued a plakaat, imposing penalties on devil-dances and similar idolatrous ceremonies; in 1688 permission was refused to the King of Kandy to erect a Buddhist Temple within the Dutch territory ; ^ and a few years later, appli- cation was made by the Protestant clergy to have the Buddhist worship prohibited at the great temple of Kalany, within a few miles of Colombo, and for authority to build a schoolroom on the ruins of a heathen madiuiy or preaching-house, which stood in its immediate vicinity. The Government were reluctant to take so bold a step as the suppres- sion of one of the most ancient Buddhist foundations in Ceylon, apprehensive that they would draw down the vengeance of the King of Kandy, with whom it was then expedient to cultivate peace and alliance. They expressed their willingness, however, to impose a penalty on such nominal Christians as should be * Bertolacci's Account of Ceylon, Introd., pp. 60, 72. Records of the Dutch Consistory of Colombo, a.d. 1751. * Valentyn, c. 17, quoted by Hough, vol. iii. p. 91. Chap. II. FAILURE OF THE DUTCH SYSTEM. 55 convicted of idolatrous practices ; ^ and they gave an authority for the establishing of the Christian school as requested. The experiment was unsuccessful; the school-house was opened, but the resort of pil- grims to the temple became more multitudinous than ever, and the clergy in their extremity appealed from the timid policy of the local authorities to the supreme authority at home, to enforce the plakaat of Van Pyl against the idolaters of Kalany. The Dutch East India Company complied; and in 1692 they declared the Buddhist ceremonies at Kalany to be prohibited, and ordered the priests to withdraw from the temple. Notwithstanding this and similar measures, the progress of conversion amongst the Buddhists was still unsatisfactory and unsound. The proscription, both of popery and idolatry, was found to be insuf- ficient without the compulsion of converts, and this was resorted to so undisguisedly as to attract the attention and draw down the ecclesiastical censure of the clergy in Holland. In 1700 a.d., the Classis of Amsterdam addressed a remonstrance to the Con- sistory of Colombo, impelled by their anxieties for the state of the Church in Ceylon. They state that * In 17 II the Dutch Government found it necessary to carry this intention into effect, and by a proclamation issued on the 6th of June in that year a Christian convicted of participating in any of the ceremonies of heathenism was declared liable to be publicly whipped and imprisoned in irons for the space of a year. 56 CONTINUED DECLINE OF DUTCH CONVERTS. Chap. II. it has reached their ears, and on high authority, " that in some places attempts are made by improper and unjustifiable means to coerce the natives to a reception of Christianity, that is, of baptism; that they who are not baptized are declared to have for- feited a third of their property, and fines are imposed for the purpose of compelling attendance at the schools and at church.^ They remind the Consis- tory that if such things are, they are not of Christ, nor calculated to advance his kingdom ; that compulsion can never generate conviction, nor penalties inculcate be- lief ; and that those who are constrained by such inad- missible means, though they may submit to call them- selves Christians, must remain the enemies of Christ. Twenty years later the prospect was equally sad ; and in 1730, the Consistory of Galle took occasion to place upon record their own views of the obstacles which prevented the growth of Christianity. These were, in theHfirst instance, the influence of the native chiefs, who, though they had assumed the designa- tion of Christians in compliance with the wishes of the Government, were still " incorrigible Buddhists ; " and in their pride of caste, they required separate churches to be erected specially for themselves, to which even their own wives were to be inadmissible. Secondly, the public prevalence of idolatry, and the secret adhesion to it, notwithstanding the pretence of * The Rev. Mr. Palm's Account of the Dutch Church in Ceylon, p. 42. Chap. II. LOW STATE OF CHlilSTIANlTY IN CEYLON. 57 Christianity. Every action of the lives even of professing Christians was represented to be regulated by the practice and precepts of Buddhism : " when a child is born, they still consult the astrologers ; when it is sick, they hang charms round its neck; and even after baptism they discontinue the use of its Christian name, and a heathen name is given it as usual on the first occasion of its eating rice. They will undertake no work without ascertaining a lucky day for commencing ; and when sick or in adversity they send for the devil-dancer in preference to their clergy. When they marry, it must be in the pro- pitious hour ; and when they die, their graves are decorated with leaves of the tree sacred to Buddhu, and cocoa-nuts and rice are piled around as food for the departed. They make offerings to the idols at Kattragam, they bestow gifls on the mendicant servants of the temple, and, in short, the highest benediction they can pronounce on their friends is, * May you become a Buddhu !' For the prevalence of this hypocrisy and infidelity the clergy blame the remissness of the Government in not enforcing the penal laws of 1682 ; and still more the licentious and offensive lives of the Europeans themselves, who encourage the natives in debauchery, and show them an example in the practice of every vice." ^ Such was the condition of Christianity about the * The Rev. Mr. Palm's Account of the Dutch Church in Ceylon, pp. 52, 53. 58 KISE OF THE ROMAN CATHOLICS. Chap. II. time when Baron ImhofF assumed the government of Ceylon in 1736; and in handing over his authority to his successor, in 1740, he left on record his views as to the means of its extension, and the necessity of a greater number of missionaries to preach to the natives in Singhalese, Malabar, and Portuguese ; and that these should be desired " to abstain from sending in lists of the converts they had made to Christianity, when they only cause that religion to be ill under- stood and ridiculously observed. The Romish priests," he continues, *' do the Company much injury ; they are zealous in their opposition to its interests, and very closely united amongst themselves ; and it is my opinion that they never will be put down till we send out more efficient teachers of our own faith." 1 It would appear that obstacles to the extension of Christianity from the influence of idolatry were even less apprehended than the difficulties now encountered from the rising ascendancy of the Roman Catholics, whose numbers had actually multiplied under persecution. They had churches in every district from Jaffna to Colombo; and in 1734 they extended their operations to the Southern Province, and with such success that the Presby- terian clergy of Galle, distracted by the impracti- cability or apostacy of the natives, gave way before this accumulation of hostile influences: from 1745 * Lee's Edition of Ribeyro's Ceylon, App. 176. Chap. II. PERSECUTION OF CATHOLICS OF NEGOMBO. 59 A.D., the district was left for some years altogether without the services of a Protestant minister/ No circumstance is more demonstrative of the rela- tive condition of the two Churches at this period — of the increasing strength of the Romish priesthood — the apprehension of the Dutch clergy — the spirit of the Consistory and the policy of the Government — than their treatment of the Koman Catholic community of Negombo and the surrounding korles, in which their numbers have been at all times more consider- able than in any other district in the south of the island. In 1750 the Roman Catholics of this place, about twenty-two miles distant from Colombo, assumed sufficient courage to lay before the Govern- ment the grievances and disqualifications under which they laboured, and to entreat a reconsideration of its policy with a view to their relief. They complained, that being sincere believers in the tenets of their own Church, which had been espoused by their fore- fathers two hundred years before, it was a violence offered to their conscience to be compelled, under penalties, to send their families to be instructed in doctrines which they rejected, and an offence to their feelings to hear them rehearsed by their child- ren on their return home from school. They ad- mitted frankly, that whilst in terror of the law, and to avoid the fines imposed by the Government, they so far conformed as to have their children * Lee's Edition of Ribeyro's Ceylon, pp. 54, 59. 60 PERSECUTION OF CATHOLICS OF NEGOMBO. Chap. II. baptized by the ministers of the Reformed Church ; they were, nevertheless, in the habit of having the same children baptized a second time by the clergy- men of the Church of Rome. They lamented that, being compelled to deny in public doctrines which they cherished in their hearts, this perpetual conflict between their secret convictions and their public profession endangered the salvation of their souls ; and they earnestly prayed to be admitted -to liberty of conscience and the free exercise of their religion, which no compulsory avowal of Protestantism could ever induce them to abjure.* Their application was referred by the Government for the consideration and opinion of the Consistory of Colombo, who urged strenuously that no relaxation whatsoever might be granted ; that the Government regulations, and the fines for non-attendance at schools and at church, should be firmly enforced against Roman Catholics; that baptism by a priest should neither be sanctioned, nor its validity admitted ; and that none but Protestant headmen should be invested with authority in the different districts. The Governor and the Council, whatever might be the strict letter of the law, were by no means prepared to carry matters to such an extreme ; they even reminded the Consistory in their reply that it was beyond the province of that body to interfere with penalties or political regulations which were ' The Rev. Mr. Palm's Account, &c., p. 60. Chap. II. ITS FAILURE. 61 properly within the jurisdiction of the civil adminis- tration. As to Eoman Catholic baptism and its validity, that was a question which they must refer for the instruction of the authorities at Batavia ; and as regarded the headmen, and the exclusion from oflSce of all but Protestant candidates, it had been found practically impossible to act uniformly on that principle, as the numbers of such converts had become too scanty to afford a sufficient field for selection. The prayer of the Koman Catholics was, however, rejected, and the exasperating though ineffectual policy of exclusion and compulsion was still openly pursued. Reaction and retaliation were the natural consequences. Emboldened by a sense of their own numbers and physical strength, the Roman Catholics ventured on a more ostentatious display of their in- fluence over the people; they erected places of worship at Caltura, within a few miles of Colombo, and commenced their public celebration of their festivals with all their accustomed paraphernalia and parade. The governor caused the leader of this movement to be banished to Tutocoreen on the Coromandel coast, where the Dutch had a settle- ment; serious disturbances followed, and for some years afterwards the districts round Colombo were the scene of continued riots, in which the Protestants were insulted and assaulted by their opponents. These events seem to have partially opened the eyes of the Government to the inutility of persecu- 6^ CHRISTIANITY AT CLOSE OF DUTCH RULE. Chap. II. tion as an instrument of conversion ; a reaction im- mediately followed in favour of a more enlarged toleration, and under the three latest Dutch gover- nors, Falk, Yan de Graaf, and Engelbeck, between 1765 and the occupation of Ceylon by the British in 1796, though the penal laws against the Roman Ca- tholics were not formally repealed, they ceased to he rigidly enforced, and their priests were allowed to reside in the Dutch territory, but they were not permitted to wear their sacerdotal vestments or exercise their functions within a certain distance of fortified towns. There is na record in the proceedings of the Con- sistory towards the close of the Dutch Government to show that disappointment or discouragement had led to a determination to reduce the ecclesiastical and educational establishments, or to contract opera- tions which had been productive of such unsatisfac- tory results ; but that inference is deducible from the circumstance that such reductions were gradually effected. In 1730 there had been thirteen ministers employed in garrison duty and the superintendence of native instruction, and in 1747 there were but Jive in all Ceylon, and of these but one who under- stood the language of the natives.^ From this time forward the Dutch sought and received assistance from the Danish mission at Tranquebar, who sup- ^ Records of the Colombo Consistory, 1730, 1745, 1747. Hough, vol. iii. b. vii. e. ii. p. 103, note. Chap. II. CHRISTIANITY AT CLOSE OF DUTCH RULE. 63 plied them with types and with printers, educated young men for the ministry in Ceylon, and sent re- peatedly clergy from their own establishment to assist in the declining labours of the Dutch. The most remarkable of these visitors was Christian Frederick Schwartz, a name renowned in the annals of Chris- tianity in India, who landed at Jaffna in 1759, and devoted a large portion of the year to preaching and administering the sacrament at every station in the island.^ There are unfortunately no accurate data as to the actual number of professing Christians at the close of the Dutch rule in Ceylon and the arrival of the Bri- tish in 1796; and the records of the Consistory, though they contain returns and statistics down to 1760, are significantly silent after that date. At an earlier period they had been estimated by Valentyn at 420,000,^ but Hough asserts that before the end of the eighteenth century they had been reduced to 300,000 ; ^ and it is observable that amongst the mul- * Hough, vol. iii. b. vii. c. 2, p. 27. * In 1722 Valentyn gives the number of Tamil Christians in Jaffna at . . . . 189,388 Singhalese Christians in other places , , 1 '79,845 Christians in the Galle District , . . . 55,169 424,392 Besides 2799 young men and 1493 women, candidates for baptism. Valentyn, c. 17, quoted by Hough, vol. iii. b, vii. c. 2, p. 101. » lb., p. 104. Philalethes states (p. 191) that in 1801 the 64 CHRISTIANITY AT CLOSE OF DUTCH RULE. Chap. II. titude of Tamils and Singhalese converts there is not a single instance on record of a Moorman or Maho- medan who had been induced to embrace Christianity, It is still less practicable to discriminate what pro- portion of these large numbers were Christians in heart or merely Christians in name ; but the records of the Dutch Government, as well as the casual no- tices of the historians of the period, leave no room to doubt that in the opinion of their contemporaries the preponderance was considerably on the side of the latter. In fact, had it been otherwise, had these converts been devout and enlightened believers, their prodigious amount would quite warrant the remark of the historian of Christianity in India, that "the progress of conversion in Ceylon under their ministration would have been unparalleled in the history of the Church since the days of the Apostles.*' * The latest records of the Dutch Consistory, how- ever, contain an expression of their conviction, that even the converts of Jaffna were but Laodiceans in heart, ^ and the Classis of Walchern but a few years before had expressed their fear, from the small num- ber of communicants in proportion to the crowds of number of native Protestants in Ceylon was 342,000, and that the members of the Roman Catholic Church were still more numerous. * Hough, vol. iii. b. vii. c. 2, p. 93. • Records, 1751. Chap. II. MANY REAL CONVERTS MADE BY THE DUTCH. 65 Singhalese who had been baptized/ that their pro- fession was unsound, and the converts themselves ^'sine Christo Christiani" Still there is abundant evidence to show that all were not unreal professors. Baldseus and Valentyn have borne their testimony to this fact with impres- sive moderation ; and the latter declares that amongst the native Christians of Jaffna there were many whose conduct and life might put Europeans to the blush. Cordiner, who wrote his account of Ceylon from 1799 to 1804, and, as the first colonial chaplain under the English Government, must have been aware of the state of religion at the time of the British occupation, and personally acquainted with many of the Dutch converts, has stated that although religious knowledge was not perfectly conveyed to the lower orders of the natives, many of the higher ranks became as true believers in its doctrines, and as conscientious performers of the duties of Christianity, as those who adorn the most enlightened regions.^ Cordiner, however, must have been but imper- fectly informed when he states that the Portuguese * This discrepancy is very prominent in the Ecclesiastical Returns of the Dutch Clergy : for instance, in 1760, of 182,226 natives enrolled as Cliristians at Jaffna, but 64 were members of the Church ; of 9820 at Manaar, only 5 were communicants ; and in the same year at Galle and Matura there were 36 members out of 89,000 who had been baptized. The Rev. Mr. Palm, p. 67. * A Description of Ceylon. By the Rev. J. Cordiner, A.M. London, 1807, vol. i. p. 155. Philalethes, p. 191. F 66 SYSTEMS OP DUTCH AND PORTUGUESE. Chap. II. compelled the natives of Ceylon to adopt the Koman Catholic religion without consulting their inclination, and that the Dutch, unlike them, had refrained from the employment of open force for the propagation of their religious faith ;^ and Hough, in his important work on Christianity in India, has adopted his asser- tions without due examination. On both points the historical evidence is at variance with these represen- tations. I have discovered nothing in the proceed- ings of the Portuguese in Ceylon to justify the impu- tation of violence and constraint ; but unfortunately as regards the Dutch Presbyterians, their own re- cords are conclusive as to the severity of their measures and the ill success by which they were followed. The plakaats and proclamations of the Government, and their orders and regulations at one time for the coercion of the Buddhists, and at another for bribing them to conformity, are sufficient proofs of their system as regarded the heathens ; and if any evidence were wanting as to their oppressive and compulsory policy towards the Koman Catholics and their priesthood, it may be found in the legislative acts of the British Government, one of whose earliest measures was to repeal the penal laws enacted by the Dutch, under the operation of which, according to the terms of the preamble of that Act, " the Roman Catholics, a numerous and peaceable body of His * Cordiner, vol. i. pp. 156, 157. Hough, vol. iii. b. vii. c. 2, pp. 14, 75. Chap. II. FAILURE OF THE DUTCH. 67 Majesty's subjects, were rigorously excluded from many important privileges and capacities." ^ These laws, though they had not been acted upon in all cases, were still found to be a cause of anxiety to those who professed the Catholic religion, and they were accordingly repealed in 1806, when the Roman Catholics were allowed the unmolested exercise of their own religion in every part of Ceylon, relieved from all civil disqualifications, and their marriages declared valid notwithstanding the laws to the con- trary which had been enacted by the Dutch. Whatever may have been the instrumentality re- sorted to by the Portuguese priesthood, and however objectionable the means adopted by them for the extension of their own form of Christianity, one fact is unquestionable, that the natives became speedily attached to their ceremonies and modes of worship, and have adhered to them with remarkable tenacity for upwards of three hundred years ; whilst even in the midst of their own ministrations, the clergy and missionaries of the reformed Church of Holland were overtaken by discouragement ; and it is a remarkable fact, that notwithstanding the multitudinous baptisms, and the hundreds of thousands of Singhalese who were enrolled by them as converts, the religion and discipline of the Dutch Presbyterians is now almost extinct amongst the natives of Ceylon. Even in Jaffna, where the reception of these doctrines was * See note D, end of the chapter. F 2 68 ITS CAUSES. Chap. II. all but unanimous by the Tamils, not a single con- gregation i§ now in existence of the many planted by Baldaeus, and tended by the labours of Valentyn and Schwartz ; and in Colombo and throughout the mari- time provinces there are not at this moment fifty native Singhalese, even amongst the aged and infirm, who still profess the form of religion so authoritatively estab- lished and so anxiously propounded by the Dutch.^ The causes of this failure, however, are neither few nor obscure. Irrespective of the unsubdued influ- ences of idolatry and caste, the doctrines of Chris- tianity were too feebly developed and too superficially inculcated to make any lasting impression on the reluctant or apathetic minds of the natives of Ceylon. The Dutch ministers employed in their dissemination failed to qualify themselves for the task by mastering in the first instance the vernacular tongues of the island ; * and the Consistory in vain insisted on the * It was a device of the Dutch to circumvent the Roman Catholics by prohibiting the use of the Portuguese language, being that of the priests educated and sent from Goa : the attempt was, however, unsuccessful ; and it is somewhat curious that at the pre- sent time Portuguese is in almost universal use in all the towns in the maritime provinces, and that Dutch is not only almost extinct, but the descendants of the Dutch have betaken themselves to speak the language of Portugal. See Philalethes, p. 228. Dutch Proclamation, 14th Nov., 1649. * Out of a list of 97 clergymen in Ceylon between 1642 and 1725, as given by Valentyn, only 8 were qualified to preach in the native languages, 4 in Tamul and 4 in Singhalese. Hough, vol. iii. p. 75, 103. Chap. II. DUTCH CLERGY IMPERFECTLY QUALIFIED. 69 inefficacy of instruction conveyed through the cold and unsatisfactory medium of interpreters.^ In ad- dition to this, their numbers were too few to render eJ9fectual aid to the multitude of their hearers ; and in 1722, when the returns showed nearly half a million of nominal Christians, there were but four- teen clergymen in all Ceylon. Notwithstanding the clear perception which the Dutch appear to have had of the salutary influence of elementary and moral instruction in preparing the mind for rejecting the absurdities of heathenism, and embracing the pure precepts of Christianity, the amount of educa- tion which they communicated in their schools was infinitesimally small. It seldom went beyond teaching their pupils to read and to write in the language of their district, and even this was discouraged by the supreme authorities at Batavia, who, in communi- cating with the missionaries of Ceylon, expressed strongly their opinion that "reading and writing are things not so absolutely necessary for the edification of these poor wretches, as teaching them the funda- mentals of religion, which are contained in a very few points ; and to pretend to propagate Christianity by reading and writing, would be both tedious and chargeable to the Netherlands East India Com- pany."^ Under a system so superficial and ineffi- ' The Rev. Mr. Palm's Account, &c., pp. 5, 8. * Letter of M. Matzuyker, Governor- General of Batavia, to Baldspus, Sept. IStli, 1662. Baldaeus, p. 811. 70 EFFECTS OF BRIBING CONVERTS. Chap. II. cient, the labour actually bestowed was productive of no permanent fruits ; it was but seed sown on stony ground, it was scorched by the sun, and because it had no root it soon withered away. Again, the system of political bribery adopted by the Dutch to encourage conversion amongst the Singhalese was eminently calculated to create doubts and contempt in the naturally suspicious minds of the natives; whilst they could not fail to conclude that there must be something defective or unreal in a religion which required coercion and persecution to enforce its adoption. Where the former system was apparently successful, it produced in reality but an organized hypocrisy; and when persecution en- sued, its recoil and reaction were destructive of the object for the furtherance of which it had been unwisely resorted to. And, lastly, the imprudence with which outward professors were indiscriminately welcomed as genuine converts to Christianity, in- volved the certainty of future discomfiture. The example of apostacy, under similar circumstances, is more dangerous in proportion than the encourage- ment wrought by adhesion ; and thus the more widely the field was incautiously expanded, the more certain became the danger, and the more frequent the re- currence, of such untoward events. Towards the close of their career, the Dutch clergy had painful experience of this pernicious result, and their lamen- tations became more frequent over the relapses of Ghap. II. EFFECTS OP BRIBING CONVERTS. 71 their converts, first into the errors of popery, and finally into the darkness of heathenism.^ At length, in apparent despondency, and in painful anticipation of defeat, instead of altering the system on which they had discovered that they could no longer rely, they merely contracted their missionary operations to the narrowest possible limits ; cast upon others the labour in which they were no longer hopeful of suc- cess; and, at the final close of their ministrations, the clergy of the Church of Holland left behind a superstructure of Christianity prodigious in its out- ward dimensions, but so internally unsound as to be distrusted even by those who had been instrumental in its erection, and so unsubstantial that it has long since disappeared alm^ost from the memory of the natives of Ceylon. ^ ^ Ecclesiastical Report of the Glalle District. Records of the Colombo Consistory, 1757. 72 THE PORTUGUESE DESCENDANTS IN CEYLON. Chap. II. NOTES TO CHAPTER II. ( A. ) THE PORTUGUESE DESCENDANTS IN CEYLON. No class of the European descendants who have become natu- ralized in Ceylon present at the present day so humble an aspect or occupy so low a grade as the posterity of those of the Portuguese whom poverty and other causes compelled to remain in the island after its conquest by Holland. In every particular — in ability, education, and personal bearing — they are inferior to the descendants of the Dutch, who have since been placed in similar circumstances by the arrival of the British. The latter, from their education and capabilities, aspire to offices of rank and responsibility ; whilst the Portuguese section of the " burghers " are contented to fill the humbler occupation of tradesmen and artisans. The distinction, thus perpetuated, till it lias almost become a characteristic of race, may be traced to the despotic and fanatical policy of the Dutch Government in Ceylon, which, from the commencement of its rule, subjected the Portuguese, on the plea of their being Roman Catholics, to social degradation, excluded them from every office of emolument, and effectually shut them out from every pursuit of industry or path to distinc- tion. They were prohibited, by a proclamation in 1717, from leaving their places of residence without previous information to the authorities and permission obtained, under heavy penalties for the first offence, and " arbitrary punishment " if repeated. So effectually does this course of persecution and oppression appear to have crushed the spirit and benumbed the ambition of those subjected to its influences, that, even at the present day, under a liberal government, and after a lapse of nearly a century and a half, it is rarely that a Portuguese burgher aspires to rise above the position to which his forefathers had been reduced by the penal laws of the Dutch. Chap. II. CATHOLICS IN THE KANDYAN MOUNTAINS. 73 ( B.) EOMAN CATHOLIC COLONY IN THE KANDYAN MOUNTAINS. "In 1815, when the Kandyan territories submitted to the British Crown, a colony of Roman Catholics, the descendants of those Portuguese who had settled in the interior during the reign of King Raja Singha, were discovered in their mountain fast- nesses at Wahacotta, still retaining their attachment to the Christian name and ordinances, although they were hemmed in on all sides by the Buddhists, and had not seen the face of a priest for nearly three-quarters of a century." (Casie Chitty, Sketch of the Roman Catholic Church in Ceylon, p. 21.) Their minister, who was, of course, unordained, was called a sacristan. They had one copy of the New Testament in Singhalese, translated by a Roman Catholic priest, but no one of them could read, and the sacristan only knew a few prayers by heart. The community consisted of about two hundred souls, they worshipped the Virgin Mary, prayed before the crucifix, and were married and buried with a form similar to the Roman Catholic Church ; but they occasionally visited the temples of Buddhu and made offerings of flowers upon his shrine. (Davy's Ceylon, c. iv. p. 1 ; Harvard's Account of the Wesleyan Mission in Ceylon and India, Introd. p. Ixv., Appendix No. V., p. 333.) ( C. ) . DUTCH CONVEETS, a.d. 1684. Fabricius (Jo. Albert), in his Lux Evangelii, gives the follow- ing extracts from letters of Hermann Specht, from Colombo, and Adrian de Mey, prefect of the Malabar College at Jaffnapatam, giving an account of the state of Christianity in Ceylon. Specht's letter is dated in 1684, and he says : — " In regno Jaffnapatam sub quo etiam Manaar comprehenditur, sunt, excepto Manaar, secundum supputationem ultimam, et secundum catalogum nobis 74 DUTCH CONVERTS, a.d. 1684. Chap. II. de illis tradituni invent! conversi Christiani centum quadraginta et unum millia, quadringenti et quinquaginta sex (141,456) quorum conversion! praeposit! fuerunt quinque pastores ; sed ante paucos dies uno pastore mortuo, sunt hoc tempore illis praeposit! tantum quatuor pastores." The same authority, writing from Colombo, says : — " Regnum JafFnapatam habet incolas bis centies mille septuaginta octo millia septingentos et quinquaginta novem (278,759), inter quos incolas sunt Indi Christiani conversi centies mille octuaginta millia trecenti et sexaginta quatuor" (180,364). Adrian de Mey writes on the 6th November, 1690, and announces his own appointment as prefect of the Malabar semi- nary for the extension of the Dutch language, as a medium for communicating Christian instruction. But in this and a subse- quent communication of the 22nd January, 1692, likewise quoted by Fabricius, he speaks modestly though confidently of the state and prospects of Christianity amongst the Tamils : — " Status ecclesiae ad hue est talis qualis fuit quando tibi novissime scrips! Malabaric! adolescentes in collegio habitantes sunt diligentes egregie proficiunt in lingua Belgica ; ita ut spatio unius ann! didicerint legere et scribere. Noverunt Christianas orationes et quaestiones ex Borstii libello possunt memoriter recitare, easque ex Belgico sermone in Malabaricum transferre. Cantant etiam Psalmos in nostra ecclesia. Spero Deum deinceps concessurum esse illius gratiam suam et eos impleturum spiritu sue, ut ill! adolescentes cum tempore fiant benedicta instnimenta ad propa- gandum regnum Christ! inter hos ethnicos." Chap. II. ABOLITION OF CATHOLIC DISABILITIES. 75 ( D. ) REGULATION ABOLISHING EOMAN CATHOLIC DISABILITIES. The following is the regulation in question, published by the Governor, Sir Thomas Maitland, in 1806 : — Regulation or Government. Present — His Excellency the Governor in Council, A.D. 1806. Regulation 4th. — A regulation for taking off the restraints which were imposed upon the Roman Catholics of this island by the late Dutch Government, passed by the Governor in Council on the 27th of May, 1805. It being His Majesty's most gracious intention that all persons who inhabit the British settlements on this island shall be per- mitted liberty of conscience and the free exercise of religious worship, provided they can be contented with a quiet and peaceable enjoyment of the same, without giving offence to Go- vernment ; and it appearing that the Roman Catholics, who are a numerous and peaceable body of His Majesty's subjects, are, by several laws passed under the late Dutch Government, rigorously excluded from many important privileges and capacities ; and that, although these laws have not been acted upon in all cases by His Majesty's Government, yet that they are still unrepealed, and a cause of anxiety to those who profess the Catholic religion — The Governor in Council enacts as follows : — First. — The Roman Catholics shall be allowed the unmolested profession and exercise of their religion in every part of the British settlements in the island of Ceylon. Second. — They shall be admitted to all civil privileges and capacities. Third. — All marriages between Roman Catholics which have taken place within the said settlements since the 26th August, 1 795, according to the rites of the Roman Catholic Church, shall be deemed valid in law, although the forms appointed by the late Dutch Government have not been observed. 7Q STATUE AT THE AUKANE WIHARE. Chap. II. Fourth. — This regulation shall take effect on the 4th day of June next, that being His Majesty's birth-day. Fifth. — Every part of any law, proclamation, or order, which contradicts this regulation, is hereby repealed. By order of the Council, (Signed) John Deane, Secretary to the Council. Colombo, 21th May, 1806. ( E. ) COLOSSAL STATUE AT THE AUKANE WIHARE. The vignette at the head of this chapter represents a remarkable colossal statue of Buddhu, which exists in a secluded portion of the great forest which stretches southward from Dambool in the direction of Kornegalle. A gentleman who had recently traversed it in returning from an elephant hunt came suddenly on this huge relic of antiquity, and at his suggestion I shortly after made a visit to the spot. As usual, a mass of overturned rock has been selected as the site of a temple, which is still occupied by a soli- tary priest ; and close beside his dwelling stands the lonely statue represented in the drawing : it is upwards of 50 feet in height, carved out of the face of the solid stone, and so entirely detached from it, that they are only connected by two small ties of the living stone, which have been left by the artist unhewn, for the purpose of supporting the figure. The rock is scarped so as to serve as a wall on either side, and there are the remains of hollows at top, which had once sustained the timbers of a roof ; but the whole is now open to the sun, and from this circumstance the temple bears the name of the Aukane Wihare. Its construction is of the remotest antiquity, and the priest in charge of it informed us, that solitary and deserted as it seems, it was still visited from time to time by pious strangers, whose sacred books may have made them acquainted with the existence of this gigantic relic in the depths of the forest. A,fJ/CHC^^ The Banyan Tree — Mount Lavinia. CHAPTER III. THE BRITISH PERIOD. Early Neglect of the Natives — General Relapse into Heathenism — Degraded Character of the "Government Christians" — The Church of England — The Roman Catholic Church and its Progress — The Dutch Reformed Church and its Decline — The Re-establish- ment of the Protestant Religion amongst the Singhalese — First Arrival of the Missionaries — London Mission, 1804 — Baptists, 1812 — Wesleyan Methodists, 1814 — Church of England Mission, 1818 — The Tamils — The American Missionaries. Chap. III. FIRST FAIR TRIAL OF CHRISTIANITY. 11 CHAPTER III. THE BRITISH PERIOD. There is something of unusual interest in the period of this inquiry at which we have arrived. Two eras have been reviewed in this brief sketch of the history of Christianity in Ceylon — that of artifice and corrupt inducement practised by the early priest- hood of Portugal, and that of alternate bribery and persecution by the clergy of the Church of Holland. We now come to scrutinize the progress made during the third epoch, since the British occupation of the island, when for the first time a legitimate field was offered for the unadorned influence of the Gospel, and a fair and unbiassed trial has been given to the efficacy of truth and simplicity for its inculcation, unaided by the favour and uninfluenced by the frowns of authority. For some years after the conquest of Ceylon by the British, attention was but sparingly directed to the extension either of Christianity or education amongst the Singhalese and Tamils. Our tenure of the island was uncertain, and our occupation almost provisional, till, by the treaty of Amiens,^ Ceylon » A.D. 1802. 7S THE HON. MR. NORTH'S GOVERNMENT. Chap. III. was definitely attached to the dominions of Great Britain. Four years before, the government of the colony had been confided to the Hon. Mr. North, afterwards Earl of Guilford, who with administrative talents of the highest order combined an enthusiasm in the cause of education, by which at a later period of his life he imperishably associated his name with the regeneration of Greece, as the founder and first Chancellor of the Ionian University. Mr. North's first efforts as Governor were directed to the promotion of native instruction by reviving and extending the educational system of the Dutch.^ The tax on the marriages of native Christians was abolished ; the Dutch ministers were reinstated in their churches, the use of which, together with the free exercise of their religion, had been carefully stipulated for in the conventions on the capitulation of the various fortresses in Ceylon, and the clergy were invited to itinerate throughout the rural dis- tricts at the cost of the Government, for the purpose of keeping alive the knowledge of Christianity amongst the Singhalese. For some years after the British occupation the Presbyterian religion, accord- ing to the form of the Church of Holland, was re- garded practically as the ecclesiastical establishment of the colony. It was s© styled oflScially by Sir Thomas Maitland in his communications to the Con- * Cordiner's Ceylon, vol. i. p. 160. Chap. III. CHURCH OF ENGLAND. 79 sistory of Colombo in 1807 ;^ and in 1810 the Earl of Liverpool, then Secretary of State for the Colo- nies, proposed to reinforce the Dutch clergy by ap- pointments from those ordained by the Church of Scotland, and to receive youths from Ceylon to be educated for the ministry in Edinburgh. It v/as not till 1816 that the congregations of the Church of England became so numerous that on the suggestion of Sir Eobert Brownrigg they were placed under the spiritual superintendence of the see of Calcutta, and an archdeacon appointed to conduct the local admi- nistration of the Church in the unavoidable absence of the bishop. But neither this annexation, nor the subsequent erection of Ceylon into a bishopric in 1845, made any fundamental changes in the status and relative rights of the several Christian commu- nities throughout the island, who, both by the statutes and the constitution of the colony, are entitled to equal support and consideration at the hands of the authorities.^ The first colonial chaplain of the Church of Eng- land was Cordiner (one of the earliest writers on the affairs of Ceylon as a colony of Great Britain), who was appointed in 1797 ; the number has since been increased to twelve, who, together with the chaplains * Letter of Sir T. Maitland to the Dutch Consistory, 16th January, 1807. * Ordinance of the Ceylon Legislature, No. 1, 1845, to pro- vide for the maintenance of ministers of the Christian religion. 80 COLOMBO ACADEMY REVIVED. Chap. III. of the churches of Scotland and of Holland, are borne alike on the establishment of the colony. The colonial chaplains, however, have comparatively little practical connexion with the subject now under con- sideration — the extension of Christianity amongst the natives ; as the nature of their functions confines them almost exclusively to the towns and forts occupied by Europeans; whilst the more interesting and enter- prising duty of carrying education and the Gospel into the Singhalese villages and the seclusion of the jungle has fallen almost exclusively to the lot of the various missionary bodies who have successively settled in the island since 1804. One of the first acts of Mr. North's government was the revival of the Colombo Academy, a collegiate institution established a century previously by the Dutch, and in which they had trained their native students for the ministry, under the care of their ablest missionaries, Synjen, Kalden, and Wetzelius. Such was the general success of Mr. North's mea- sures that in 1801 the number of schools throughout the colony amounted to 170 ; and Sir Thomas Mait- land, who succeeded him in the Government, exhi- bited an equal appreciation of the importance of popular instruction, and an equal assiduity in its pro- motion. He sought the co-operation of the Colombo Consistory for still further restoring the educational institutions and public charities of the Dutch, and he assisted their ministerial labours by the appointment Chap. III. GENERAL KELAPSE OF DUTCH CONVERTS. 81 of catechists and proponents. But his operations, like those of his predecessor, were unfortunately cir- cumscribed by the embarrassed state of the colonial finances, from which, by order of the Secretary of State, no larger sum than 1500/. per annum was for many years appropriated to the maintenance of native education; a retrenchment the immediate effect of which was to close a multitude of schools which had been opened by Mr. North in all parts of the island.^ But we now come to a painful manifestation of the unsubstantial nature of all that had been formerly done by the Dutch in the way of Christian conversion among the natives of Ceylon ; evincing at the same time the deep and tenacious attachment of the Sin- ghalese to their own national superstitions. On the arrival of the British, both the Singhalese and Tamils, accustomed as they had been for nearly two centuries to a system of religious compulsion, expected to find on the part of their new masters a continuance of the same rigour which had characterised the ecclesiastical policy of the Dutch. Under this apprehension they prepared themselves to conform implicitly to what- soever form of Christianity might be prescribed by ' In a MS. Autobiography of Christian David, the first* Or- dained Tamil Minister in Ceylon, deposited in the Diocesai^ Library in Colombo, he relates that, having been appointed by Mr. North, in 1800, to the superintendence of forty-seven schools in the peninsula of Jaffna, they were all suddenly closed by Sir T. Maitland in 1805, most probably in consequence of the want thus caused of means applicable to their maintenance. G 82 « GOVERNMENT CHRISTIANS." Chap. III. the new Government ; ^ and not only did the number of nominal converts exhibit no immediate reduction on the change of rulers, but they were reported in 1801 to have so far exceeded anything ever exhibited by the Dutch, as to amount to no less than 342,000 Protestants, exclusive of a still greater number who professed the Roman Catholic religion. Cordiner, the zealous colonial chaplain, records this agreeable * Buchanan, in his visit to Ceylon in 1806, inquired of the boatman who brought him from Ramisseram, and was one of these " Government Christians'' what religion the English professed ? but he could get no other reply than that " they were neither of the Portuguese nor the Dutch religion." — Chris- tian Researches, p. 184. The facility with which the Singhalese accommodated them- selves in so many instances to the religious predilections of their successive masters, and the anticipations with which they evidently expected a change of the national religion as a necessary sequence of political conquest, is not to be regarded as a manifestation peculiar to the natives of Ceylon, but is more or less a character- istic of Asiatics in general. Territorial conquests in the East have been almost universally followed by the imposition of the religion of the conquerors. There can be little doubt that the establishment of Buddhism itself in Ceylon was the result of a foreign invasion ; whilst its extirpation from surrounding localities was equally a consequence of conquest. The records of the Buddhist religion abound with such vicissitudes — with its over- throw by the Brahmanical princes and Mahomedan conquerors of India, and its expulsion from the eastern provinces of Persia, from Affghanistan, Bokhara, and the countries to the north-west — events which led to its extension in the opposite direction, and to its adoption amongst the Tartars and other races to the north- ward of China, amongst whom it has maintained its ascendancy to the present time. Chap. III. RETURN OF THE TAMILS TO IDOLATRY. 83 fact; in the sincerity of his satisfaction over so goodly a retrospect, he looked forward with corre- sponding confidence to an equally promising future, and declares that the natives of Ceylon were '* per- fectly free both from bigotry and prejudice : having so long wandered in darkness, they follow gladly the least glimmerings of light ; the first openings of re- ligious knowledge are received by them with tran- sport ; and they look up with adoration to any one who bestows pains in endeavouring to teach them."- This agreeable vision, however, proved as transient as it was unreal ; the natives soon came to regard the withdrawal of compulsion to religious conformity only as evidence of religious indifference on the part of their new rulers ; and they became still more firmly convinced of the justice of this conclusion on disco- vering that they were no longer to be paid for apos- tacy, and that a monopoly of offices and public employment was not as theretofore to be jealously preserved for the outward professors of Christianity. Almost with greater rapidity than their numbers had originally increased, they now commenced to decline. In 1802 the nominal Protestant Christians amongst the Tamils of Jaffna were 136,000; in 1806 Bu- chanan, who then visited Ceylon, described the Pro- testant religion as extinct, the fine old churches in ruins, the clergy who had once ministered in them forgotten, and but one Hindoo catechist in charge of ' Cordiner, p. 163, 164. g2 84 RETURN OF THE TAMILS TO IDOLATRY. Chap. III. the province. Vast numbers had openly joined the Soman Catholic communion, to which they had long been secretly attached, and the whole district was handed over to priests from the college of Goa.^ In the Singhalese districts the decline, though not so instantaneous, was equally deplorable ; the 342,000 over whom Cordiner confidingly rejoiced in 1801, had diminished in 1810 to less than half the amount, and numbers of Protestants were every year apos- tatising to Buddhu.^ The rumours of this reaction had not failed to reach England, where they excited anxiety and dis- satisfaction ; and the Secretary of State, Viscount Castlereagh, so early as 1808, addressed a despatch to Sir Thomas Maitland, to acquaint him with the fact that the measures of his Government had been freely censured for their tendency to discourage the progress of Christianity, and to induce the natives of Ceylon to relapse into paganism.^ But as the go- vernor had himself represented some time before that the regulation of the Dutch which had rendered ' Buchanan's Christian Researches, p. 185. Hough's History of Christianity in India, voL iv. p. 533. * Hough's History of Christianity in India, voL iv. pp. 534-538. ' In all probability the charges against Sir Thomas Maitland, alluded to in this despatch of Lord Castlereagh, were those which had been published by Buchanan after his visit to Ceylon in 1806, on which occasion he alludes with more than necessary reprehen- sion to what he evidently regarded as the deliberate and culpable neglect of the Government in relation to the religious establish- ments of the colony. Chap. III. ARRIVAL OF MISSIONARIES IN CEYLON. 85 Christianity an essential qualification for office, had only tended to foster falsehood without diminishing idolatry, Lord Castlereagh afterwards intimated his conviction that the abrogation of the obnoxious rule might have given rise to the current surmises; and he enjoined upon the governor the necessity of devoting every energy to the promotion of education as essential to the extension, if not ultimately iden- tified with the existence, of Christianity itself. The result of this disheartening demonstration of apostacy throughout Ceylon was not, however, without its uses, and it was, to a certain extent, im- portant in more than one particular. Christian missionaries had already begun to establish them- selves in Ceylon ; three had arrived in 1 804, and at the very outset of their toil they found not only a clear field for their labours, but a striking illustration of the difficulties of their task, and of the hopelessness of attempting anything in mere human strength or in any exclusive reliance upon human devices. The local Government, thue* animated by the encourage- ments of the Secretary of State, and supported by the hearty co-operation of the colonial authorities, addressed itself anxiously to the work of re-esta- blishing Christianity. Proponents were appointed to itinerate the provinces, and baptize the children of the natives ; the successive missions of the Wes- leyans, the Church of England, and the Baptists were liberally encouraged by the Governor and 86 FIRST MISSIONS AT JAFFNA, &c. Chap. III. cordially welcomed by the colonial chaplains and clergy ; the Bible Society and the Christian press of India supplied translations of the Scripture and reprints of doctrinal discourses for the use of the Singhalese ; education was pressed forward with earnestness and vigour, and such a combination of agencies was speedily brought into action as reason and experience had demonstrated to be most effectual for the diffusion of enlightenment and the inculcation of truth. The success of these renewed efforts was, however, far from satisfactory: the first three mis- sionaries who arrived in 1804 were stationed respectively at Jaffna, Matura, and Galle ; but after a patient trial at each place the result was pronounced to be a failure ; they succeeded in establishing schools which were but sparingly attended ; the Singhalese Christians in the south were represented, after four years* ministration amongst them, to be "worse than the heathen — thousands of them actual worshippers of Buddhu ;" and their general estimation of Chris- tianity so low that it was known to the Singhalese only as " the religion of the East India Company" As for the Tamils of the North, after a few years of hopeless exertion, the missionary sent to them was withdrawn ; and so universal was their relapse into idolatry, that within a very few years the only Christians who were to be found in the Peninsula were the members of the Church of Rome. ^ * Harvard's History of the Wesleyan Mission in Ceylon, Chap. III. ABUSE OF CHRISTIAN BAPTISM. 87 The causes of this disappointment were, however, to be traced in a great degree to the incautious measures of the Government for arresting this uni- versal degeneracy : measures which, in their practical result, have entailed upon the island an evil which exists to the present time, and one of so much mag- nitude as still to oppose a serious obstacle to the exten- sion of Christianity. The proponents appointed by Mr. North and Sir Thomas Maitland proceeded to exercise their func- tions with a zeal almost untempered by discretion. The administration of baptism was the most pro- minent, as it appears to have been the most laborious, portion of their duties ; and the Singhalese, accus- tomed for upwards of a century, under the Portu- guese and Dutch, to regard baptism as the test and qualification for the enjoyment of numerous civil advantages, still retained the idea that the inheritance of property by their children, as well as other per- sonal privileges, would be contingent on the insertion of their names in the thomho or baptismal register of the district. On' the periodical visits of the proponent, the tom-toms were sounded throughout Iiitrod., p. Ixviii. — Tracy's History of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions, c. viii. p. 61. One inci- dent of this period, which caused some scandal, was the sale by the Government, in 1805, of the ruined church of Point Pedro, which had been erected by Baldaeus. It was bought by a Hindoo, and pulled down to employ the materials in the. erection of a Brahmanical temple. 88 ABUSE OF CHRISTIAN BAPTISM. Chap. III. the villages, the children were brought in crowds to be baptized, and the ceremony was performed in many instances by arranging them in rows, the proponent, as he passed along, sprinkling their faces with water, and repeating the formula of the rite. The Singhalese term for this operation was Christiani- hareneway or " Christian making ;" but it was far from being regarded as anything solemn or religious. It had been declared honourable by the Portuguese to undergo such a ceremony ; it had been rendered profitable by the Dutch ; and, after three hundred years' familiarity with the process, the natives were unable to divest themselves of the belief that sub- mission to the ceremony was enjoined by orders from the Civil Government. Of baptism itself they had no other conception than some civil distinction which it was supposed to confer, and to the present day the Sin- ghalese term for the ceremony bears the literal inter- pretation of " admission to rank'' ^ If two Buddhists quarrel, it is no unusual term of reproach to apply the epithet of an " unbaptized wretch ,•" ^ and when a parent upbraids his child in anger, he sometimes threatens to disinherit him, by saying he will " blot out his baptism from the thombo." Even to the present day a native child cannot be legally regrstered without previous baptism by a Christian minister, and the practice of the mission- aries (with the exception of the Baptists) serves to ^ Kula-wadenawa. * To-gintu-gua. Chap. III. LARGE NUMBERS OF NOMINAL CHRISTIANS. 89 perpetuate the evil, as they refuse to solemnize the marriages of individuals unbaptized.^ Prodigious numbers of nominal Christians who have been thus enrolled, designate themselves "Christian Buddhists," or "Government Christ- ians," and with scarcely an exception they are either heathens or sceptics.^ There are large districts in which it would be difficult to discover an unbaptized Singhalese, and yet in the midst of these the religion of Buddhu flourishes, and priests and temples abound. The majority ostensibly profess Christianity, but support all the ceremonies of their own national idolatry, and more or less openly frequent the temples, and make votive offerings to the idol. The rest are alternately Christians or infidels, as occasion may render it expedient to appear ; and in point of character and conduct they are notoriously the most abandoned and reckless class of the community. But in speaking of these classes under the designation ' " The dexterity of the natives in overcoming difficulties in this respect is amusing. A man in Malwana, being alarmed during an attack of sickness that he should die before his son and heir could be baptized, sent for his brother, who, instead of car- rying the child all the way to Colombo, borrowed an infant in the town^ and had it baptized and registered by a Wesleyan minister in the name of the absent child, who was at home. In this way the same infant has been frequently baptized many times." — MS. Notes by the Rev. J. Davies, Baptist Missionary, Ceylon. * " When we ask the people their religion, the common reply is, We are of the Government religion." — Ibid. 90 PREPONDERANCE OF ROMAN CATHOLICS. Chap. III. of Christians, a wide line of distinction is to be drawn between them and the missionary converts, whose adhesion to Christianity, however imperfect may be their inward convictions, is at least an act of premeditation, and ensures a certain degree of cir- cumspection in demeanour ; whilst no similar obliga- tion is felt to be incumbent upon those whose nominal addiction to Christianity is merely the result of an accident. It will readily be imagined that the existence of such a body, at once so numerous and so regardless, must be highly prejudicial to the extension of genuine Christianity ; and every individual who has had personal experience of its effects has borne his testi- mony to the fact that nothing has so effectually deterred the Singhalese in their first approaches to the truth as the apprehension of being identified by their conversion with a class whose reputation and whose practice are alike an outrage on the religion in which they were born, and an insult to that which they profess to have adopted. The E-oman Catholic Religion, under the British administration, has maintained the same ascendancy, and exhibited the same energy, which it had previously manifested throughout the patronage of the Portu- guese and the proscriptions of the Dutch ; and, at the present day, its members form by far the most numerous community of Christians in Ceylon. In the maritime provinces they were permitted an unre- Chap. III. CASTE IN CEYLON. 91 stricted liberty of worship by the proclamation of 1806; and although the political state of the country, for some years after the acquisition of the Kandyan kingdom, rendered it expedient to impose certain restraints on the visits of their priests to the interior, these were enforced exclusively with a view to their personal safety, and they, as well as every civil disability, were abolished by the Act for the relief of Koman Catholics in 1829. Since that period, the exertions of their clergy have been perseveringly directed to the conversion of the Kandyans ; but their success has been much less signal than amongst the low country Singhalese and the Tamils — a circum- stance ascribable not only to the stronger influence of Buddhism, cherished as it was by the Kandyan kings, but to the greater ascendancy of caste, and the difficulty of reaching the people except through the instrumentality of their chiefs. The Singhalese of the coast have proved more tractable converts, from the circumstance that their longer association with Europeans has, to a great extent, broken down this brrier of caste ; but in the Kandyan mountains the system flourishes in ranker luxuriance, under the con- joint influence of the Buddhist priest and the headman. Caste in Ceylon is a conventional discrimina- tion of rank,^ not a religious separation of race, such ^ Caste, as it exists at the present day amongst the Buddhists of Ceylon, is purely a social distinction, and entirely disconnected with any sanction or pretensions derivable from their system of 92 CASTE IN CEYLON. Chap. III. as exists amongst the Hindoos on the continent of India; and the enforcement of these distinctions is essential for supporting the pretensions and dignity religion. Nor is evidence wanting that even at a comparatively modern period such was equally its aspect amongst the natives throughout the continent of India, by whom caste was regarded not as a sacred, but a secular discrimination of ranks. The earliest notices of India by the Greek historians and geographers enumerate the division of the people into Brahmans, Kshatryas, Vaisyas, and Sudras ; but this was a classification which applied equally to the followers of Buddhu and of Brahma ; nor were the members of either section held ineligible for the offices of the priesthood. Arrian, when he names the class of Brahmans at all, refers to them not as an order of priests, but as the bearers of arms and defenders of fortresses against the assaults of Alex- ander ; and his description is more applicable to caste as it exists under Buddhism than to its development at the present day in the Brahmanical system. Strabo describes the Brahmans as eating indiscriminately \^ith other castes, and Fa Hian recounts their conduct as merchants and seamen — practices and pursuits utterly at variance with the sacred character which they now arrogate, and reconcilable only on the conclusion that caste, even so lately as the fifth century of our era, was a secular arrangement, the exclusive claim to which has been subsequently arrogated by the Hindoo priesthood ; in proof of which it may be cited that Fa Hian and the other Chinese travellers of the fifth and seventh centuries commemorate their intercourse with Hin- doos of every caste, including Brahmans who were Buddhists : — " D'apres le recit de Shakya, le peuple Indien etait divise en cinq castes. La premiere comprenait les guerriers ; la seconde, les suppresseurs des crimes, ou les Brahmanes ; la troisieme, les ouvriers et les commer9ants ; la quatrieme, les chasseurs et les bergers ; la cinquieme^ les pretres et les ascetes. II n'est point ici question des Brahmanes comrae caste religieuse — tout au Contraire : la cinquieme caste, loin d^etre exclusive, etait composee dHndividus sortis des quatres autres castes. ^^ — Maupied, Essai sur I'Origine des Principaux Peuples Anciens, c. viii. p. 193. For Chap. III. AUTHORITY OF HEADMEN AND PRIESTS. 93 of the hill chiefs. Hence, although the authority of the priesthood could at any time be exerted to dis- courage it, as opposed to the principles of their faith, the alliance between them and the chiefs, in relation to this question, has at all times been maintained for mutual advantage; the priests upholding the social ascendancy of the headmen, and the headmen, in return, protecting the Buddhist religion from the encroachments of Christianity. Were Buddhism and its worship to decline, the priests would have reason to apprehend the reversion to the Crown of the lands formerly granted for the maintenance of the temples, to the possession of which their personal influence is, in a great degree to be as- cribed ; whilst the chiefs, on the other hand, de- prived of the support and co-operation of the priest- hood, might equally despair to re-establish their feudal supremacy over the Kandyan people. A Kandyan, upwards of seventy years old, when recently pressed by a Roman Catholic clergyman to declare openly his conviction of the truth of Christianity, which he had already privately avowed, declined resolutely to do so. *' I admire your religion," said he, " and believe in its reality ; but before I embrace openly its doctrines, you must first effect the conver- sion of the chief : and I promise that not only I, but an account of the changes in the system of caste in India, and the supersession of the inferior ranks by the encroachments of the Brahmans, see Mountstuart Elphinstone, Hist. India, vol. i. b. ii. c. 1. 94 CATHOLICISM AND BUDDHISM COMPARED. Chap. III. my household and followers, will then adopt your belief, so soon as you are prepared to assure us of his previous sanction and example." ^ Apart from the authority thus assumed by the headmen and priests, and which, it will be perceived, is entirely a feudal and not a religious obligation, the Roman Catholic clergy profess to have encountered little real opposition from the actual influence of heathenism, and still less from Buddhism than from the more enslaving superstitions of Brahma. In common with the ministers of almost all Protestant churches, they complain that the obstacle they have had 'to encounter arises from apathy on the part of the Singhalese, which no excitement can arouse, and a listlessness and indifference which no apprehension can excite ; and however reluctant to avow their obligations to the efficacy of processions and ceremonial display, the experience of the Roman Catholic clergy has demonstrated that it is only by the influence of such expedients that they have been enabled to arrest the attention of the natives, and acquire the first accession of converts to their church. In furtherance of this policy, every facility has been afforded by the genius and coincidences of Buddhism itself; not only in the familiarity of its votaries with the accustomed range of devices common to all communities, whether Christian or * MS. Statement from the Roman Catholic Bishop of Usula,, Vicar Apostolic of Ceylon. Chap. III. CATHOLICISM AND BUDDHISM COMPARED. 95 heathen, which address themselves to the imagi- nation through the avenue of the senses, but like- wise in the similarity of the tenets, which are cha- racteristic of the respective observances of each. Buddhism, like the ceremonial of the Church of Rome, has to some extent its pageantry and decorations, its festivals and its fireworks, its processions, its per- fumes, its images, its exhibition of relics, its sacred vestments, and its treasures of "barbaric pearl and gold." It has its holy places and its pilgrimages in prosperity and health, and its votive offerings in calamity and disease. The priests of both are de- voted to celibacy and poverty, to mortification and privation. Each worship has its prostrations and genuflexions, its repetitions and invocations, in an ancient, and to the multitude an unintelligible tongue ; and the purgatory of the one has its counterpart in the transmigrations of the other. Both have their legends and their miracles ; their confidence in charms, and in the assistance of guardian saints and protectors : and in the general aspect of their outward observances, not less than in the concurrence of many of their leading beliefs, it is with the least conceivable violence to established customs, and the slightest apparent disturbance of preconceived ideas, that the Buddhist finds himself at liberty to venture on the transition from his own faith to that of his new advisers. One remarkable circumstance, too, is observable in their converts, however meagre may be their 96 DEMEANOUR OF ROMAN CATHOLIC PRIESTS. Chap. III. acquaintance with Christianity — that the number of nominal Christians who still adhere in secret to the rites and tenets of Buddhism, is infinitely smaller amongst the Roman Catholics than amongst the pro- fessors of any other church in Ceylon; an incident which has been ascribed to the overruling influence of the Confessional, and the unintermitted control which it exerts over the feelings as well as the actions of its votaries. In fact, if any evidence were wanting to substantiate the real ascendancy thus acquired and maintained by the Church of Rome, it woidd be found in the munificence with which the natives contribute habitually for its support, and the liberality which they have manifested in the erection of costly chapels and highly decorated altars for its worship/ It is due, likewise, to its priesthood to declare, that whatever may be their individual feel- ings towards Protestantism and its agents, they have carried on their operations in Ceylon with an absence of active jealousy, and an abstinence from any direct interference with the ministrations of the clergy of other denominations, who have chosen the same sphere of labour with themselves. They acquiesced, at an early period, in the free circulation of the Scriptures amongst their disciples ; ^ they mani- ' For the present condition of the Roman Catholic religion in Ceylon, as regards its schools and congregations, see Note A at the end of this chapter. * Hough's History of Christianity in India, vol. iv. b. xii. c. iv. p. 546. Chap. III. ROMAN CATHOLIC CONVERTS. 97 fested no opposition to the religious instruction com- municated to the native pupils in other schools ; and Harvard, himself a Protestant missionary, has borne his willing testimony to the sincerity and demeanour of the E/Oman Catholic converts ; whom he describes " as more detached from the customs of paganism, more regular in their attendance on the religious services of Christianity, and in their general con- duct more consistent with the moral precepts of the Gospel, than any other religious body of any mag- nitude in Ceylon."^ However merited may have been this testimony of Mr. Harvard, or however truthful as regarded the comparative claims of the several Christian communities at the time when it was written, the thirty years which have since elapsed have so far altered their relative aspects, that the converts of the Roman Catholic church may fairly rest their moral reputation on their own merits, without being indebted to a comparison invidiously instituted with those of others, who, in point of con- duct and Christian bearing, exhibit no evidences of inferiority. It is true that the use of the Bible is riot openly prohibited to their flocks ; but as yet no eflPort has been made by the Roman Catholics to supply the Singhalese with a version in the language of the island ; and I have learned, with some regret, that within a very recent period the disposition to * Harvard's Narrative of the Wesleyan Mission in Ceylon, Introd., p. Ixvii. H 98 WIDE FIELD FOR EXERTION. Chap. III. non-interference so highly commended on the part of their priesthood, has not been altogether without exceptions. It is just to them to state, at the same time, that the instances which have reached me of a contrary indication, bear less the character of oppo- sition to the measures of others, than of vigilance to protect their own converts from intrusion ; nor should it Jbe a matter of surprise, if, in places where the Roman Catholics have established schools for the education of their flocks, they should exert every legitimate influence to induce the attendance of their children at their own, in preference to resort- ing to similar institutions maintained by Protestant clergy. Unhappily the field for exertion in Ceylon, a vast expanse of which is yet untouched and un- broken, is sufficiently wide to enable each Church to choose an area for its own toils, without inter- fering with the labours or the success of others ; and the familiarizing of the heathen, however imperfectly, with the name and aspect of Christianity, even in its least purified form, cannot be otherwise regarded than as an advance into the hitherto undisputed dominion of idolatry, and a lodgment preparatory to its eventual conquest.^ Even as an agent of social progress its importance is self-apparent; and however superficial may be their religious convictions ' MS. Notes on the Church of England Missions among the Cingalese. By the Rev. A. D. Gordon. Chap. III. DECLINE OF DUTCH REFORMED CHURCH. 99 on the part of the great mass of the population, there are to be found, amongst the Roman Catholic Singhalese, men whose morality is as undoubted as their attachment to the forms of the adopted religion is sincere, and whose conduct and demeanour as Christians are as consistent and becoming as those of any other sect in Ceylon. This is not the less true or important notwithstanding the admitted fact, that the ignorance of the vast majority is still crass and unenlightened ; and if so much can be effected even by a perverted form of Christianity, the prospect of ultimate triumph is rendered the more bright and encouraging through the instrumentality of a purer faith operating under circumstances at least equally favourable^ TJje decline of the Dutch Eeformed Church, since the British occupation of Ceylon, has been gradual, but uniform. At no time had it attained any ascendancy over the Singhalese : it exhibited externally none of " the poetry of Popery ; " and whilst the imagination of the natives was unattracted by the stern simplicity of its exterior, their minds were unprepared to be influenced by the truths and abstract principles of its doctrine.® ' See Note B, end of this chapter. ' It is to the labours of the Dutch missionaries in Ceylon, and the anxiety felt in Europe for their success, that the world is indebted for the treatise of Grotius De Veritate Religionis Christianas. It was undertaken at the solicitation of the clergy H 2 100 DECLINE OF DUTCH REFORMED CHURCH. Chap. III. On the retirement of the Dutch authorities to Java after the capitulation of Colombo, many of the clergy, and all those of the opulent classes who were in a condition to emigrate, followed the fortunes of the Government, and along with them, took their departure for Batavia. Those who remained, as- sembled as usual in the fine old churches, the pos- session of which had been secured to them by treaty, and the Government for a time took on itself the charge of defraying the salaries and other expenses of the ministry. The subsequent fortunes of the Dutch Church, however, and the adverse influences by which it was surrounded, were unfavourable to the continuance even of its diminished prosperity. It was no longer the exclusive religion of the State ; the most influential and wealthy of its community had departed ; and in comparative poverty and neg- lect it had to maintain an unequal struggle with the rising pretensions of the Church of England, whose clergy had been appointed as chaplains to the British authorities and the military, and a still more dis- astrous contest with the Church of Rome, by whose priesthood the Dutch converts were drawn ofl" in prodigious numbers.* of Holland, and was originally intended as a handbook for heathen missions, and for the use of the seamen embarked in the expe- ditions to India and the East. * In 1798 the Consistory of Colombo earnestly besought the governor to take effectual measures to secure the congregations Chap. III. DECLINE OF DUTCH REFORMED CHURCH. 101 After the landing of the English the officiation of the Dutch clergymen had been altogether with- drawn from the outstations and the natives, and con- fined almost exclusively to the several congregations within the forts of Colombo, Matura, and Galle. But in a very short period their ministrations were still further contracted even here : Galle and Matura ceased to be provided with resident clergy of their own persuasion ; the use of the Dutch churches was liberally granted by the Consistories to the chaplains of the Church of England ; and only once or twice in each year the Dutch clergy of Colombo made periodical visitations for the administration of the sacrament. This decline was, however, in no degree to be attributed either to any hostile influence of the Government or any failure to perform its engage- ments to the Dutch ; and the Classis of Colombo, in its assembly in 1805, at the very time when serious apprehensions were expressed that the Dutch commu- nion would be speedily extinct in Ceylon, recorded in the archives of Wolfendahl that " everything con- nected with their religion had, by the favour and protection of the British, stood and continued in the same order as under the Netherlands Government." ^ Their own clergy were, however, old and infirm, and from the influence of the Roman Catholics ; and proponents were appointed and paid by the British Government with this express view, to officiate at Negombo, Chilaw, and Calpentyn. ' Records of the Consistory of Colombo, 1805. /•o ti 102 DECLINE OF DUTCH REFORMED CHURCH. Chap. III. no possibility was apparent of procuring others from Holland. In 1813, so extensive had been the decline of Christianity, not only as regarded the professing members of the Reformed Church of Holland, but amongst those attached to every other Protestant community in Ceylon, that the entire ecclesiastical establishment of the Colony consisted of but three chaplains of the Church of England, two German Presbyterians, of whom one was stationed at Co- lombo and the. other at Galle, and about half a dozen Proponents — a clerical officer peculiar to the Church of Holland, with functions intermediate between those of a catechist or deacon of the Church of England and those of a probationer or licentiate of the Church of Scotland.^ ' On the first occupation of Colombo, and for several years afterwards, the Church of England service for the troops was celebrated in the church of the Dutch Presbyterians at Wolfen- dahl ; and, about the year 1800, so liberal were the views of the Consistory in such matters, that they acquiesced in the appoint- ment of a proponent, under the direction of the Church of Eng- land chaplains, to officiate to that portion of the congregation who were already exhibiting an inclination to exchange the Pres- byterian for the Episcopalian discipline. This friendly arrange- ment continued uninterrupted down to 1815, when a large number of the Singhalese and Tamils having openly attached themselves to the English communion, two churches were ex- pressly erected for their accommodation, and the building at Wolfendahl again reverted to the exclusive use of the Dutch Presbyterians. From that period till very recently the most Chap. III. DECLINE OF DUTCH REFORMED CHURCH; 103 At the present moment there are but two clergy- men of the Church of Holland in Ceylon ; and of the many thousands of Singhalese and Tamils who, fifty years ago, formed the strength of the Dutch communion in the island, barely a remnant are now ostensibly attached to its worship. It may be re- marked, too, as an illustration of the confused and imperfect idea formed by the Singhalese of the dif- ferences in discipline or doctrines between Pro- testant sects, that numbers of those who consider themselves bound to attend the ministrations of the Episcopal chaplains paid by the Government, cannot yet divest themselves of the idea that they still belong to the "HoUandish Church/'^ The con- gregations which still attend the ministrations of the Dutch clergy, are the direct descendants of the old Dutch inhabitants ; but their dialect has been gra- dually exchanged for that of the English and Por- tuguese ; and at this moment there are not above fifty individuals in Colombo who can understand the language in which Christianity was preached to their forefathers by Wetzel ius and Baldaeus, though still cordial understanding has been maintained between the clergy of the two establishments, and the buildings of the Dutch have on all occasions been lent without hesitation for the officiation of the Episcopal chaplains. ' " Landse Pallya^ Landse, the term frequently applied by the Singhalese to anything English or European, is a corrup- tion of Hollandische, Dutch. 104 DECLINE OF DUTCH REFORMED CHURCH. Chap. III. warmly attached to the Presbyterian worship and discipline. It is not altogether improbable that before many more years shall have elapsed the Dutch service will have ceased, and that its Con- sistory and members may invite their future ministers from the kindred Church of Scotland, between whom and the Church of Holland there exists little other distinction than the difference of a name. Such an incorporation would present fewer diffi- culties than any attempt to supersede the Dutch church by another Presbyterian establishment. Its constitution, already well defined by the laws of Holland, has been recognised by the British Govern- ment in other colonies besides Ceylon, and here its doctrines and its discipline have been familiar to the people for upwards of two hundred years. Nor is it likely that the several sections of the Presbyterian church at home, however they might stand aloof from each other, would withhold their assistance, or abstain from ordaining ministers for perpetuating the Presbyterian constitution of the church in Ceylon ; which might be regarded by them as neutral ground, inasmuch as it presents peculiarities more or less differing from them all. Such a proposal would likewise recommend itself to the Singhalese congregations upon other considera- tions. In many particulars the reformed religion of Holland agrees with the other forms of Christianity in the island, both Roman Catholic and Anglican ; Chap. III. DECLINE OF DUTCH REFORMED CHURCH. 105 for example, in the celebration of festivals, such as Easter and Christmas, which are not observed by the Church of Scotland, but to which the inhabitants of the colony have been so long accustomed that their discontinuance, to those unacquainted with the argu- ment, would wear the appearance of regardlessness and indifference unfavourable to the influence of a church established in a community so circumstanced. Again, the Church of Holland agrees with the Episcopal churches in the use of a prescribed form of liturgy used by the officiating minister on sacra- mental occasions. The utility of such a handbook of devotion can hardly be called in question, even by the advocates of extempore worship, in a colony cir- cumstanced like Ceylon, where exhaustion must more or less detract from the fervour of exhortation ; and its necessity appears to have already occurred to the authorities at home, as the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland is now taking steps for pro- viding an authorized form of prayer for the members of their own communion in the colonies and remote districts of Great Britain. But in addition to these considerations, arising out of the constitution of the allied churches, there is another which points forcibly to the propriety of maintaining the Dutch establishment. The Dutch, unlike the English in Ceylon, were essentially colo- nists in the true sense of the term, whilst the British have at all times been mere sojourners in the island. 106 RE-ESTABLISHMENT OF CHRISTIANITY Chap. III. The result is, that at the present moment the mem- bers of the Reformed Church so far outnumber those of the Scotch Presbyterians, that the latter may, perhaps, be 40 or 50 in Colombo, whilst the Dutch descendants and other Burghers who frequent the Wolfendahl Church are little short of 2000. By such an alliance as I have here suggested, the ano- maly would be removed of a highly paid Chaplain officiating exclusively for the former, whilst the spiritual wants of the vast majority are now imper- fectly tended by one Dutch clergyman on a very inferior income from the colony ; and the fusion of the congregations, whilst it would equalize the labours would add to the usefulness and efficiency of the ministers of each. With this hasty notice of the ecclesiastical esta- blishments of Ceylon, and of those sections of the clergy who administer more especially to the spiritual wants of the European community, I return to the consideration of the re'estahlishment of Christianity among the natives^ and the labours and success of the several missions for its extension amongst the Singh- alese and Tamil population. So rapid was the decline of the Christian religion throughout the colony during the period immediately subsequent to the retirement of the Dutch, and so extensive its corruption where it had not actually disappeared, that on the first arrival of the several missionaries of the Baptists, the Wesleyans, the Americans, and Chap. III. AMONG THE NATIVES. 107 the Church of England, between the years 1812 and 1818, the Protestant form of Christianity, and cer- tainly its purity and influence, might be considered almost extinct. The work of conversion was literally to be commenced afresh in many districts, and throughout the island generally, wherever this was to be attempted, a new agency and system were to be introduced, diff*ering in every essential and par- ticular from that resorted to by the clergy of Por- tugal and Holland. The first missionaries who arrived in Ceylon after its occupation by the English were the three Germans, sent out in 1804 by the London Missionary Society, the imperfect success of whose labours has been already alluded to.' These were followed in 1812 by a deputation from the eminent establishment of the Baptists at Serampore ; and two years later, by the Wesley ans, led by the lamented Dr. Coke, who expired on the voyage, when within a few days' sail of his destination. To these were added, in 1818, four ordained missionaries of the Church of England. All were welcomed and encouraged by the colonial authorities, and by a mutual agreement the various districts of the island were appropriated by each as the future scene of their labours. In relating the result of their exertioUvS, and the salutary influence which they have since exercised * See ante, p. 84. 108 RE-ESTABLISHMENT OF CHRISTIANITY Chap. III. over the civilization and moral condition of the Singhalese and Tamils, it will be more convenient to consider separately their respective operations amongst the Hindoos of the Northern Province and amongst the Buddhist population of the rest of the island, in order to exhibit not merely the distinct nature of the superstitions with which they had severally to contend, but the distinct results of their toils for the conversion and amelioration of each district. In pursuance of this arrangement, it will be ex- pedient to turn, in the first instance, to the peninsula of Jaffna, in which the two ministers of the Wesleyan mission had established themselves in 1814; and whither they were followed two years later by the American missionaries, and in 1818 by a clergyman of the Church of England. From that time to the present the most intimate understanding and the most cordial co-operation have subsisted between these several bodies ; and the largest attainable suc- cess has been attendant on their conjoint operations. But whilst the means at the disposal both of the Wesleyans and the Church of England have been circumscribed, from the fact of their being but de- tachments of a body who have still more extensive establishments in the Singhalese districts, the Ame- ricans concentrating all their numbers and force at the one point on which they had established them- selves, have conducted their proceedings on a system Chap. III. AMONG THE NATIVES. 109 much more striking in its results, but not less sound and effectual in its working than that of their col- leagues and fellow-labourers in the same field. In religion the members of the American mission are selected indifferently from the Congregationalists and Presbyterians, associated with laymen as physicians and conductors of the press, and the whole acting under the instructions of one of the most remarkable associations for the dissemination of Christianity that has existed since the time of the Reformation, ' The American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Mis- sions,' which has its head-quarters at Boston, in Massachusetts. The first successful settlers in the portion of North America now known as the New England States, were essentially a colony of missionaries,^ who, having fled to Holland to escape the religious co- ercion of Elizabeth, emigrated thence to North America in the reign of James I. : where in after years their numbers were reinforced by those whom the intolerant policy of the Stuarts had driven to seek liberty of conscience in the New World. The Charter of James to the " Plymouth Company " especially recites that one of its principal objects was the extension of Christianity to the Indians. The Charter of Charles to the " adventurers " associated for planting the province of Massachusetts professes that the design of the king and the colonists is the ' See Robertson's America, b. x. 110 THE PILGRIM-FATHERS OF AMERICA. Chap. III. conversion of the natives to the true faith ; and the seal of the Company bore the device of a North American Indian, the motto being taken from the cry of the Macedonian in the vision of St. Paul, " come over and help us'' These " pilgrim-fathers " were the first pioneers of the Protestant world, and the first heralds of the reformed religion to the heathen of foreign lands. Their mission is more ancient than the Propaganda of Rome, and it preceded by nearly a century any other missionary association in Europe. It was encouraged by Cromwell and incorporated by Charles II. ; and Cotton Mather records that it was the example of the New England fathers and their success amongst the Indians that first aroused the energy of the Dutch for the conversion of the natives of Ceylon. By degrees a great people grew out of the humble New England missionaries; but they do not appear at any time to have lost sight of the grand object to the prosecution of which they were indebted for their origin. Their labour amongst the Indians extended along the vast continent of North America from Georgia to Canada, and, wisely combining the theory and example of social improvement with the preach- ing of the Christian religion, they introduced every- where secular learning and instructions in agriculture and the useful arts in connexion with the teaching of Christianity. , The result was signally successful. Chap. III. FIRST MISSIONARIES TO INDIA. 1 11 The Indians of North America have been eminently distinguished for their readiness to perceive and admit the value of Christianity and civilization ; and amongst no other heathens of modern times has the Gospel had such early and decided success, and no other savages have so readily thrown aside their barbarism and become civilized men.^ Encouraged by this success in the Western hemi- sphere, the missionaries of New England next turned their attention to the East, and in 1812, under an Act of Incorporation from the commonwealth of Massachusetts, they commenced those missionary operations in the Old World which have since been extended over Turkey and Greece, Syria, Persia, India, Siam, the islands of the Pacific, and the con- tinent of Africa. Their first missionaries to India in 1812 were ordered by the Governor-General to leave Calcutta by the same vessel in which they had arrived ; ^ and one of them on his return having accidentally landed in Ceylon, was so struck with the opening which it presented for missionary enterprise, and so strongly encouraged by the Governor, Sir Eobert Brownrigg, to undertake it, that, in consequence of his repre- sentations to the American Board, a Company was sent out in 1816, consisting of three clergymen and * Tracy's History of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions, p. 20. " Hough's History of Christianity, vol. iv. b. xii. c. iii. p. 512. 112 ARRIVAL OF AMERICAN MISSIONARIES: Chap. III. their wives, who proceeded to take up their residence at Jaffna, which has since been uninterruptedly the scene of their remarkable and useful labours. Four additional colleagues arrived in 1819, six were added in 1834, and notwithstanding absences, deaths, and removal, the strength of the establishment for many years has been from seven* to eleven or- dained ministers, with a physician and other lay officers. The old chapels and ecclesiastical buildings of the Portuguese and Dutch now rose into unexpected importance, and were assigned by the Government to the Americans, as well as to the Wesleyan and Church of England missionaries, for churches and schools. In 1820 the success of the American mission in these conjoint objects had been already so decided that it became necessary to form a printing establish- ment for the supply of the books and translations required for the use of their schools ; but by some singular misconception on the part of the Governor, Sir Edward Barnes, the mission was uncourteously refused the permission to use their own types ; and the printer, who had actually arrived from America, was ordered within three months to take his departure from Ceylon. The printing-presses were handed over to the missionaries of the Church of Eng- land, and for several years afterwards the liberty to use them was withheld from the Americans. This- Chap. III. THEIR DIFFICULTIES. 113 unwise decision was ultimately rescinded by Sir R. W. Horton in 1832; a printing establishment was organized by the mission at Manepy, and from that single institution there have since been issued no less than one hundred and thirty million pages of in- struction and enlightenment in English and Tamil for the natives of Ceylon.^ From the commencement of their labours no difference of opinion appears to have prevailed amongst the three religious bodies in the north of Ceylon, who had thus undertaken the work of elevating the religion of Christ above the superstition ' This was unfortunately only a solitary example of the innu- merable impediments against which these zealous philanthropists had to contend in the earlier stages of their undertaking. Death made many vacancies in their little band : pecuniary resources from the United States were occasionally so circumscribed as to. compel the reduction of their establishments and the abandon- ment of schools in the plenitude of their usefulness ; and, even when funds were available, there was no regular means for their remittance to a place so remote as Jaffna, to which the transport of specie was dangerous and uncertain, and wliere there were neither bankers nor merchants through whom to negotiate bills. The indefatigable missionaries, however, struggled boldly with every difficulty, and at length established themselves so tho- roughly in the good-will of the natives, and so effectually con- ciliated the confidence of the colonial Government, that for many- years past their operations have gone on without interruption ; their exj)enditure in Ceylon alone has been upwards of 110,000/.,, irrespective of the large sums devoted to other countries through- out the East. — Tracy's History, p. 89. In addition to this, the Mission have expended, on behalf of the American Bible anc< Tract Societies, nearly 10,000/. ] ] 4 IMPROVED BASIS OF OPERATIONS. Chap. III. of Brahma. And forewarned by the monstrous deceptions which had been so long and so success- fully practised on their predecessors, those who now renewed the attempt to convert the Tamils to Christianity prepared to proceed by a sounder agency and on a more certain foundation than that which had proved so delusive to the Dutch. They had before them the illustration, too recent to be disregarded, of the pliant acquiescence with which the Tamils had so lately accommodated themselves to the wishes and doctrines of their teachers, and ex- hibited a dishonest conformity in the absence of all real conviction. They had the warning derivable from their sudden apostacy that no credence was to be attached to the sincerity of such multitudinous conversions, the result of no mental exercitation, and the origin of no moral improvement. They had in the experience of others the painful but well- ascertained conviction that it must be a sacrifice of no ordinary magnitude for the Hindoo to exchange for the pure and self-denying morals of Chris- tianity the sensualities of a superstition which ex- tends an indulgence to every passion, and not only sanctions but sanctifies licentiousness. Above all, they had daily and hourly before their eyes the dread spectacle of that formidable superstition which they came to overthrow, but which still enchained with a superhuman tenacity the imagination and intellects of its votaries. Chap. III. ROMAN CATHOLIC CHURCH IN CEYLON. 115 NOTES TO CHAPTER HI. ( A, ) PRESENT STATE OF THE ROMAN CATHOLIC CHURCH IN CEYLON. The present condition of the Roman Catholic Church in Ceylon, as detailed in a communication made to me by the Rig"ht Rev. Caetano Antonio, the Roman Catholic Bishop of Colombo, is as follows : — The island is divided into two sees — that of the north, which includes the Tamil districts of Jaffna and Trincomalie, and that of the south, which comprises the Singhalese population of the island. The number of ordained clerg-y is thirty-three, assisted by upwards of five hundred Catechists and spiritual teachers, chiefly Singhalese and Tamils, with a small proportion of the European descendants. Their system combines secular education with religious instruction, and their schools are to be found in all parts of the island wherever their chapels have been opened. They have upwards of three hundred churches throughout Ceylon, and 116,000 persons are enrolled as members of their several congregations. Of these, the Singhalese proportion is 83,561, the Tamils 31,952 ; the remaining 1141 are burghers and Euro- peans, and their ranks are said to be daily increased by the accession of fresh converts from the heathen. From another source I have heard that their schools in the present year (1849) are forty-six in number, and upwards of two thousand pupils are said to be in regular attendance, one-half of whom are Tamils ; but I have reason to fear that the quality of the education is much more meagre and imperfect than in the institutions of other churches. This may be a result of operations so extended as to outstrip the means disposable for their effectual superintend- ence ; but so far as my own observation assists, and it is con- firmed by that of others, the scholars of the Roman Catholics I 2 116 POLICY OF ROMAN CATHOLIC CLERGY. Chap. III. exhibit much less diversity of information and less proficiency in that professed to be communicated than I have found in the pupils of similar institutions in Ceylon. Their schools are more numerous in proportion in the Tamil districts of the north than amongst the Singhalese population in the southern provinces of the island, (B. ) THE ROMAN CATHOLIC CLERGY AND THEIR POLICT. The view which I have endeavoured to give of the general operations of the Roman Catholics in Ceylon, and of the results by which they are characterized, is deduced not from any indivi- dual representation, but as the conclusion derivable from a com- parison of testimony drawn from numerous sources, and confirmed by my own experience and observation. At the same tinic it is right I should state, in alluding to their position in relation to the clergy of other sects, and the extent of opposition exhibited by them, that I have received from one quarter in which the Protestant missionaries appear, more than any other in the is- land, to have come into direct collision with the Roman Catholics, a much more intense description of the nature of their hostility and of the benighted condition of their flocks, than I have dis- covered in the representations of others from whom I have equally sought for information on the subject. I allude to the Baptist missionaries who, in their labours throughout the secluded villages in the western province, have come much into contact with the Roman Catholic priesthood and their agents. They describe the Singhalese Roman Catholics as, of all classes of the natives, the most superstitious, and sunk in ignorance even below the heathen who surround them — the use of the Protestant Scriptures vir- tually excluded, and no effort made to supply the want by any translation of the Roman Catholic version — no books or tracts on Christianity in circulation amongst them — their schools few and inefficient — of the great mass of the adult population a smaller Chap. ill. POLICY OF KOMAN CATHOLIC CLERGY. 117 proportion of Roman Catholics able to read than of any other religious community in the island — and, in short, all the public operations of the priesthood apparently directed on the principle that the less religion is understood, the more it is likely to become reverenced and feared. The authority of the priests over their congregations is described as supreme ; their denunciation of heretics unqualified, and the constraint placed upon their own flocks to protect them from the contact of the Protestant mission- aries so extreme, as to amount to personal violence ; and, in the event of conversions to any other form of Christianity, a Catholic who would venture to renounce his religion would draw down on himself a vengeful persecution unknown to any other class, unless perhaps the Hindoos and Brahmans. — MS. Notes of the Rev. J. Davies, Baptist Missionary, Ceylon. Entrance to a Hindoo Temple — Colombo. CHAPTER IV. THE BRAHMANICAL SYSTEM. Its Vastness, Mystery, and Power — Its Sacred Books — Its Grand Supports, Caste and Science — Hindoo Mythology — Hopeless Ritual — Worship of Shiva — False Physical Philosoj)hy — Effects of Education hy the Missionaries — Boarding Schools and Colleges — Female Seminaries — and their singular Success — Social Eleva- tion of the Tamils — General Results. Chap. IV. THE BRAHMANICAL SYSTEM. 119 CHAPTER IV. THE BRAHMANICAL SYSTEM. The Brahmanical System, as that against which the powers and energies of Christianity have been mar- shalled, has something so stnpendous in its dim and undiscovered dimensions, so appalling in the bound- less profundity of its dismal dominion, that, viewed from a distance, the boldest may halt in apprehension and the most far seeing pause in dismay. It is not alone the influence of the unnumbered myriads who have passed beneath its gloomy sway, during ages the most remote, nor is it the strength of the multi- tudes who still prostrate themselves, not humbly but proudly, before that awful despotism which leads captive the body through the corruption of the soul — it is not these alone that alarm the bravest and cause the most confident to quail. Whilst its proportions are so vast as to defy all survey, so unascertained that their outline melts away into mystery and dark- ness, all that is partially visible appears so compactly consolidated, so formidably sustaining and sustained, that the minutest outwork to be invested seems to summon and concentrate to its defence the same 120 THE BRAHMANICAL SYSTEM. Chap. IV. awful authority and mysterious power which gcvern and support the gigantic mass that towers above it. There is no section, no fragment of this prodigious structure that has not an assigned position and iden- tification with the whole — not the most trivial act of its humblest defender and slave that is not pre- ordained and prescribed, performed and recognized under divine and infallible authority, as a portion of that stupendous system which has been reared and supported by its own intimate intertexture, and ren- dered apparently impregnable by the fitness, the combination, the harmony and impenetrable union of its parts and members. Such is the outward aspect of the Brahmanical system to those who come from enlightened lands to gaze in painful astonishment on this colossal structure of idolatrous barbarism; and such, strange to say, undiminished in magnitude and power, does it still present itself to the eyes of the millions who from youth to age have bowed before it, and worshipped, as the embodiment of all earthly wisdom and the per- fection of all heavenly science. The difficulty of effectually assailing the Brah- manical system arises from this mysterious immensity, from the vastness and indistinctness of its huge pro- portions. It is in ihis that consists at once its real and its artificial strength — real in die prodigious area over which its baleful influence extends, and in the myriads who bend blindly and submissively before its Chap. IV. THE BRAHMANICAL SYSTEM. 121 despotic authority ; artificial but still overpowering in the infinitude into which it has multiplied all its com- ponent parts. Its mythical cosmogony stretches away beyond the bounds of space ; its historical annals extend backwards to the birth of time. Its chro- nology is recorded, not by centuries, but by millions of millions of ages ; and the individuals engaged in one single exploit, minutely commemorated in its archives, exceed in number the whole congregation of human beings that have pressed the earth since the creation of man. Its events have been chronicled in Sanskrit, a lan- guage the most expressive and harmonious that has ever been attuned to human utterance ; a language whose characters are declared to be a direct revela- tion fi:om the Deity himself, and its sounds the ac- cents of the celestials. It is professed that in the revolution of ages the use of this melodious tongue has been withdrawn from the lips of ordinary mortals, and its knowledge has been entrusted to the divine race of the Brahmans alone, to whom it has been permitted to cultivate this dialect of the gods.^ ' It is unnecessary to remark that the pretensions of Sanskrit to this mysterious antiquity are without foundation. Its alpha- bet is said to be a modification of the characters in which was written the ancient language of the Buddhists, the Pali, of which Sanskrit is a comparatively modern derivative — and the name borne by each is sufficiently indicative of their re- spective ages ; Pali signifying the " root," or " original," and Sanskrit the "finished " or "polished " language which has sprung 122 THE BRAHMANICAL SYSTEM. Chap. IV . The Yedas and the Shastras, the sacred volumes which contain all imaginable knowledge, and embody all that has been communicated by the inspiration of from it. It is likewise a significant fact that, although India abounds in sculptured rocks and inscriptions bearing reference to events in the reigns of the earliest kings, '' not a single Sanskrit in- scription has been found approaching to within six or seven hundred years of the date of those in Pali, the earliest dating in the fourth century of our era." — Colonel Sykes's Notes in Asiatic Journal, vol. xii. p. 415. In like manner the legends on the most ancient coins from all parts of India, from Bactria to Cape Comorin, are in Pali or Pracrit, which prevailed to the very confines of Persia ; and if, as Colonel Sykes observes, the extension of their religion claimed by the Brahmans from remote antiquity em- braced all these countries on the continent of Asia, thus involving the knowledge of Sanskrit for the study of its sacred writings, surely they would have left us some specimens of their dialect upon coins or on rocks, if the people using it had been numerous, or even if Sanskrit itself had been diffused amongst a few. (See also Maupied, Essai sur I'Origine des Principaux Peuples Anciens, p. 205.) Nor is there anything in the literature of Sanskrit to vindicate its title to an origin so ancient. Its style exhibits all the traces of transition from the first efTbrte of expres- sion to the highest refinements of grace and inflection ; but its historical compositions are so utterly imaginary, that " only one has been yet discovered to which the title of history can with propriety be applied, the Raja Taringini, an account of Cashmir, which dates no higher than the 12th century (Prof. Wilson) ; and the same high authority has pronounced that the Sanskrit records have established but one historical fact which can be relied on as authentic, the identity of Chandragupta with San- dracottus, the contemporary of Alexander the Great. The weight of probability is in favour of the opinion of Colonel Sykes, that there is still wanting proof of the existence of Sanskrit until six or seven centuries after the extant proofs of the existence of Pali. Notes, &c., p. 335. Chap. IV. THE BRAHMANICAL SYSTEM. 123 Omniscience, are written in this venerated language, and are believed to be as ancient as eternity, and to have issued direct from the lips of the Creator.^ ' Ttie antiquity claimed for the sacred books of the Brahmans has been reduced by modern investigations to a comparatively recent standard. " Sir William Jones," says Colonel Sykes, " in his preface to the Institutes of Menu, broaches a speculation^ the reasonableness of which we can test by reference to palpable epochs of improvement in our own and other modern European languages. He says that the Sanskrit of the three first Vedas, that of the Menava Dharma Sastra (Menu) and the Puranas, differs in pretty exact proportion to the Latin of Numa, that of Appius, and that of Cicero, or of Lucretius where he has not affected an obsolete style. He therefore assumes that the several changes in Sanskrit took place in times very nearly proportional to the above changes in the Latin ; that the Vedas must therefore have been written three hundred years before the Institutes of Menu, and those Institutes three hundred years before the Pfiranas. By this calculation Sir William Jones dates the Yedas from the fifteenth or sixteenth centuries before Christ. But as Professor Wilson has proved, from internal evidence, that the Puranas were written or compiled between the eighth and fourteenth centuries of the Christian era, it follows, accordino* to' Sir William Jones's hypothesis, that the Institutes of Menu date from the fifth century a.d., and the Vedas from the second century. Both the above are indeed great authorities; but in spite of this startling deduction, from applying Sir William Jones's calculations to Professor Wilson's dates, the absence of Sanskrit inscriptions before the fourth century, and the language of the inscriptions of that period^ give some weight to doubts respecting the antiquity of all the sacred writings of the Brah- mans." — Notes, &c., Asiatic Journal, p. 418. See also Essai sur rOrigine des Principaux Peuples Anciens, &c., par F. L. M. Maupied : Paris, 1844, p. 176. " The Vedas were probably written at different periods, but were compiled in their present form in the fourteenth century b.c." — Mountstuart Elphinstone, b. i. c. 4. 124 THE BRAHMANICAL SYSTEM. Chap. IV* From the Vedas proceed the Upangas and Puranas, those versified commentaries and interminable trea- tises which compose the wisdom of the East, teaching all arts, expounding all sciences, developing all mys- teries, explaining all laws and ethics, embracing all that it becomes man to know, and enjoining all that it behoves him to perform.^ All these form a body of learning so profound as to be infallible, so vast as to be inscrutable, so voluminous that the mere frag- ments of these giant epics, which are still accessible to mankind, are computed by millions of stanzas, and the whole existence of an ordinary mortal, though prolonged to the uttermost hour, would barely suffice to initiate him into the first rudiments of the ineffable literature of Brahma. It is this imposing immensity in which consists the ascendancy and duration of the system; its vastness baffles all scrutiny and defies all human comprehension. The mind of the Hindoo is over- awed by the sense of inconceivable extension; he feels it impious to explore where he despairs to comprehend ; he bows in distance and in humbleness before the sublimity of mystery, and in the very prostration of his intellect — he believes. ^ "The Puranas, which are eighteen in all, are alleged by their followers to be the works of Vyasa, the compiler of the Vedas ; but in reality they were composed by different authors between the eighth and sixteenth centuries, although in many places from materials of much more ancient date." — Mountstuart Elphin- stone, Hist. India, vol. i. b. ii. c. 2. Chap. IV. THE BRAHMANICAL SYSTEM. 125 But in the benevolent dispensation of Omnipotence there have in later times been those who have boldly ventured nearer to this mighty fabric of superstition, who have penetrated its dim recesses, held aloft the torch of truth and science to explore its hidden foun- dations, and returned to proclaim to its Christian assailants that the colossal superstructure is not iwr pregnable. They have entreated its deluded de- fenders to descend with them into its forbidden passages, to see and to satisfy themselves of its un- soundness and their own impending danger ; but as yet the voice of warning and persuasion has been raised almost in vain ; few have had the resolution to follow, and fewer still the courage to be con- vinced. But one paramount and permanent ad- vantage has been secured ; an entrance has been laid open to the most intimate secrets of the system ; and all that now remains for Christian energy and per- severance to accomplish is to devise the means by which the alarm may be more widely sounded, and the thoughtless millions led to enter and examine for themselves, and once awakened to a sense of their long delusion, to guide them to security and truth. It must be apparent how hopeless it would be, within the space I have allotted to myself, to attempt anything like a compendium of the doctrines, the dis- cipline, the observances, and the morals of the Brah- manical superstition ; but it is desirable to afford to those whose attention may not have been previously 126 THE BRAHMANICAL SYSTEM. Chap. IV. turned to the subject, some faint idea of the magni- tude of the system and the obstacles which it opposes to the approach or the ascendancy of Christianity, and at the same time to point out those peculiarities in its structure and constituent parts, the inherent weakness and unsoundness of which present a favour- able opening for the entrance of enlightenment, and a prospect of success for the well-directed labours of instruction. The religion of the Hindoos has hitherto rested securely on two grand supports — the scheme of phy- sical science which pervades all the details of their sacred mythology, and their slavish submission to the divine caste of the Brahmans.' These latter, the Levites of the East, have been venerated as the vicegerents of spiritual authority upon earth, the depositaries of all human knowledge and ex- pounders of all heavenly wisdom. From Brahm, the universal and self-existent intelligence, by whom the universe was willed into existence (but to whom, strange to say, no temples are erected in Hindostan, since his attributes are too sublime and ethereal to be reduced to any intelligible type under which they could be adequately worshipped), proceeded at the same time the Hindoo Triad, Brahma the Creator, ' A comprehensive account of the present' state of the Hindoo religion, and the changes which it has undergone, will be found in the third and fourth chapters of Mountstuart Elphinstone's History of India, vol. i. b. ii. Chap. IV. THE BRAHMANICAL SYSTEM. 127 Yishnu the Preserver, and Shiva the Destroyer.^ To Brahma was confided the formation of all the beings that were to people the myriads of worlds which had been produced from the great mundane egg, and direct from his presence proceeded the countless pro- geny of animated forms that have since moved throughout the universe.^ From his head issued first of all the caste of the Brahmans, and simultaneously with their birth flowed from his lips in finished and substantial form the sacred volumes of the Yedas for the instruction of mankind in all needful knowledge. Of these, from the first march of time, the Brahmans were or- dained the exclusive guardians, and the sole teachers and interpreters of their transcendant truths.^ From the arm of Brahma proceeded the military caste of the Kshatryas, from his breast the Vaishyas, or pastoral and mercantile races, with their innume- " Brahma, though he seems once to have had some degree of preeminence, was never much worshipped, and has now but one temple in India. It is far different with Vishnu and Siva. They and their incarnations now attract almost all the religious veneration of the Hindoos. The relative importance of each is eagerly supported by their numerous votaries ; and there arft heterodox sects of great extent which maintain the supreme divinity of each to the entire exclusion of his rival." — Mount- stuart Elphinstone, Hist. India, vol. i. b. ii. c. 4. * India and Indian Missions, including sketches of the gigantic system of Hinduism, by the Rev. Alexander Duff, D.D., Church of Scotland Mission, Calcutta, p. 121. ^ Mountstuart Elphinstone's History of India, b. i. c. 1. 128 THE BRAHMANICAL SYSTEM. Chap. IV. rable subdivisions, and from his foot the laborious caste of the Shudras, whose doom is that of toil and of humbleness, of slavery and degradation. Caste, in all its visible arrangements, is thus not only referred by the Brahmans to a sacred and lofty origin, but in its distribution and subordination its ad- justment from the commencement is asserted to have been unaltered, and it is presumed that to the ex- tinction of the universe it must remain the same and immutable/ Caste is not a distinction of de- gree, but of essence, A member of one recognized caste could by no merit or exaltation be elevated into one higher in the scale ; and if, by the violation of the institutes of Brahma, an individual should be overtaken by the awful visitation of an expul- sion from caste, he falls, not into a lower recep- tacle ; for whose rites and institutions, its functions and its duties, he would be utterly disqualified, — but he drops altogether out of the pale of mankind. He becomes an " outcaste,'^ a pariah, for whom humanity has a form, but no recognized place ; a name which concentrates all that a Hindoo holds loathsome and abhorred.^ * In contradiction of this statement as to the origin and immu- tability of caste, see Note at p. 91, ch. iii. * " The loss of caste is faintly described by saying that it is civil death. A man not only cannot inherit, cannot contract or give evidence, but he is excluded from all the intercourse of private life as well as from the privileges of a citizen. He must not be admitted into his father's house; his nearest relatives Chap. IV. THE BRAHMANICAL SYSTEM. 129 Thus by the very nature of their religion, am- bition and all its civilizing impulses and influences are annihilated, and the highest approval and rewards in a future life are reserved by the Deity for him who, with the most contented submission and un- flinching endurance, shall have discharged all the duties and performed all the ceremonial observances peculiar to the caste in which it is his fate to have been born. In this scheme the Brahman, divinely pre-eminent in origin, in wisdom and in power, walks the earth, a thing to wonder at and adore. To envy his exaltation or to dispute his supremacy would no more pass across the mind of a devout Hindoo than to aspire to become a planet or to question the brightness of its effulgence. The Brahman is to the rest of the world the oracle of Omniscience, the fountain of all instruction, the teacher of all duties and functions in this world, and the guide to infinite beatitude in the next.^ It is a crime amounting to sacrilege in a must not communicate with him ; he is deprived of all the con- solations of religion in this life, and all the hopes of happiness in the next. Unless, however, caste be lost for an enormous offence, or for long continued breach of rules, it can always be regained by expiation ; and the means of recovering it must be very easy, for the effects of the loss of it are now scarcely observable. It occurs, no doubt ; and prosecutions are not un- frequent in our courts for unjust exclusion from caste ; but in a long residence in India I do not remember ever to. have heard of or met with an individual placed in the circumstances I have described." — Mountstuart Elphinstone, Hist. India, b. ii. c. 1. ^ Mountstuart Elphinstone, quoting from Menu, says: "A K 130 THE BRAHMANICAL SYSTEM. Chap. IV. Hindoo of one of the unprivileged castes to pry into that body of knowledge of which the Brahmans are the sacred dispensers ; every study and every science which relies on the operations of mind and intelli- gence form their exclusive domain; and to the rest of mankind it is permitted only to occupy themselves in those arts and humble occupations in which suc- Bramin is the chief of all created beings ; the world and all in it are his; through him, indeed, other mortals enjoy life; by his imprecations he could destroy a king with his troops, elephants, horses, and cars ; could frame other worlds and regents of worlds, and could give being to new gods and new mortals. A Bramin is to be treated with more respect than a King; his life and person are protected by the severest laws in this world and the most tremendous denunciations of the next ; he is exempt from capital punishment even for the most enormous crimes ; his offences against other classes are treated with marked lenity, whilst all offences against him are punished with tenfold severity." — History of India, vol. i. b. 1, c. 2. Tiie condition of the Shudra or servile class, as described by Menu, is no longer to be found in Ceylon ; but its specification is illustrative of the exalted pre- tensions of the Brahmans. According to Mr. Elphinstone, " The duty of a Sudra is to serve the other classes ; but his chief duty is to serve the Bramins. A Bramin must not read the Veda, even to himself, in the presence of a Sudra : to teach him the law, or to instruct him in the mode of expiating sin, sinks a Bramin into the hell called Asamwrita. It is even forbidden to give him temporal advice. A Suiira is to be fed by the leavings of his master or by his refuse grain, and clad in his worn-out garments. If a Sudra use abusive language to one of a superior class, his tongue is to be slit ; if he sit on the same seat with a Bramin, he is to have a gash made in the part oftieniiing ; if he advise him about his religious duties, hot oil is to be dropped into his month and ears." — History of India, vol. i. b. 1, c. 1. Chap. IV. THE BRAHMANICAL SYSTEM. 131 cess is attainable by dexterity or strength, and which are entirely independent of imagination and thought.* To rivet more firmly this subjection of the rest of mankind, it is from the lips and at the hands of the Brahmans that ail other races and castes are to re- ceive the myths of their religion, the code of its belief, and the ritual forms of its worship, which in number and infinity almost weary imagination, as they have already exhausted ingenuity. It is no figure of speech to say that the duties and formalities, enumerated in the ordinary ritual of the Brahmanical code, are as numberless as the stars of heaven, and countless as the sand on the sea shore for multitude.* So vast is their nmltiplicity, that life itself is de- clared to be insufficient to comprehend, much less to discharge, their obligations ; and the highest aspira- tion of the devout Hindoo is to master, in one stage of existence, such a fragment of this indispensable knowledge, as may entitle him in other births to take in a still further portion of intelligence ; and thus, by successive translations, obtain the infinite bliss of absorption into the eternal essence of the Supreme. Not merely the principles for the general regulation of life, but all the accessories and circumstantials of conduct, are anticipated and prescribed by the Brah- mans with a tenfold greater minuteness than Judaism ' Mountstuart Elphinstone, b. i. c. 1 ; b. ii. c. 1. « Duff's India, p. 152. K 2 132 THE BRAHMANICAL SYSTEM. Chap. IV. ever knew. " All the customs, manners, habits, and acts, however varied or minute, ridiculous or frivo- lous, loathsome or vile, which can characterize the doings of an individual ; or the modes of intercourse, public or private, between man and man ; all are believed to be solemnly pre-ordained of God. Every imaginable transaction of life, whether important or trivial ; nay, every function of animal nature, is enstamped by the prescription of religious obser- vances. There is, in all of them, an eternal ringing of changes on certain motions, utterances, and sub- stances. There are bathings and washings, and sip- pings and sprinklings, standings and sittings, walkings and turnings, in every conceivable position; touch- ings and smellings of various auspicious things ; rubbings of the teeth and rinsings of the mouth ; changings of apparel and anointings with fragrant oil ; deckings with strung and unstrung blossoms and garlands, and wreaths of flowers; perfumings with sandalwood and saffron and aloes ; gatherings of dust and scatterings of leaves ; kindlings of fires and suspendings of lamps ; covering and uncovering of vessels of brass and of copper and of earth ; com- poundings of honey and rice, of herbs, of roots, and of sugar ; offerings of grain and of water, of milk and of butter and curd ; repetitions and naming of the three worlds and the seven; repeatings of the mys- terious monosyllable aum ; recitings of the holiest of texts, the Gayatri ; suppressions of the breath and Chap. IV. THE BRAHMANICAL SYSTEM. 133 intense inward meditations ; adorations of elements and planets and stars ; invocations innumerable of the Triad, and assembled gods and philosophers and sages; in fine, of all animated beings in heaven above or on earth beneath ; and all these are again varied and modified, expanded, curtailed, divided or mul- tiplied, combined or transposed, in forms so multi- tudinous as to verge on infinity. It is as if the whole of these primary elements were thrown into one huge kaleidoscope, and kept ever revolving; at every revolution producing the same substantial elements, but under new forms of arrangement, configuration, and grouping; and so onwards through every addi- tional gyration without limit and without end." ^ Such is a faint approach to a summary of the ritual observances of a Hindoo; yet these are but the formulae of his daily and ordinary duties, and are irrespective of those more essentially belonging to adoration and worship, and of the ceremonies to be performed at the more remarkable periods, and on the more memorable occurrences of life ; on the occasion of births, marriages, and interment, each of which forms a voluminous system within itself. They are exclusive of the rites observed in purification and diet, the latter a code of cookery as comprehensive as any ordinary treatise on the art ; and these, and ten thousand others equally minute and circumstan- ' Dr. DuiF, p. 164 : see also Mountstuart Elphinstone's His- tory of India, vol. i. b. i. c. 4. 134 THE BRAHMANICAL SYSTEM. Chap. IV. tial, are again diversified and re-arranged to suit the worship of the innumerable minor divinities who divide the honours of adoration with Brahma/ To comply absolutely and unfailingly with all the requirements of a system so multifarious and un- bounded, is so manifestly beyond the limited powers, either of intellect or endurance, which have been assigned to man by his Creator, that from infancy to eternity the doom of the Hindoo is helpless and hopeless insufficiency, obligations which he feels that he wants the strength to fulfil, demerits which are unavoidable, and penalties and pimishments which can only be averted by the aid and mediation of the Brahnians. Again, out of this religion of impossibilities and despair, springs another which is its natural conse- quence — the adoration of the avenging deities, to whose tortures the pre-doomed and defaulting devotee is consigned for the expiation of his offences and sins of omission. Hopeless of earning the approbation of the benevolent principle of the divinity, he seeks to deprecate the wrath of the malignant ; despairing of a smile from the Ormuzd of his triad, he turns in terror to avert the frown of its Ahriman. Hence come the impulses to devil worship, the licentious orgies of Shiva, the bloody sacrifices of Kali, the funeral piles of the Suttee, the atrocities of Jaggar- nath, the self-inflicted tortures of the fakirs, the » Dr. Duff, p. 153, 164, 170, 176. Chap. IV. THE BRAHMANICAL SYSTEM. 135 parricidal murders in the waters of the Ganges, the revolting festivals of the Durga, the horrors of Cha- rakpooja, and the unearthly carnage of the Phan- segars and Thugs.^ Hence the origin of rites to which it is a desecration of language to apply the designation of viorship ; and which, hopeless of con- ciliating heaven, seem designed only to move the sympathies of hell. In each and in all its develop- ments, the Brahman, in the full ascendancy of his divine investiture, directs, controls, and animates the system ; his supremacy undoubted, his authority un- questioned, and his officiation the appointed link of connexion between the Deity and the other members of the human race. In this arrangement consists the chief strength of the Brahmanicai religion, its exclusion, its im- penetrability, and its mystery ; but the other grand feature of the system, its material and physical ' " Bloody sacrifices are performed to Siva, though discouraged by the Bramins of his sect, and it is in honour of him or of his consort that so many self-inflicted tortures are incurred on certain days in every year. On these occasions some stab their limbs and pierce their tongues with knives, and walk in procession with swords, arrows, and even living serpents thrust through the wounds ; while others are raised in the air by a hook fixed in the flesh of their backs, and are whirled round by a moveable lever, at a height which would make their destruction inevitable if the skin were to give way." — Mountstuart Elphinstone, Hist. Ind., vol. i. b. ii. c. 4. The licentious and obscene worship of Devi, the wife of Shiva, is adverted to by the same high authority in the same chapter. 136 THE BRAHMANICAL SYSTEM. Chap, IV. philosophy, whilst it has been equally designed with a view to overawe the minds of its votaries by its involutions and immensity, is so monstrous in its inventions and so extravagant in its delu- sions, as to involve the inevitable certainty of its eventual exposure and overthrow. So far as the doctrines of Brahma profess to deal with abstractions, or to rest upon the authority of a divine revelation, ingenuity and fabrication may dis- cover a defence for its theories against the most for- midable assailants; but where its pretensions have been incautiously identified with questions of fact, and its tenets made dependent upon natural phenomena, the whole system becomes accessible to the light of ordinary knowledge, and its errors are susceptible of scientific exposure. As the infallibility of Kome underwent an irretrievable discomfiture when, aban- doning the dimness of tradition and the subtleties of theosophists, the Holy OflSce flung its daring defi- ance at the philosophy of Galileo ; so wherever enlightenment can penetrate, and Science lend her aid as the ally of Christianity, the authority and impostures of Brahmanism must of necessity be over- thrown in their encounter with demonstrable truth. This is one inappreciable advantage gained in the conflict with the Brahmanical idolatry, not merely illustrative of the invaluable assistance which edu- cation is calculated to lend in the struggle, but almost conclusive as to its hopelessness were the alliance to Chap. IV. THE BRAHMANICAL SYSTEM. 137 be overlooked or dissevered. For as all the knowledge of the Brahmans professes to be directly communi- cated by heaven, all their sciences and arts to be dictated by the Creator, it follows unavoidably that the detection of falsehood in the revelation must be utterly destructive of all confidence in the oracle and its priests. As regards their science, the anomalous alliance of sublimity and absurdity has never been exhibited in such colossal proportions as in the strange com- bination in which they are presented in the Brah- manical philosophy.^ Creations which, in their theory of the universe, extend throughout the immensity of space, when described in their details degenerate into oceans of syrup and seas of clarified butter. Their sacred chronology is rolled backwards into the dim- mest distance of time, but the movements of mo- narchs who lived millions of ages ago, are related with all the solemn minuteness of the Court Calendar of yesterday. They have a system of geography, in which the earth is expanded into dimensions that occupy an area whose diameter is equal to the dis- tance between our planet and the sun ; and within this the Hindoo world rests upon animated elephants, whose movements are the origin and explanation of earthquakes. They have a code of physics, so re- ' For an account of the ' Physical Errors of Hinduism ' see an admirable article under that title by a native gentleman, in No. XXII. of the Calcutta Review, June, 1849. 138 THE BRAHMAN ICAL SYSTEM. Chap. IV. condite as to be held worthy of the divine omnisci- ence, by which it professes to have been communi- cated, but which yet includes all the dreams of the alchemists, and all the delusions of magic. They have a science of medicine, so profound as not only to cure all diseases, but likewise to foresee their attacks, and to control and pre-arrange the approach and ravages of death. They have a system of mathe- matics, by which they profess to explain all the phe- nomena of the natural world, but which is dependent on the powers of its common, its mystic, and its magical numbers. They have a theory of astronomy, which mounts to the sublime in the boldness of its conceptions, but which descends more congenially to the trivialities of astrology and the freaks of divina- tion; ' and whilst the professors of this exalted study ' The practice of astrology at the present day in Ceylon, and the preparation of the ephemeris predicting the weather and other particulars of the forthcoming year, appears to have undergone little or no change since this custom of the inhabitants of India was described by Arrian and Strabo. But in later times the Brahmans and the Buddhists have superadded to that occupation the casting of nativities and the composition of horoscopes for in- dividuals, from wljich the Sophista described by Arrian abstained. Et(Tt ^e Koi fjayriKfjg ovroi jjlovvol 'Iv^wj' ^arj/jtoveg, ov^i £0flrai aXXut fjiavTeveadai, on ^rj ao<{>u avh^i. Mavrevovai de oaa vitep twv u)paiu)v Tov eVeoe, i^ai si rig eg to koipov avixtpopi) KaTa\nfj.(ja.vei' to. tcm de tKaaroKTLv ov (T Prepared leaves of the palm-tree, to be written on with an iron style. Chap. VI. PLIANCY OF THE SINGHALESE DIALECT. 265 foreign to their customs and their habits of thought, but in idioms and forms of expression neither familiar nor intelligible. No people of the East are more critical as to style or more fastidious as to terms than the natives of Ceylon, and the harmonious arrangement of sentences has an allurement for them far more attractive than any interest in the sense. Unfortunately, hitherto this inducement has been feut imperfectly supplied, and the strangers who have made a study of their tongue, with a view to its employment in translation, have failed to master that peculiar tone and those graces of style by which alone the natives are attracted. In the preparation of the Church of England ver- sion of the Scriptures and the Book of Common Prayer an innovation has likewise been admitted, to which it will be long before the ear and the taste of the Singhalese will be thoroughly reconciled. So pliant is their dialect, and so artistically has it been inflected to adapt it to the relative station of the personages addressed, that in one particular alone, the variations of a single pronoun, a native of Ceylon is enabled to apply with delicate propriety no less than ten or twelve degrees of respect, each appro- priate to the recognised rank of the individual ad- dressed, and ranging from a familiarity expressive of contempt to a degree of awe and veneration with which in' their ideas of worship the Supreme Being alone should be approached. In the version of the 266 OBNOXIOUS VERSION OF THE SCRIPTURES. Chap. VI. Scriptures translated by the Church of England missionaries of Cotta all these distinctions have been equalized : they have omitted the use of the honorific " wohanse^'^ and addressed the Deity throughout with the ordinary appellative of "^(?" or thou. The alteration has given rise to the most vehement re- monstrances on the part of the higher class of natives and of the many who, like them, have been reared in that national veneration for rank which the Budl^ dhists have substituted somewhat inartificially for the prohibited distinctions of " caste." They have protested, as blasphemous^ against the application to the Supreme Being of epithets which would be felt as an insult if addressed to one of themselves. They lately rose in a body and retired from a church when the obnoxious version was introduced, and they have intimated an intention, should an innovation so offensive be persevered in, to seek in some other communion of the Christian church that respect for their feelings which they conceive has been disre- garded in their own.^ * The proceedings of the Singhalese on this occasion are strangely illustrative of the deep tenacity with which, notwith- standing their long familiarization with Christianity, the upper classes still maintain their attachment to caste and its distinctions. After retiring in a body from the church in which the obnoxious version of the Scriptures was sought to be used, they addressed a remonstrance to the Bishop of Colombo in which the following passage occurs : — " When language absolutely insulting, and in our opinion degrading, to our God and Saviour is used, we can only testify Chap. VI. OBNOXIOUS VERSION OF THE SCRIPTURES. 267 Another incident which has unavoidably retarded the usefulness of the press, is a natural result, of the our abhorrence of it by withdrawing from the sound thereof; or inexpressibly grieve our minds, and substitute for feelings of devotion very different and opposite feelings, by remaining to hear that which we conscientiously believe to be little short of blasphemy.'* This remonstrance failing to procure from the Bishop a declaration that, till some authorized version should have been promulgated, each congregation should be permitted to select that which best accorded with their own ideas of devotion and worship, a memorial was presented, in terms equally strong, and accompanied with an intimation of the determination of those whose feelings it represented to attach themselves to some other body of Christians, rather than continue in the Church of Eng- land with their earnest entreaties disregarded : — "It is with sorrow and surprise we find in your Lordship's communication of the 21st of November a rule altogether dif- ferent, mentioned as that referred to by your Lordship in your letter of the 7th— a rule having no direct concern with congre- gations^ but with clergymen — a rule, we most respectfully sub- mit, perfectly unnecessary, unless it be supposed that a clergyman has not himself the power (if he choose to exercise it) of jpre- venting objectionable doings in his own church by another clergyman. " What we have from the commencement, and without any variation, sought for, is a declaration from your Lordship recognizing and enforcing the rule your Lordship found in existence when you arrived in Ceylon ; a rule which in effect declared that a clergyman, when ministering in any Singhalese church, be it his own or not his own, should use that version which the congregation prefers, and not that which he himself wishes to adopt — or may even find compulsorily adopted — against the known wishes and expressed remonstrances of the people. We would also most respectfully submit, that we cannot be justly charged, by implication or directly, with needless agita- 268 OBNOXIOUS VERSION OF THE SCRIPTURES. Chap. VI. scarcity of books, that the natives, from want of practice and familiarity, read with so much slowness tion, when we only lawfully seek to be protected from having what we believe a blasphemous version of Scripture and of the Liturgy thrust upon us, and when we as lawfully assist others of our countrymen, who required our advice, in attaining the same object. " We would also further most respectfully urge, that while we seek no imposition upon others of that version which we prefer, and which they may not prefer, we only entreat, until the Church has set forth authorized versions, that even-handed justice may be dealt out to all parties ; whereas, your Lordship, with heart- felt sorrow we observe in your letter, would deny to us laymen that liberty which you would freely allow to others, who, though clergy, are no more alone the church than we, the laity, are alone the church. This cannot promote the things that make for peace, and must have the effect of perpetuating discord instead of bringing about union. " As matters now stand, according to the rule laid down by your Lordship, were our respected chaplain to die to-morrow, or to be induced to use the blasphemous version of Cotta, no remedy is provided for us. 'iJWe owe it to your Lordship, as well as to ourselves, our countrymen, and to our posterity, to declare explicitly that matters cannot remain thus. If your Lordship cannot grant our reasonable prayer, we must appeal to the higher powers in Church and State, and, if need be, even to the highest ; and should such appeal (which God in his mercy forbid) prove in vain, your Lordship will drive us to the necessity of seeking Christian pri- vileges in some other branch of the Church Catholic, which will not impose on us, as terms of communion, a version of the Scrip- tures and of a Liturgy abounding (as we conscientiously aver the Cotta version does abound) in blasphemous expressions towards our Creator, Redeemer, and Sanctifier. " We implore your Lordship — who cannot possibly know our language as we know it — to save us from this only alternative Chap. VI. READING A DRUDGERY TO SINGHALESE. 269 and difficulty as to diminish the enjoyment and to render reading an effort, to overcome which the in- terest or the idiom of such works as we have hitherto supplied them with scarcely present a sufficient allure- ment. Many who can read with comparative ease their own books, which are written with an iron style upon olahs, are embarrassed by the same letters when impressed upon paper; and it is a curious illustration of the temperament of the lower orders, that the belief is not unfrequent amongst them that reading is an operation of magic, by which ideas are invoked and come from some distant quarter on naming the mysterious signs which have been pre- viously traced upon the page. Reading is, in fact, a drudgery to the Singhalese ; and the same, I apprehend, may be said of the majority of Asiatics, including the Chinese. Even the most successful pupils of the missionary schools seldom devote themselves to it as a voluntary pur- suit ; and it cannot be concealed that the impulsive taste for study, either as an enjoyment or a relief, has yet to be created in Ceylon. That it has struck root on the continent of India may be inferred from the circumstance of the establishment of native presses in Hindoostan ; but before such a manifestation can open to us, hy declaring that until the Church shall have set forth authorized versions of the Bible and Book of Common Prayer, each co7igregation shall he left in peaceable possession of that version of both lohich it conscientiously prefers" 270 CONJOINT INFLUENCES OF Chap. VI. be looked for amongst the Singhalese, we must await the diffusion of education and the multiplication of books. No one who has had opportunities of observation and experience of the results of missionary exertions amongst uncivilized races can hesitate to record his conviction that the means which have proved most effective for conversion to Christianity have been the conjoint influences of education and preaching^ not conducted as independent operations, but as subsidiary, co-operative, and mutually sustaining. Preaching is doubtless the original and the or- dained means of diffusing the Gospel ; but however unqualified the terms in which it was enjoined on or recommended to the Apostles, those who would follow their example, whilst adapting that means to the end, must not overlook the diversity of circum- stance which characterizes respectively the scenes of the Apostles' labour and their own. For the former, the way was already prepared by anticipa- tion ; and they were relieved from the necessity to educate as well as to preach. The Jews were no doubt inferior to their Greek. and Roman audiences in the elements of general knowledge ; but they were by no means inferior to the teachers who arose amongst themselves to announce the new dispensation. The modern missionary, on the contrary, goes forth from the most enlightened regions to illuminate the most benighted. This superiority implies a duty, dis- Chap. VI. EDUCATION AND PREACHING. 271 tinct, though identified with the main object of his mission ; and wherever that mission has been suc- cessful, civilization has become more or less synony- mous with Christianity. Even where the results of the alliance have been less striking, the process, though incomplete, is inchoate ; and civilization has not merely prepared the way for the reception of the truth, but has laid that solid foundation which is essential to the stability and permanence of the structure. Where schools have never effected a single conversion amongst the natives, they have nevertheless served to diffuse preliminarily that general intelligence which is its surest forerunner ; and even in this secondary relation their social im- portance is extreme. The objection to merely secular education may be so far well-founded that in in- sulated instances it may render the individual more accomplished as an evil-doer, and refine his sagacity for mischief; but education has never yet been pro- ductive of these effects upon a general scale — never aggravated the defection of a nation, or precipitated the general deterioration of a community : on the contrary, whilst ignorance gives eternity to vicious custom and perpetuates depravity, education, by arousing the energies and stimulating the improve- ment of the few, leads eventually to the enlighten- ment and social elevation of the mass. But as more immediately affecting the interests and diffusion of Christianity itself, the condition of 272 A CONDITION OF IGNORANCE Chap. VI. ignorance is of all others the most unfavourable to its reception, and the least congenial to its permanent ascendancy; and those who aim at having it em- braced most intelligently, most effectually developed, and most abidingly established, must be prepared to pioneer its path by the toil of education, and the im- provement of the social condition of its recipients. It is more or less by secular and scientific education that we can eventually hope to undermine the false philosophy which forms the basis alike of the Budd- hist and Brahmanical systems. They are so intimately intermingled, and so familiarized in the minds of the people, that they must be swept away by education before a standing-place can be formed for the truth of Christianity ; and, on the other hand, to confirm the victory of the latter, and establish its permanent dominion over error, education alone can confer the ability to investigate its evidences, and teach them like the Jews of Berea to examine for themselves, and " search the Scriptures whether these things are so." Christianity began its career in the most polished circles, and amongst the most enlightened community of the age. Its behest was to " teach all nations ;" and the line of its march was most triumphant where the progress of instruction had been the most marked and successful. Its first churches were planted in the educated circles of Asia Minor and of Greece ; and in remoter districts and villages its progress was so Chap. VI. UNFAVOURABLE TO CHRISTIANITY. 273 comparatively slow that four centuries after the birth of its founder the last refuge of parting idolatry was amongst the pagani and rustics. But not only are the most civilized races the first to receive Christianity ; they are likewise the most enduring and consistent in retaining and preserving it in its pristine integrity. Neither history nor more recent experience can furnish any example of the long retention of pure Christianity by a people themselves rude and unenlightened. In all the nations of Europe, embracing every period since the second century, Christianity must be regarded as having taken the hue and complexion of the social state with which it was incorporated, presenting itself unsullied, contaminated, or corrupted in sympathy with the enlightenment, the ignorance, or debasement of those by whom it had been originally embraced.^ At the period of the Reformation the progress of the purified faith was coeval with the restoration of letters, and concurrent with the advancement of learning, a result which had not escaped the per- spicuous foresight of Luther, and which inspired that importance which he uniformly attached to the dif- fusion of knowledge. ~ ^ The rapid and universal degeneracy of the early Asiatic churches is associated with the decline of education and the intellectual decay of the communities amongst whom they were established. * D'Aubigne, b. iv. c. 9. T 274 PROSPECTS OF CHRISTIANITY Chap. VI. In Ceylon, and in India, after all that has been achieved by the influence of Europeans, and the ex- ertions of missionaries, there exists between the religion of the native converts and their social and intellectual condition an incongruity which cannot be permanent. Either Christianity in their hands will degenerate to the level of its guardians, or their own national character must be elevated till it approaches the standard of their religious profession. Christianity amongst them is at the present moment preserved in its purity, only by the presence and the vigilance of the strangers who implanted it ; but looking to the probable arrival of a period when the support derived from Europe by foreign missions may cease, and the natives of India may be left to their own unaided efforts and guidance, the question becomes of para- mount importance, — to whose guardianship and cul- ture is Christianity in India to be hereafter entrusted ? — whether to be committed to a people debased below the condition of other Asiatics, amongst whom it has heretofore declined and disappeared, or elevated by education towards that pitch of enlightenment which characterizes the nations of Europe, by whom it has been cherished for nearly 2000 years, retaining more or less of the integrity and purity in which it was commmiicated to mankind by its divine Author and his disciples ? In more than one passage I have already alluded to those distinctive peculiarities in the relative <:;hap. VI. IN CEYLON AND IN INDIA. 275 structure of the Brahmanical and Buddhist supersti- tions, which, while both are accessible to the conjoint influence of education and preaching^ have rendered it expedient to adjust these two great engines of in- tellectual power in such different proportions as are best suited for their intended effect upon each. The basis of this distinction is the greater degree in which the religion of the Brahmans professes to repose on the exact and physical sciences, and the larger admixture of false philosophy and fable with which its most important tenets have been copiously blended. Buddhism, whilst affecting a similar association with subjects so profound, has in the long lapse of time not only admitted innovations into its physical and his- torical structure ; but, enamoured of its metaphysical subtleties, it has given to its code of ethics and morals a prominence of position beyond that which is affected by the religion of the Brahmans and Hindoos, and which renders the latter system comparatively more assailable by the agency of argument. In addition to this, so universal is the ignorance of the Buddhist population, that although the terms of their scientific absurdities may be familiar to their ear, so little do they cultivate their study, and so imperfectly are they acquainted with their theories and combinations, that even successful demonstration of their errors in such particulars would fail in the majo- rity of instances to destroy the polypus vitality of their T 2 276 FAILURE OF MERE EDUCATION Chap. VI. tenacious faith in the remainder. The same amount of exposure as to its scientific fallacies which would be fatal to the belief of a Hindoo, would prove less effective in shaking the confidence of a Buddhist, and hence the greater reliance which the missionaries in Ceylon have reposed in the efl&cacy of preaching when sustained and associated with the agency of the school-room and the seminary. But disconnected with the pulpit, the results of mere education in India, even under the most favour- able circumstances, have been deplorably meagre in relation to conversion from the native superstitions. It has undoubtedly done much to prepare the way for the Gospel; it has shaken erroneous systems, checked the further ascendency of superstition, dif- fused an elementary knowledge of Christianity, and prepared a more intelligent audience for the voice of the truth ; but as a means of direct and actual con- version, unassisted education has most signally failed. A large proportion of native converts have no doubt been trained in the schools of the various missions ; but the fact is a coincidence, and by no means a result, conversion in such instances having been the effect of a separate agency. In Jaffiia, while the educational labours of the American mission have produced almost a social revolution throughout the province, the number of their nominal converts has barely exceeded 600 out of 90,000 pupils. Of these perhaps less than one- Chap. VI. AS A MEANS OF CONVERSION. 277 half could trace the change to the unaided instru- mentality of instruction ; and instances are not rare in which the scholars reared by these devout and untiring men, so far from returning their care by an alliance with their objects, have proved by their scepticism and infidelity more dangerous enemies to -the truth than even heathenism itself. ^ ^ The Rev. Howard Malcolm, of Boston, U.S., who in 1836 made a tour of the Missions in Hindoostan and Bunnah, in Siam, Malaya, and China, after describing the extent to which educa- tion has been carried in their Christian institutions, has thus summed up the inadequate success by which all its labours have been followed as regards conversion to Christianity: — "The proportion of conversions among this mighty host of scholars is certainly very small. It was stated by the late Rev. Mr. Reichardt, of Calcutta, who laboured long in the service of the Church Missionary Society, that of the many thousand boys instructed by this Society, only five or six had been converted. At Vepery, a suburb of Madras, where for a hundred years this species of labour had been largely bestowed by the Christian Knowledge Society, the results are scarcely more encouraging ; nor at Tranquebar, where schools have been maintained for a hundred and thirty years. In all Madras, where several thousands have been constantly taught in Missionary schools, there are not known to be half-a-dozen converted natives. At the Anglo- Chinese College at Malacca, which has existed for twenty years, only a few have been converted, though some twenty or thirty have been brought over to Christianity. In Ceylon, where schools have been conducted for twenty-six years, and generally with more attention to religion than is common in India, few conversions occurred before 1830; and those since that time have been rather the effect of protracted meetings and especial pastoral effort, than the school system. Out of the Scotch General Assembly's School in Calcutta, which for six years has had an average of 400 scholars and the entire and 278 PREACHING THE MOST EFFECTUAL Chap. VI. The conclusion is irresistible, that the schoohnaster of himself is not calculated, nor is he expected, to supersede the missionary; and education does not forfeit its esteem because it has failed to realize what it was never relied on to achieve. As preparatives and auxiliaries, the value of schools can scarcely be overrated ; as independent agencies they can be but productive of disappointment ; and preaching as the grand momentum of conversion can find no adequate substitute in mere educational discipline. Even were schools universal and books multiplied without end, the living voice would be still indispensable to awaken attention and apply general truth to the ever-chang- ing relations of life. constant attention of two Missionaries, there have been but five or six conversions. The Baptist schools in Bengal, numbering thousands of scholars, for more than thirty years past have pro- duced very few conversions. That at Chittagong, taught by a Missionary in person every day for sixteen years, with an average of 200 pupils, has witnessed but two of the scholars brought to a knowledge of the truth. Tn Arracan no conversion has yet occurred in the schools. Among all the Burmans I know of no Chnstian who is regarded as the fruit of schools. Among the Karens many scholars have been converted ; but the primary and daily object of these schools has ever seemed to be the conversion rather than the education of the scholars. In places where schools have most abounded and for the longest time, a con- siderable number of pupils have rejected Heathenism without embracing Christianity, and are now conceited infidels, worse to deal with than pagans. Many of them by means of their education have obtained offices under government, or in com- mercial houses, and exert a considerable influence against religion." Chap. VI. INSTRUMENT OF CONVERSION. 279 Preaching was founded oil no peculiar adaptation to the existing state of society in that portion of Asia in which it took its rise. It is suited to the capacity of human nature in every condition of society, in every quarter of the universe, and in every vicis- situde of times, wisely founded as it is on the nature of religion itself, as well as on the nature of man. Of all expedients it has proved the most effectual in arousing the interest and directing the inquiries of an illiterate and uncivilized people ; and, strange to say, from the earliest period preaching has been the special practice of the Buddhist priesthood them- selves. Every temple has its pulpit, round which an audience is collected, to whom the sacred books of their religion are expounded ; by the reading of a passage from the Pali, followed by a commentary in Singhalese, by another officiating priest. With the natives, the ease of listening to such discourses not only relieves them of the effort to read, but they evince an interest in the operation which has more or less disposed them to attend to public exhortations from the Christian missionaries who have visited their villages. And small as has been the result of their labours, it may safely be said, that of the whole number of real conversions in Ceylon, Jive at least have been made by means of preaching for one by the influence of schools, or any other instru- mentality. * ' The instance of the Moravians in Greenland is a striking 280 PREACHING TO THE HEATHEN. Chap. VI. But in using the accustomed phrase of preaching to the heathen, a very different idea is associated with the practice in Ceylon from that which is con- veyed by the same familiar term to the ear of an European. The preaching of a missionary has little of the form and ceremonial of an address to a con- gregation elsewhere. It is with difficulty that a native audience can be induced either by curiosity or entreaty to attend. Even then they do not exceed an assemblage of some ten or twenty persons, to whom the subject is not only so new but so incompre- hensible that it is seldom they will listen, and rarely, indeed, that attention is followed by either reflection or inquiry. The life of the jungle missionary of illustration of the failure of education as a substitute for preach- ing in the case of a Christian mission : — "The Moravians tried both methods ; they tried the preparatory system of instruction and civilization under most favourable circumstances and with surprising perseverance, but it totally failed in reclaiming a single savage from his rude and hideous superstition ; the Green- landers refused to be moved by the Missionaries' pre-arranged plans of conversion, and after years of fruitless toil they varied this experiment, they began to preach the Gospel in plain and perspicuous terms, and the effect was instantaneous. Preaching and its influences were successful in transforming these northern savages into humble and docile beings ; and amongst the Cingalese, strange as it may sound to those who have had no practical inter- course with unenlightened races, yet it is a fact that when spoken to on the subjects of sin and salvation, of time and eternity, their attention is more readily arrested, and their resistance more easily subdued, than when addressed on the more ordinary topics of moral and economical instruction." — MS. Notes of the Rev. J. Davies. Chap. VI. LIFE OF A JUNGLE MISSIONARY. 281 Ceylon is one of privation and fatigue, of exposure and sickness, of disappointment and repulse ; nor can it be more faithfully described than in the words of one of the most apostolic teachers who has ever visited India, the late Baptist missionary, Mr. Daniel, who, to the close of a long and useful existence, made the hamlets and forest villages the scene of his toilsome but not unsuccessful labours. After describing,^ in touching terms, the discouraging re- pulse of every ordinary attempt to obtain a hearing from the villagers, where there is nothing to excite, amuse, or astonish ; and after describing the ridicule and frequent insults by which such invitations are usually answered, Mr. Daniel thus tells of his daily life and pursuits in exploring these secluded spots in the jungle : — " I enter a village, and, proceeding from house to house, I sit down on a seat, if I can procure one, or if not, I spread a mat upon the ground, and endeavour, in the plainest language, and with the most familiar illustrations, to explain the way of sal- vation. Sometimes, in answer to my invitations to attend, the Singhalese ask, * What will you pay us to do so ? Will you give us arrack, if we listen to you ?' If not thus coarsely insolent, they will invent some excuse to get away ; and if sent to ask their friends to attend, they go, but do not return. We proceed to another house ; and having thus spoken the word ^ In a letter to tlie Baptist Committee in London, July 8, 1840. 282 BAPTIST MISSIONS IN INDIA. Chap. VI. in one village, we pass on to tbe next. We often meet with little but contempt, opprobrium, and laughter ; and _each day in the week (except Saturday, which is devoted to study) is employed in these exertions, and in the journeys connected with them. Oh ! that I could tell you of success in proportion ; but for the present this is denied us. But those who sow in •tears have the promise that they shall reap in joy ; and probably we are now depositing the seed which at no distant day will spring into a glorious harvest." The good man who wrote this was attached to the first mission that, after the British conquest, com- menced its labours in Ceylon — that of the Baptists, who, early in 1792, formed themselves into a society for the propagation of the Gospel beyond the British islands, and whose career on the continent of India is one which must be ever memorable in the annals of Christianity. They have carried the Gospel into numerous countries of the East ; they have translated the Bible into forty-five languages ; they have printed a million copies of the Scriptures, and thirty millions of other Christian publications, for distribution to idolaters ; and at this moment they have nine thousand children under instruction, and thirty-eight thousand converts, members of their church in va- rious lands of the heathen. They made their first visit to India in 1793 ; and twenty years later they sent their earliest representative to Ceylon, in the person of Mr. Chater, whose memory has been per- Chap. VI. APPORTIONMENT OF MISSIONS. 283 petuated as one of the first who made the attempt to systematize the study of Singhalese for Europeans,^ with a view to the future dissemination of the Scriptures. In 1814, the Baptist missionaries were followed by those of the Wesl ey an Methodists ; in 1816, by the Americans ; and in 1818, by those of the Church of England. In selecting the scene of their labours, each of these bodies appears to have chosen its position so as least to interfere with the operations of the others, contented that each in his own sphere should make known the great truths of Christianity, with an absence of all rivalry or sectarian distinctions. The Americans took their way to Jaffna, and com- menced their career amongst the Tamils of the North. The Baptists, who had already commenced their labours amongst the Buddhists of the South, fixed their head quarters at Colombo, and thence gradually extended their operations throughout the surrounding villages, and eastward till they reached to Kandy, and the rich valley of Matelle. ^ The Methodists chose the line of the sea-coast, from Negombo, southward, to Matura. The Church of ' His Singhalese Grammar is still one of the best that has appeared. In addition to which he took a share in the Singhalese translation of the Bible, in 3 vols. 4to., made a translation of the New Testament into Portuguese, and innumerable tracts expla- natory of the Christian religion. * The Baptists have also a station in the Southern Province at Matura. 284 BAPTIST MISSIONARIES— Chap. VI. England clergy established themselves a little more inland at the villages of Baddegamma, a few miles northward of Galle, and at Cotta, the ancient capital of the low country : — at both points they devoted them- selves to education as a leading feature in their ope- rations ; and at the latter especially they founded one of the most important normal seminaries in the island for the training of teachers, and the instruction of native assistants for the ministry. The singular fact has already been stated of the almost total disappearance amongst the Buddhist population of every trace of Christianity within a very few years from the retirement of the Dutch from Ceylon ; and so strong was the re-action, that on the arrival of the English missionaries, the natives could not be persuaded to listen to their first addresses, and even after three years of exertion and discouragement, not one Singhalese had admitted his distrust in idolatry. A Buddhist priest who had been converted by the Baptists, and took the name of Theophilus, was the first to embrace Christianity, and a few years later his example was followed by a second who had been attached to one of the Kandyan temples.^ These were men of acuteness and comparative intelligence, and the missionaries have recorded it as the result of their subsequent observation and experience, that * From a MS. account of the Baptist Mission in Ceylon, by tlie Rev. Mr. Dawson and the Rev. J. Davies. Chap. VI. THEIR LIMITED SUCCESS. -285 in proportion as the Buddhists exhibit an acquaint- ance with the doctrines of their own religion, they evince also a spirit of inquiry into the tenets of Christianity — a characteristic which affords higher hopes of their ultimate conversion than can possibly be entertained of their more listless and phlegmatic fellow-countrymen. Amongst thera, too, the influ- ence of the press has been found most attractive, and much good has resulted from the circulation of a valuable work by Mr. Gogerly, of the Wesleyan mission. On the Evidences of Christianity^ adapted to the Use of the Buddhists} This is another en- couraging trait in the character of the Singhalese, and its existence is confirmed by the fact of the pro- digious circulation of Christian tracts and translations throughout the island, amounting in 1848 to upwards of five million pages, of which 3,657,300 have been printed at the press of the Baptist mission in Kandy, and the rest procurable elsewhere. Notwithstanding these indications, however, of an inclination to inquire, the progress of conversion through the instrumentality of the Baptists was slow and circumscribed ; and after ten years of toil and anxiety, they could boast of but three small village congregations and eight schools with less than three hundred pupils in attendance. Even here, too, the peculiar genius of the Singhalese was a serious obstacle ^ The title of the work, which is still in the course of pub- lication, is * Christiana Prag-nyapti.' 28^ INFLUENCE OF CASTE. Chap. VI. to their progress* Those in the vicinity of the towns do not undervalue education, especially if it include such an amount of English instruction as may qualify them for public employment ; but even this they will not receive without some scruples as to the hands by whom it is offered. Caste, though distinctly de- nounced by their sacred books, and ostensibly dis- avowed by the Singhalese themselves, still exists in their veneration for rank, whether hereditary or ad- ventitious. Thus every district and every village has its little leader, a pre-eminence accorded to birth rather than property, and by a descending scale certain members of the community in right of rela- tionship or connexion assume an undefined superi- ority, and are tacitly admitted to the exercise of what is technically called an " influence." In the hamlets so universal is this feeling amongst the natives, so habitual the impulse to classify themselves, and to look up tosome one as their superior in the scale of society, that the custom descends through every gra- dation of life and its occupations, and in some of the villages the missionaries found it necessary to appoint two schoolmasters, even when there was less than occupation for one — " influence," as well as ability to teach, being an essential qualification ; and if the individual did not possess the former, it was indis- pensable to associate with him some other who did.^ Again, if a village could not furnish a master com- * MS. Account of Baptist Mission. Chap. VI. INFLUENCE OF CASTE. 287 petent to teach, it was in vain to procure one from a distance ; his " influence " did not extend to that locality, and no pupils could be got to attend. Nor was caste itself without the open avowal of its force ; the children of a Vellala or high caste family being on no account permitted to enter the schoolhouse of a lower caste master. These are obstacles which prevail in all their original force even at the pre- sent day; and in the purely Singhalese districts, such as Matura, the prestige of caste is so despo- tic, that no amount of qualification in all other particulars can overcome the repugnance to inter- course with those who are deficient in the para- mount requisite of rank. Mr. Chater, after a long career of usefulness, died in 1829, and was succeeded by the excellent man to whom allusion has already been made, Mr. Daniel. Even then the amount of success which had been bequeathed to him by his indefatigable predecessor was so small as almost to occasion despondency ; and the number of pupils under instruction barely ex- ceeded four hundred, Mr. Daniel's first impulse was to attempt the conversion of the Moormen of Colombo, and for this purpose he prepared a Manual of Christianity for their especial instruction : — " But no perceptible good was the result. The more re- spectable Mahomedans met the oifer of the tract with a dignified refusal ; the lower classes rejected it with contempt ; and to the present day no decided 288 FEMALE EDUCATION. Chap. VI. conversions from Islamism have ever been made in Ceylon." ' For ten years this good man laboured in preach- ing the Gospel, and establishing schools and congre- gations in the villages around Colombo. Female education in particular was found to be of no less importance amongst the Buddhists and Singhalese than amongst the Tamils of Jaffna. The social po- sition of women amongst the Singhalese, although they are not altogether excluded from intercourse, is entitled to no higher approval than a faint expression of its superiority to that assigned them amongst the Hindoos. The female peasantry are utterly destitute of education, and those of the wealthier classes re- ceive only a smattering of instruction in the merest elenients of knowledge. Secluded in their own houses, and with no means of observation beyond the narrow circle of the few females which form a Singhalese hamlet, they know comparatively no- thing of the universal scepticism around them. They cling tenaciously to the attractive precepts of Buddhism ; they are the earnest patronesses of the priesthood ; and almost universally they are in possession of rude images of their divinity, which are * MS. Account of Baptist Missions. Harvard, in his narra- tion of the Wesleyan Mission, records the conversion of one Mahomedan, who was converted in the Fort Church of Colombo in 1814, and baptized by the name of Daniel Theophilus. Ch. viii. p. 160. Chap. VI. FEMALE EDUCATION— MR. DANIEL. 289 worshipped with fervour as the penates of the house- hold. Their early marriages, the mere bargains by which they are contracted, and the extreme facility with which they are dissolved,* their low status in the families of their husbands as well as in their own, all tend to confirm their social degradation even in the highest ranks ; whilst in the villages and hamlets the females do all the drudgery of the house and of the field, they are the messengers to the bazaar and the drawers of water from the wells, they collect the firewood, cook the food, and wait on the males of the family whilst they eat ; and in the intervals of their employment they assist in the labours of the rice-grounds, plunge through the mud of the irrigated fields, weed the paddy as it rises above the water, and assist to sever and carry home the collected crop during harvest. The indefatigable Baptist mission- ary saw the value of enlightenment amongst a class so unequally circumstanced, and within three years after his landing in the place, Mr. Daniel had suc- ceeded in establishing female schools in several of the villages around Colombo, and one of higher pre- tensions near the Fort, which being designed to in- * A pithy, but correct, picture of the institution of marriage amongst the Buddhists, was given by the late Queen's Advocate, Sir Arthur BuUer, in one of the discussions in the Legislative Council, when he said that the marriages of the Singhedese were generally arranged by a " come hither," and dissolved by " a kick." U 290 DEATH OF MR. DANIEL. Chap. VI. struct the more affluent natives, was superintended in person by the ladies of his own family. The remainder of his story is like that of too many of these devoted men, who have done honour to Christianity and their country in the East. In the midst of a career of usefulness, the health of his chil- dren declined ; a return to England was inevitable ; his wife died upon the voyage, and the bereaved old man, as if nerved for still bolder exertion by these disasters, shortly after changed the scene of his labours from the civilization of the capital to the soli- tudes of the forest. He spent two years in incessant wanderings from village to village, throughout the maritime provinces to the east of Colombo, the toils and discouragement of which he has narrated in a passage already quoted from his correspondence.^ He returned to Colombo, resumed his educational labours, his attention to preaching and the press, and in 1844 he died full of years and honour; his last moments cheered by the affection of all good men in the island, and his name endeared to the Singhalese by the remembrance of his toils and benevolence. At the time of his death, so successful had been his exertions, and those of others who had been asso- ciated with him in the ministry, that 1000 pupils were under instruction in 44 schools of his mission ; but after upwards of thirty years' preaching little more than 200 converts were in the immediate ' Page 28. Chap. VI. DISSEMINATION OF CHKISTIANITY. 291 membership of the church. In the interval that has since elapsed, the same good work has been progress- ing with an impulse acquired from its own increasing success, the press has been sending forth its perennial streams of instruction, a normal seminary for the training of native ministers has been founded in addi- tion to the numerous schools of the mission, and the preaching of Christianity has been carried into every accessible hamlet. It has penetrated the awful retreats into which the lepers have retired to conceal their mutilations from the shuddering glance of man- kind ; and it has found an audience and an echo in the repulsive community of the Gahalyas — the he- reditary executioners under the Kandyan kings ; a whole village of whom have from time immemorial been established on the farther banks of the Maha- villagaiiga, a few miles distant from Kandy, their presence being too polluted to be permitted within the gravets ^ of the capital. The successors of Mr. Daniel were Mr. Dawson ' This term, which is applied to the space outside the principal Forts in Ceylon, has puzzled some of the military engineers. The Singhalese word, Cada-wetta^ describes the enclosure or boundary of a temple or city, or a royal chase. It was adopted by the Portuguese, after the erection of these fortresses, to define the limits of the lands they had been permitted by the native princes to appropriate, and the word Garvetta is still used in the patois of the Portuguese burghers. When the Dutch seized the Forts the word passed into Gravette^ which appears on their records, and from the British in turn took the present term Gravets. u 2 292 PROGRESS OF THE BAPTIST MISSION. Chap. VI. and Mr. Davies, the latter from Hortou College, near Bradford.^ Under their auspices the progress of the mission has been uninterrupted. At present it occupies 130 villages of the Singhalese; employs three European and eleven native missionaries ; maintains 35 schools, with an average attendance of 830 pupils, and has enrolled as communicants 451 converts to Christianity. Over these who from time to time have been admitted as members of their communion, they exercise the greatest caution as to baptism and the reception of professions ; looking to conduct rather than conformity as the genuine test of conversion, and hence the proportion of their con- verts who have relapsed into heathenism has been comparatively small, whilst numbers have lived worthy of their profession, and died unshaken in their faith. The greatest detriment to success has arisen from the example and influence of the merely nominal Christians whose life has been an insult to their pro- fession, and whose acts have deterred others from adopting it. But of these who have received their earliest instruction at their hands, and been taught * Since this passage was written this excellent and amiable man has breathed his last — a victim to the fearful epidemic scourge of Ceylon,. dysentery. It was my privilege to know him intimately ; a more enlightened Christian I never met, and a more benevolent spirit never winged its way from a scene of earthly usefulness to an eternal reward. Chap. VI. WESLEYAN MISSION. 293 by them the principles and the precepts of Chris- tianity, there are many Singhalese now filling places of honour and emolument in the public service, and engaged in private professions, who, though they have not openly made any avowal of Christianity, have been instrumental in disseminating amongst their countrymen that respect and veneration for its precepts which they have been taught to imbibe not less by the lives than by the lessons of the Baptist missionaries. Next in order of time to the Baptists the Wes- LEYAN MISSIONARIES engaged in similar works amongst the Singhalese Buddhists. On their arrival in 1814 they were welcomed by the clergy of the Church of England who had preceded them in the capacity of chaplains ; and the Government, hopeful through their instrumentality to counteract the universal apostacy of the natives, assigned them salaries as teachers, and sanctioned their dispersion throughout the island, for the purpose of opening schools at the principal sta- tions in the northern and western provinces. In pur- suance of this arrangement, they established them- selves amongst the Tamil population of Jaffna, Trincomalie, and Batticaloa ; and so early as 1819 they had opened schools in the principal villages along the western coast, from Negombo to Galle. For twenty years the Wesleyan missionaries carried on the work of general education in the maritime provinces, which was afterwards taken up by the 294 WESLEY AN MISSION. Chap. VI. Government in 1834. They did not aspire to the communication of the higher branches of learning, which had already been provided for in the seminary of Colombo (an institution maintained by the Govern- ment for the education of the sons of the chiefs and higher order of the natives) ; but in the principal villages to which they extended their operations the children of the peasantry were instructed by the Wesleyans in the principles of Christianity and the essentials of elementary knowledge. The usual objection was at first urged to females learning to read ; ^ but this was soon overcome ; and at a very early period the attention of the mis- sionaries was directed strongly to an object which has since been kept steadily in view, the education of the Singhalese through the medium of their own ver- nacular tongue. Until taken up by the Wesleyans, this important department had been exclusively in the hands of the priesthood, who occupied themselves in every pan- sela and temple, in teaching to write upon olas, and ' In speaking of the influence of females the Missionaries observe, " If, as is frequently the case at the commencement of a new work, the congregation consists only of school-children and men, then we feel that as yet little good has been achieved ; hut so soon as the females feel interested and attend^ we have good hopes : and when an equal or even a larger proportion of the congregation consists of them, we begin to regard our cause as likely to be eventually successful." — MS. Account of the Wesleyan Mission. Chap. VL VERNACULAR EDUCATION. 295 read from the legendary books of the Buddhists. In their hands education was of the lowest description ; and the priests themselves were but a stage in ad- vance of their pupils. Science forms no feature in their own education ; history is confined to the events connected with religion and its movements ; medicine is culled from the imperfect notices of their ancient Sanskrit authorities ; and astronomy, degraded into the mere dreams of astrology, is affected to be studied by the priests, who, by a singular anomaly, share its cultivation with the tom-tom heaters or herra- wayos, one of the lowest and least respected castes in Ceylon. Vernacular education was begun by the Wesleyans in 1817, in the hope of superseding the Buddhist priesthood in this department ; and so successful was the effort, that before the close of the year upwards of 1000 scholars were in attendance; twelve months after the number increased to 4000 ; and during thirty years that the system has been in operation, upwards of 21,000 pupils, females as well as males, have from time to time been instructed in the nume- rous schools of the mission.^ No religious test is required for admission ; and no compulsion is exerted to enforce participation in the Christian services of the schools. The objections of parents are at once re- spected, if advanced ; but the instances have been rare ^ MS. Account of the Wesleyan Mission in Ceylon, by the Rev. D. J. Gogerly, Colombo. 296 PREACHING TO ADULTS. Chap. VI. in which any scruples have ever been urged, either by the priesthood or the people, to any portion of the system. But laborious and extended as have been these efforts of the Wesleyans, the tenor of their observa- tion and experience has produced a conviction, that however efficient education may have proved amongst the Buddhists as a pioneer and precursor for the in- troduction of Christianity, its value is but secondary as compared with preaching to adults, and awaking the native mind through the instrumentality of the pulpit and the printing-press/ Under this conviction the Methodists have been at all times the closest investigators of Buddhism, the most profound students of its sacred books in the original, and the most accomplished scholars both in the classical and vernacular languages of Ceylon. The information thus acquired has been sedulously employed by them in the preparation of works in Singhalese, demonstrative of the errors of the Budd- hist religion, and illustrative of the evidences and institutes of Christianity. To the value of these publications and the influence exercised by their pro- mulgation throughout Ceylon, the missionaries of other churches who labour in the same field with the Methodists have borne their cordial and concurrent attestation. * MS. Account of the Wesleyan Mission in Ceylon, by the Rev. D. J. Gogerly, Colomb6. Chap. VI. PASTORAL VISITATION BY NATIVES. 297 But the most important of all missionary labour amongst the natives, that by which the knowledge of Christianity is most successfully implanted, and its practice is most effectually encouraged, is the pastoral visitation by the native clerical assistants. The in- dividual selected for this duty spends his days amongst the villagers; he is their adviser on all occasions, their companion in all pursuits; he be- comes their umpire in differences, their friend in every emergency ; he gains their confidence by his superior knowledge, and he retains their affections by the discharge of all kindly and gentle offices. I have conversed with men of this class, whom I have sometimes encountered in my journeys, and from no sources have I been able to glean the same accurate knowledge of the people and their customs, their social habits and their wants. Nor is there any agency, however energetic, to which we can look with equal confidence, not only for the extension of Christianity throughout the island, but for the incul- cation of those principles and an example of those morals and rules of conduct which win respect for religion even amongst those who are themselves slow to admit its influence and truth. As to the general success of their labours, the Wesleyan clergy speak with the same modesty and caution which so strongly distinguishes the records of the modern missions from the deceptive and self- delusive statements of the Portuguese and the Dutch. 298 RESULTS OF WESLEY AN MISSION. Chap. VI. The total number of native Christians admitted to actual membership with their church is something over 1000 ; but they draw a strong line of distinction between these and the mere members of their con- gregations, who are infinitely more extended. From the latter no other demonstration is required than an outward avowal of Christianity, and a respectful attendance on its worship ; but from those received into actual communion there must be such a prac- tical demonstration of its power as leads not only to a renunciation of heathenism, but to a life and con- duct such as becomes adherents of the truth. As regards the ostensible number of their converts, although a proportion of impostors must be expected, there is yet something in the circumstances of the Methodists and Baptists, as a church, that reduces the probability of such practices to the lowest possible amount. They can hold out no pecuniary induce- ments as a lure to conformity ; they have no appoint- ments in their gift which might operate as incentives to deceit ; and so far as rank or respectability might operate as motives to profession, these could only be anticipated in relation to the other churches whose ostensible connexion with the Government is usually associated in the minds of the natives with patronage and power.^ ^ It may be taken as demonstrative evidence of a certain amount of sincerity in avowed converts, when they attest it by their willingness to contribute from their pecuniary resources to Chap. VI. CHURCH OF ENGLAND MISSION. 299 The Church of England Mission began its labours in Ceylon in 1818, and from that time to the present upwards of twenty ordained clergymen have devoted their labours, and some of them their lives, to its promotion. Its success amongst the Singhalese and Buddhists of the south has not been less remarkable than amongst the Tamils of Jaffna, though qualified by the difficulties which are pecu- liar to the national religion and social habits of the people.^ At the same time that the first Church missionaries the support of the form of Christianity which they have embraced — and this is extensively the case with the congregations of the Baptists and Wesleyans. They lend their assistance readily to the construction of places of worship and sheds for preaching in the villages, which are erected by their labour or their contribu- tions either in money or in gifts of timber and materials, and they unite in paying the expenses of servants and other charges attend- ant on these simple forms of worship. Trifling as may be the aggregate amount of these contribu- tions, the spirit and intention with which they are offered are all important as identifying the natives with Christianity as a national and local institution, and thus giving them a personal interest in what they are sometimes disposed to undervalue when performed for them gratuitously, or pressed on them only by foreigners and strangers. The Roman Catholic converts are by far the most willing to contribute from their own means to the support of their clergy and churches, and their donations for these purposes are on a scale of extreme liberality. ' A detailed account of the first establishment of the Church of England Mission in Ceylon will be found in Recollections of Ceylon, &c., by the Rev. James Selkirk; himself one of the zealous ministers by whom the first mission was reinforced in 1826. London, 1844: p. 195. 300 CHURCH OF ENGLAND MISSION. Chap. VI. formed their settlement amongst the Hindoos of the northern province, two equally energetic men, Mr. Mayor and Mr. Lambrick (the latter the translator of the Cotta version of the Scriptures in Singhalese), established themselves respectively among the Budd- hists of Point de Galle and Colombo, whence the latter removed to Kandy in 1818, to commence the work of re-introducing Christianity into that ancient kingdom, which had recently fallen under our do- minion, and throughout which its knowledge, and almost its remembrance, had been extinguished since the expulsion of the Portuguese from the island in A.D. 1658. In no part of Ceylon has the progress of Christian instruction been so slow, or the obtuseness and in- difference of the people been so disheartening, as amongst the peasantry of the Kandyan hills : even secular and scientific education, which has been else- where welcomed in the lowlands as a qualification for active employment, has failed to present any attraction to these mountaineers ; and it is a singular fact that at the present moment, out of a population of 200,000 persons who inhabit the Kandyan high- lands, there are but 159 pupils in all the Govern- ment schools ;^ and of these only twenty-three are the children of Kandyans, the remainder being Malays, Moors, or Singhalese, or of European descent. ^ This is of course exclusive of the schools of the several missions. Chap. VI. CHURCH OF ENGLAND MISSION. 301 It was four years after the arrival of the first Church of England missionary in Kandy before there was sufficient encouragement for the building of a school-house, even in the capital of the new province, and that was attended not by the children of natives, but by strangers and settlers, attracted by prospects of trade. The first objects of ministerial care were the Caffre soldiers attached to the Ceylon Eifle Corps, and the Singhalese prisoners who were confined in the Kandy gaol ; and it was rarely, and with dif- ficulty, that any Kandyan listener could be induced to attend their preaching. Ten years had elapsed before any encouraging symptoms were manifested ; and even then, although some few schools had been opened in the villages around Kandy, the number of pupils was but small, and the slightest cause was sufficient to interrupt their attendance. In these lofty mountain-ranges the fall of the tropical rains is a phenomenon almost unimagined by an European, as regards their frequency and volume: the exhalations from the Arabian Sea and the broad Gulf of Bengal, attracted by the elevated peaks of Ceylon, descend in sudden bursts, which swell every streamlet to a torrent, and spread wide inundations over the val- leys. During these rains, or even in apprehension of a sudden shower, the Kandyan peasantry have the extremest aversion to exposure ; hence their children at all such times are prohibited leaving the 302 CHURCH OF ENGLAND MISSION. Chap. VI. houses, and the schools in the villages are in conse- quence deserted. At other seasons the collection of the rice crop and the various occupations in the field afford suffi- cient excuses for non-attendance ; and these acci- dents, when assisted by the open hostility of the Buddhist priesthood, presented incessant discourage- ments to the first efforts of the Church of England Mission. From causes more profound, the progress of con- version was, if possible, still more slow and discourag- ing. The Kandyan kings had been at all times the most energetic defenders of the Buddhist faith ; and their jealous policy had so effectually excluded European intercourse, that the confidence of the natives had been in no degree shaken in their ances- tral superstitions. The boundaries of the Kandyan territory were defended by dense forests, which those who dwelled within were compelled to keep im- penetrable by the annual plantation of a particular species of palm,^ which is densely covered with thorns ; whilst every opening was carefully thickened by training those wonderful climbing plants which abound in the Ceylon forests, covered with knobs, from the points of which protrudes a spike as strong and sharp as the beak of a hawk.^ These and numerous other shrubs similarly pro- * Caryota horrida. • Todalia aculeata. Chap. VI. CHURCH OF ENGLAND MISSION. 303 vided by nature with weapons of defence^ formed the natural fortifications of the Kandyan border, and at every pass from the low country to the mountains watches were stationed beside gates of thorns, which swang upon a pivot, and were only raised to allow the passage of the king's people.^ From the low country ' Phoberos Pusilla, the Acacia latroiium, Acacia tomeii- tosa, &c. * Knox, the most authentic historian and narrator of the ancient kingdom of Kandy, has given a quaint account of these " thorn-gates " and defences ; he was himself a captive within them for nineteen years ; and after making his escape and return- ing to England, he published his * Historical Relation of the Island of Ceylon^ in the year 1681. In his chapter on "the King's Strength and Wars," he says : — " It remains now that I speak a little of the king's military affairs. His power consists in the natural strength of his country, in his watches, and in the craft more than the courage of his soldiers. He hath no artificial forts or castles, but nature hath supplied the want of them. For his whole country of Cande Uda standing upon such high hills, and those so difficult to pass, is all an impregnable fort ; and so is, more especially, Digligy-neur, his present palace. These places have already been described at large, and therefore I omit speaking any further of them here. There are constant watches set in convenient places in all parts of the country, and thorn- gates — but in time of danger, besides the ordinary watches, in all towns, and in all places, and in every cross-road, exceeding thick, that 'tis not possible for any to pass unobserved. These thorn-gates, which I here mention, and have done before, are made of a certain thorn-bush, or thorn-tree, each stick or branch whereof thrusts out on all sides round about, sharp prickles, like iron nails, of three or four inches long ; one of these very thorns I have lately seen in the Repository of Gresham College. These sticks or branches being as big as a good cane, are platted one very close to another, and so being fastened or tied to three 304 CHURCH OF ENGLAND MISSION. Chap. VI. all the paths towards their passes led by circuitous windings, and beneath heights which commanded them; and even so lately as the year 1815, the only road from Colombo to Kandy made a detour of many miles towards the south, and lay across rivers ^ abounding in alligators, and which were only to be passed on the single trunks of trees. Within these gloomy confines Europeans were seldom permitted to enter; and down to the year 1818 the British Government discouraged the attempt of Christian ministers to penetrate the interior from their con- sciousness of the want of power to assure them ade- quate protection. Thus shielded from interference, the priesthood of Buddhism exerted an undisputed influence over the minds of the Kandyans ; and the latter, withdrawn from any contact with other religious teachers, pre- served a rigid conformity to all the teaching and observances of their own national faith. The Kandy- ans to the present hour are exclusively Buddhist in or four upright spars, are made in the fashion of a door. This is hung upon a door-case some ten or twelve feet high (so that they may and do ride through upon elephants), made of three pieces of timber, like a gallows, after this manner 11 ; the thorn- door hanging upon the transverse piece like a shop window, and so they lift it up or clap it down, as there is occasion, and tie it with a rope to a crossbar. But especially in all roads and pas- sages from the city where the king now inhabits are very strict watches set, which will suffer none to pass not having a passport, which is the print of a seal in clay." — Knox, Melation, &c., part 2, c. vi. p. 54. Chap. VI. CHURCH OF ENGLAND MISSION. 305 belief; and amongst them there exists little of that laxity of profession which enables the low-country Singhalese to avow themselves the disciples of two creeds, and to rejoice in the anomalous title of "Chris- tian Buddhists." Ignorant and uninstructed them- selves, the Kandyan peasantry, on the arrival of the Christian missionaries, were apparently insensible of any advantages to their children derivable from edu- cation ; and as Christianity found no access to their villages, it became impracticable to establish schools with adequate hopes of success, as no Christian teachers could be found to officiate ; and no stranger, however eligible, could have compassed the attend- ance of a single Kandyan class. ^ Besides this, the population of each hamlet is too small to sup- port an establishment of its own, and the villages themselves too remotely scattered to admit of the children for a group being assembled at one central point. In 1823, the number of schools was but five, and the number of pupils 127 ; but so persevering were the missionaries, and so progressive their success, that in 1839 the number of schools had been increased ' '' In 1830 the number of persons in Kandy who attended public worship, Portuguese and Singhalese, was less than 200. In March 1831, the Bishop of Calcutta visited the station and confirmed 36 persons belonging to the congregation. After the examination of some of the schools in his presence, the Bishop said ' We had enough to encourage, but nothing to elate us* " — Selkirk, pp. 205-6. X 306 CHURCH OF ENGLAND MISSION. Chap. VI. to thirteen, and the number of scholars to something close on four hundred} Under such difficulties the attempt to introduce that most important branch of all, the education of females, must have appeared all but hopeless. Amidst all these obstructions and discouragements, the education of boys was never utterly neglected by the Kandyans, who sent their sons to the temples to be instructed by the Buddhist priests ; but even this imperfect attempt at cultivation was unavoidably withheld from the girls, who were inadmissible to such tuition, and unable to find any female teachers to supply its place. In Kandy, the capital town of the province, it was upwards of ten years from the first commencement of the mission before the Church of England missionaries could venture to open a school for the instruction of females ; and one of them has recorded the fact, " That learning was at so low an ebb amongst the females, and so uncommon, that when one little girl went to a village sixteen miles from Kandy, the females of the place were so astonished to hear her read that at first they came in crowds to listen to her." ^ The attempt was, however, made, and not without success. A school for girls was established in 1830, and in 1838 it was attended by between twenty and thirty pupils ; but of these very few were Kandyans, * Selkirk, p. 210. « Ibid., p. 212. Chap. VI. CHURCH OF ENGLAND MISSION. 307 the rest being of different races, and the majority of European descent. It continues to the present time, and with steady and unceasing usefulness, Mr. Oakley, the present missionary, and his lady, having devoted to it an unremitting attention for the last fifteen years. With an intimate knowledge of the native lan- guage the Church Missionaries and their catechists have perambulated the country and explained the doctrine of Christianity to the Kandyans in their secluded villages. By the captivation of its morals, actively exhibited in the blameless lives and examples of its ministers, a mutual confidence amounting to personal friendship has grown up between the pea- santry and their benevolent teachers; yet such is the ascendancy of the priesthood, sustained by the influence and authority of their native chiefs, that although belief in their own religion has been shaken, a few only have come forward to avow their convic- tion of the truth of Christianity. It is likewise a curious feature in the case that the most numerous and apparently the most ingenuous inquirers into the doctrine of Christianity have been the priesthood themselves. Mr. Oakley has been in the habit of visiting their temples, and to assemblies of fifty of their priests at a time he has had oppor- tunities of expounding the tenets and divine authority of the Gospel. They have come in numbers to his residence to ask for still further information, but x2 308 CHURCH OF ENGLAND MISSION. Chap. VI. the result has tended to show that their inquiries were directed rather by theological curiosity than by alarm for their own religion, or any serious doubts as to its authenticity. The labour of instruction, however, advances and expands ; at the present moment the native teachers who instruct the villagers are numerous ; schools are scattered in various directions, where the people have evinced a disposition to encourage them ; and although the proportion of native Kandyans is still small in their attendance, the stream of knowledge has com- menced to flow, and it is steadily finding its way in all directions. European settlers have, during the last ten or twelve years, established themselves extensively throughout the Kandyan hills, and converted into wide plantations of coffee the ancient forests which had been heretofore the haunts of the wild elephant and the elk. Civilization has thus been carried to the border of every Kandyan village, and simul- taneously with this, education has sprung up into unexpected importance, owing to the demand which has suddenly been created for intelligent natives as the assistants and servants of the planters. Such a social revolution, although productive in many particulars of irritation to the Kandyan peasants from this intrusion on their privacy and the con- sequent disruption of their habits, has been naturally accompanied by more than compensating advantages. Chap. VI. ESTABLISHMENT AT BADDEGAMMA. 309 It has presented at once a pathway and protection for missionary enterprise ; and, even more rapidly than enlightenment has made its way amongst the low-country Singhalese, I anticipate its progress amongst the mountaineers of Kandy, endowed as they are by nature with greater energy both of in- tellect and frame. Of the establishments of the Church of England Mission amongst the low-country Singhalesey the first in order of time, though not of magnitude and im- portance, was that of Baddegamma, a village in the southern province, about ten miles north of Point de Galle. Notwithstanding the presence of Europeans for upwards of three hundred years, this portion of the island is remarkable to the present day for the tenacity with which its inhabitants have adhered to their own superstitions. The district of Matura, to the Eastward of Galle, is still the stronghold of Buddhism,^ and in that to the north the practice of demon worship and devil dancing prevails to an ex- traordinary degree, and has been a source of con- tinued embarrassment to the missions of every Christian denomination, Portuguese and Dutch as well as British. In this unpromising district the Church of England Mission erected the first Episcopal Church that had ever been built in Ceylon for the exclusive use of the Singhalese. It was consecrated in 1824 * See ante, c. ii. p. 47. 310 ESTABLISHMENT AT BADDEGAMMA. Chap. VI. by Bishop Heber ; and Baddegamma, the village in which it is situated, has been for upwards of thirty years the scene of the unintermitted toils of its ministers. In addition to their own schools they undertook the superintendence of those provided by "the Govern- ment ; and thus with increased power of usefulness, derived from their more extended access to the natives, they have given an added impulse to the exertions of others, whilst their own operations have been conducted with marked vigour and success. In 1822 they had one hundred and sixty pupils under training, of whom upwards of one-third were females, and these within the seven years which followed were increased to two hundred and seventy- Jive. Of these a proportion were maintained as boarders in the institution, and so successful was their course of education, that some of the most remarkable students who have distinguished them- selves at the Collegiate Seminary of Cotta have been scholars from the elementary school of Badde- gamma.^ Bishop Turner, who visited the settlement in 1831, was irresistibly struck by that astonishing quickness which characterizes the Singhalese in early youth, but which, to a great degree, disappears as they approach manhood ; and the missionary who con- ducted him over the establishment has recorded his pithy remark that the pupils were "as sharp as ' Selkirk's Recollections, &c., p. 243-4. Chap. VI. ESTABLISHMENT AT BADDEGAMM A. 311 needles," and gave singular grounds of hope for the rising generation of the province. The social changes which followed, as the result of these exertions, were as remarkable in this locality as in other portions of the island. A system of nominal education had existed under the care of the Govern- ment, but previous to the arrival of the Missionaries it had been superficial and unsound — the salaried masters neglected for other duties the obligation to teach ; and the instruction and training of females was so utterly unknown that " before the missionaries came among them a needle had never been seen in the district.'' ^ Within fourteen years from their arrival elementary education had been extended throughout the surrounding villages ; printed books were read by the pupils as freely as the native cha- racters upon olahs; five hundred children were in daily attendance at the schools ; many thousands had been made acquainted with the essential principles of Christianity ; and so expert had the pupils in the female seminary become, that the sale of their needle- work contributed in part to defray the ordinary ex- penditure of the establishment.^ The Moodliar, or native headman of the district, in speaking of this remarkable improvement, ob- served in 1840, that " although the people were ' Eeport of Mr. Tremnell. See Selkirk's Recollections, &c., page 245. * Ibid., p. 246. 312 ESTABLISHMENT AT COTTA. Chap. VI. still ignorant and careless, and quite satisfied with declaring that one religion (Christianity) was as good as another (Buddhism), still a striking change for the better had taken place among them ; those who have been educated, though they do not turn out religious^ yet build better houses, know better manners, are more industrious, and more respected by the people around than those who are not — while with respect to the girjs they almost all of them get better husbands, and are much more kindly treated than before." ^ Still, notwithstanding all these preliminaries to conversion, the number of actual converts were few ; inquiry was nevertheless active, and the Buddhist priesthood, like those of the Kandyan Wihares, con- tinued to resort to the missionaries and invited their attendance at the temples, to furnish answers to their interrogatories as to the proofs and principles of Chris- tianity ; but the avowals of innate conviction were rare, and the proportion of communicants small com- pared with the large numbers who ordinarily assem- bled to listen to the preaching of the missionaries. Of the Church missionary establishments in Ceylon the most important is that of Cotta, a populous dis- trict within a few miles of Colombo, once the resi- dence of a line of princes, who held the sovereignty of this portion of the low country prior to the arrival * See Selkirk's Recollections, &c., page 268. Chap. VI. ESTABLISHMENT AT COTTA. 313 of the Portuguese in the sixteenth century. Amidst the thick jungle in the vicinity there are still to be traced the ruins of their palaces and buildings, whilst the dense population once attracted to the seat of government still exhibits its numbers in the many villages and hamlets which are congre- gated about the spot. The priesthood, encouraged by the protection of the kings of Cotta, formed several establishments in the neighbourhood of their court. Many of these remain to the present day, the priests are still numerous, and Buddhism in that locality exhibits more activity and earnestness than is generally met with in the Western section of the island. The population of the surrounding plain are as usual " baptized Buddhists,'* professing what they designate the sopremada agama or " Government religion." ' * Mr. Lambrick, the first Church of England missionary at Cotta, recounts that he one day asked a native of Cotta of what religion he was ; and the answer was, " Buddha's." " So then you are not a Christian ?" *' Oh, yes, to be sure I am ; I am a Christian, and of the reformed Dutch religion too /" — Selkirk, Recollections, &c., p. 312. The embarrassing anomaly of administering baptism to the children of heathens, and the still more embarrassing difficulty of withholding, was pressed on the attention of Bishop Heber by the clergy of Cotta in the year 1825. They applied to him for authoritative advice upon the subject, and in reply to their in- quiries he addressed to them a letter expressive of his views on that point as follows : — " To your questions respecting baptism, I reply — " 1st. We are not, as I conceive, allowed to baptize the in- 314 ESTABLISHMENT AT COTTA. Chap. VI. More or less influenced by these circumstances, and decided by the prospects of usefulness which fant child of heathen parents when there is reason to fear that such child will be brought up in heathenism. " 2nd. We may not even baptize the infant child of heathen parents on the promise of such parents to procure for it a Chris- tian education, unless security of some kind is actually given for its adoption, and removal from its parents' corrupt example, by its sponsor, or some other Christian. " 3rd. We may, I apprehend, baptize the children of a Chris- tian father by a heathen mother, though they are living together unmarried, provided the father declares his intention of giving his child a Christian education, and there are sufficient sponsors to add their promises to that of the parent. My reason for this decision is, that, as no professed Christian, however wicked his life, is beyond the outward means of grace, and the Lord may, for all we know, have still merciful purposes concerning him, so we cannot, for the father's sin, exclude the child from that pro- mise which is made to the children and the children's children of believers. But where the mother is Christian, and not the father, it is doubtful wiiether she may have sufficient property in, or authority over her child, to insure it a Christian bringing up. Nor is it a point on which the promise of a heathen father can be received as sufficient ; its actual adoption, therefore, by some Christian friend or sponsor, must in this last case be stipu- lated for. " 4th. The same principle appears to apply to cases when one only of a married couple is a professing Christian : though here some latitude of discretion may be allowed, in case of danger of death, of extreme maternal solicitude, of known good character on the believing mother's side, and the known probability tliat may exist that her wishes, and the endeavours of the sponsors, will not be frustrated in her infant's education. " 5th. The case of nominal Christians notoriously addicted to heathen practices must depend, in part, on the nature and extent of the evil; and still more on the character and sufficiency of Chap. VI. ESTABLISHMENT AT COTTA. 315 they presented, Cotta was selected as the seat of mis- sionary operations in 1823. The scenery is peculiarly the sponsors. Mere idolatrous or superstitious habits in the parents, if not attended with open apostacy, cannot exclude the infant when properly vouched for from another quarter. The parent, however blinded and sinful, has not lost the external privileges of Christianity, and the infant cannot be deprived of a privilege which the parent has not forfeited. " 6th. The same rule will apply yet more strongly to Chris- tians of whom we know no further harm than their ignorance and neglect of public worship. " 7th. It will have been already seen, that we have no right to refuse baptism to children actually adopted by Christians, provided those or other Christians become their securities. " 8th. With regard to the case of children thus adopted, when past the age of six years, and on the marks of conversion which may then be required in them, it appears that at this age a child who has not, from its earliest infancy, enjoyed a Christian edu- cation, can seldom know much of Christianity. Such may be admitted as infants, with proper sponsors, and it may very often be desirable thus to admit them. It is not easy to fix an age at which infancy ceases, which must depend on intellect, opportu- nity, and many other considerations. ' In subjects capace,' con- version is doubtless required ; and where capacity may be soon expected, it is generally desirable to wait. But in cases of sick- ness, or where any good or charitable end is answered by the immediate baptism of such children, and where, as before, suffi- cient securities are present, it appears that we are not warranted in denying them God's ordinance. " 9th. The Church of Rome, though grievously corrupted, is nevertheless a part of the visible Church of Christ ; we may not therefore repel the children of such parents from baptism, if they are vouched for by their sponsors in the words of our ser- vice ; which it may be noticed are wisely so framed as to contain nothing but those points on which all Christians are agreed. The direction at the end to teach our Church Catechism is a 316 ESTABLISHMENT AT COTTA. Chap VI. attractive : the present village is situated on the verge of the vast gardens of cinnamon by which Colombo is surrounded ; and a branch of the river which flows through the plain here expands into a placid lake, surrounded by natural forests, and in- terspersed with plantations of spices and groves of the cocoa-nut palm. counsel from us to the sponsors, uo engag-ement entered into by them. It follows that we are not to refuse baptism to the chil- dren of Roman Catholic parents, with sufficient Protestant spon- sors ; I even doubt whether we are at liberty even with sponsors of their parents* sect. " But in all these questions I cannot forbear observing, that we may remark the wisdom of that primitive institution (which our Church has wisely retained) of godfathers and godmothers, as affording a way of receiving into the flock of Christ those children for whose education their own parents cannot satisfac- torily answer. An ignorant or immoral father may be himself, for the present, irreclaimable ; but we may always insist that the sureties whom lie adduces should be competently informed, and of a life not openly immoral. And though the decay of discipline in our own country has grievously impaired the value of such sponsors, yet a missionary among the heathen both may and ought in this respect to exercise a sound discretion, both examining with mildness, informing with patience, and with firmness and temper deciding on the knowledge, faith, and holi- ness of those who themselves undertake to be the guides of the blind, and to sow the seeds of knowledge, holiness, and faith, in the hearts of the young candidates for salvation. " That God, my reverend brethren, may increase and strengthen you in these and all other gifts of his Spirit through his Son, and that both here and hereafter his blessings may largely follow your labours, is the prayer of " Your affectionate friend and servant, " Reginald Calcutta." Chap. VI. ESTABLISHMENT AT COTTA. 317 Here the mission commenced its labours, by the opening of schools, and the expounding of the Chris- tian religion to the natives throughout their hamlets. So early as 1828 they had 297 children under in- struction; and the first successful effort was to establish a school for females, with an . attendance of five-and-twenty pupils. The first obstacles to success were as usual presented by the obtuseness and list- lessness of the adults, who were equally unmoved by the most appalling denunciations, and unencouraged by the most captivating promises of the Gospel ;^ and as the profession of Christianity was not required as qualification for admission to the village-schools, the attendance of their children was perpetually inter- rupted by the recurrence of village festivals, and the attraction of the frequent ceremonies at the Buddhist temple and deivales. In 1834, the number of pupils had increased to upwards of 350, of whom one-sixth were girls ; and so sensibly did the people themselves begin to discern the value of female instruction, that several schools for girls were opened in villages in the neighbour- hood, to which the natives gave a willing encourage- ment ; and in which they were instructed not only in elementary knowledge, but taught for the first time to sew and make lace, with such other training and acquirements as were essential for the conduct of their ordinary domestic duties. So remarkable was the ' Selkirk, Recollections, &c., p. 311. 318 CHRISTIAN INSTITUTION OF COTTA. Chap. VI. result of these several undertakings that within six- teen years from the commencement of the mission upwards of 900 boys were in daily attendance on the schools, and 400 girls,- — a total of 1300 children throughout twenty-nine hamlets, in the immediate vicinity of Cotta. In 1840, the numbers had in- creased to seventeen hundred pupils, and the schools to twenty-seven ; and at the present time, after the per- severance and toil of the missionaries for twenty- six years, their schools number seventy-one, and their scholars exceed two thousand^ of whom 500 are fe- males.^ In connexion with the mission, and as indispen- sable to its success, a collegiate institution was founded in 1827, for the higher instruction of native teachers, and the training of assistants destined for the mi- nistry. The students were to be selected from the most promising pupils at all the other stations; and the curriculum of study was designed to include all ordinary branches of a liberal education. The foun- dation was laid by Sir Edward Barnes ; and in 1829 the seminary commenced its operations with an at- tendance of only ten students. * December, 1844. Schools at Cotta . .71 Boys in attendance . . . 1855 Girls 535 2390 — MS. Notes on the Church of England. Mission^ hy the Rev. A. Douglass Gordon. Chap. VI. CHRISTIAN INSTITUTION OF COTTA. 319 From that time to the present the "Christian Institution " of Cotta has maintained a career of usefulness unsurpassed, and exhibited a success the most remarkable. Its pupils have been received from the remotest parts of the island, wherever the missionaries have established themselves. The Tamils of Jaffna, the Singhalese of the low country, and the young Kandyans from the hills, have all been congregated here to collect their stores of truth and enlightenment, and return laden with intelli- gence to communicate their knowledge to their own countrymen. I have attended the annual examina- tion of the more advanced classes, and my own emotions have been not more those of gratifica- tion than of astonishment at the results which it has been my good fortune to witness: the stu- dents of this oriental college exhibiting an extent of scientific knowledge and a proficiency of his- torical and classical attainment rarely surpassed in collegiate institutions of much higher pretensions in Europe. The clergy who for nearly thirty years have devoted themselves to these objects have contributed from time to time the result of their own studies and investigations into the languages and literature of Ceylon ; and some of the most eminent scholars in these departments have been amongst the Church of England missionaries. The press has lent its aid to the school-room ; and a printing establishment, second 320 CHRISTIAN JNSTITUTION OF COTTA. Chap. VI. in magnitude only to that of the Americans at Jaffna, has long existed at Cotta, where the natives have been supplied with millions of pages full of truth and instruction. Hence there issued the translation of the Scrip- tures known as the " Cotta version^'' to which allusion has been already made ; the idiom of which has so seriously wounded the feelings of the higher caste natives, by the exclusion of the honorific terms by which the structure of their language enables them to adapt its expression to every conceivable gradation of rank.* The system of the Church of England mission amongst the Singhalese, as amongst the Tamils, includes the maintenance of both English and ver- nacular schools, as well as boarding establishments in which the education is of a much higher range, and is designed to qualify pupils for admission to the collegiate foundation at Cotta. So marked has be- come the change in the sentiments of the natives as to the value of instruction, that in lieu of that in- difference, which at first rendered it diflacult to pro- cure" even ordinary attendance,- the parents are now eager to pay a fee for their children ; and the extent to which such institutions might be multiplied is only limited by the means which have been placed at the disposal of the mission. Active hostility can scarcely be said to be mani- ' See ante, p. 2Q6. Chap. VI. MORAL PROGRESS. 321 fested either by the Buddhists or their priesthood ; and although more energetic exertions have been recently made by the latter, in the erection of bana- maduas, the holding of pinkamas, and ceremonies, their eflPorts have been directed less to the discourage- ment of the Christian religion than to the extension of their own. Gross immoralities are perceptibly declining amongst the villagers, not only in the vi- cinity of Cotta, but within the range of missionary influence generally; and it has been remarked by one and all, that whilst intoxication and other ex- cesses have come to be regarded with a measure of scorn, the prevalence of theft has diminished, and falsehood has received a check, from a sense of shame, the result of the newly-developed feeling of contempt for those betrayed into it. ^ Marriage as a permanent union was previously unknown amongst the Singhalese ; and polyandry, which is now confined to the remoter districts and ' The effects of this moral improvement have been strikingly illustrated by a recent analysis of the education and moral bear- ing of the prisoners confined in the criminal gaol at Colombo. Of these the number who could read was 16, who could read and write 63, and who could do neither 221. Of 300 prisoners, 30 were Protestant Christians, 40 Roman Catholics, 33 Ma- homedans, 39 Hindoos, and 158 Buddhists. Of 200 prisoners admitted to the gaol who could all both read and write, 31 had been educated in Government schools, 26 in the schools of the missionaries, 5 in the schools of other persons, and 138 by private native schoolmasters, or by priests in the Buddhist temples. 322 PHYSICAL ADVANCEMENT. Chap. VI. the Kandyan kingdom, was within a comparatively recent period universal in the maritime provinces. Though still of a mercenary and degraded character, marriage has now come to be regarded as a lasting and solemn obligation ; divorced wives and deserted chil- dren have become rare ; and the endearments of domestic life have attained a respect and apprecia- tion unknown to the ancestors of the present gene- ration. The industrial and material improvement of the Singhalese in the vicinity of Christian communities is undoubted ; but as this is most apparent in the vicinity of the European settlements, its acceleration must be conjointly ascribed to other influences besides those of Christianity — although it cannot be concealed that the instrumentality of the latter has been in too many instances neutralized and perverted by the laxity of morals and the pernicious example of un- scrupulous Europeans. In regard to the personal comforts and physical advancement of the Singhalese people, British capital and enterprise have done much ; and from the towns and plantations that influence has extended to the secluded hamlets of the interior: new careers of occupation have been opened up, and new energies called into exertion ; every missionary from north to south of the island has had occasion to mark the change produced by such causes ; but there are other changes incident to the same classes which are directly Chap. VI. PRONENESS TO RUN INTO DEBT. 323 ascribable to missionary agency. The missionary- rve taught the Singhalese industry, to avai oelves of these opportunities ; frugality in t]~ bandry of their gains, and rational enjoyment m lieu of frivolous objects to which to devote their ex- penditure. One singular peculiarity of the Singhalese is the universality of their proneness to run into debt ; and it is no exaggeration to say that half their time is devoted to borrowing money in one quarter, in order to satisfy the claims of another. The two great occasions in which they plunge into this vice are through marriages and feasts, on which sums so disproportionate are lavished, that the entertainer runs the risk for the remainder of his life of one continuous struggle with creditors and notaries, with extravagant rates of interest rapidly accumulating, embarrassment, lawyers, lawsuits, and ruin. This inveterate habit the missionaries have done much to discourage, by enforcing economy upon all within their influence, and by discountenancing in every instance unreflecting extravagance and disproportionate ex- penditure. Christianity has thus proved itself not less conducive to the political improvement than to the spiritual elevation of the people ; it has taught them that habits of thought and observation are the best allies of industry, has supplied them with new motives and incentives to labour, and given value and security to the produce of their toil. It has lowered the pride of pretension, and raised the self-respect of Y 2 324 RESULTS OF EFFORTS TO DIFFUSE Chap. VI. the degraded. Before its influence the aversion to change has given way to the spirit of improvement ; and there is no missionary station in the interior in the neighbourhood of which we may not discern the awakened energy of the people, the embellishment of their dwellings, the opening of village roads, the en- largement of their gardens, and the general extension of cultivation. ^ The results of these efforts to difiuse Christianity throughout Ceylon are less unsatisfactory than they may outwardly seem to a casual observer who re- gards only their ostensible effect ; for however limited may be the first definite gains in the numerical amount of acknowledged converts, the process has commenced by which these will be hereafter aug- mented ; and living principles have been successfully implanted as much more precious than the mere visible results, as the tree exceeds in value the first fruits of its earliest growth. Nor have these fruits themselves been inconsiderable when we bear in mind the antiquity and strength of the superstitions which have preoccupied the soil, the failures of the first efforts of Christianity to supplant them, the peculiar characteristics of the Singhalese people, and the limited means as well as the circuin- * As indicative of the shrewdness as well as the social habits of the people, a specimen of the proverbs in common use amongst the Singhalese is inserted at Note D, end of this chapter. Chap. VI. CHRISTIANITY THROUGHOUT CEYLON. 325 scribed resources of the various Christian missions which have been engaged in the work. Not the least important gain has been the access of experience^ which they themselves have acquired, sufficient not merely to protect them from the de- lusions by which their predecessors were misled, but to guide them by their more intimate appreciation of the difficulties to be overcome and of the choice of those instruments, and the better adjustment of the process by which success is to be compassed. Above all, the influence of ancient delusions has been undermined, the foundation of national errors has been shattered, and all experience has demon- strated the fact, that although exploded opinions may be often revived, exploded superstitions never acquire a second vitality ; they become shaded by the igno- miny of detected imposture ; and though idolatry is too often replaced by infidelity, heathenism itself, once exposed and discredited, can never regain its ascendancy. The aggregate number of converts in Ceylon is no criterion as to the progress of Christianity ; not only because these are not its sole indications, but because the tests on admission and the discipline afterwards differ not only in different churches, but even amongst the different establishments of the same Christian mission. In addition to which the mis- sionaries themselves are fully aware of the fact, that amongst their nominal adherents there are nunibers 326 PROSPECTS OF CHRISTIANITY Chap. VI. whose life and inward feelings are at variance with their seeming profession, and who, though they may not fall under the designation of impostors, are far from being entitled to the denomination of Christians. But with reference to these must be borne in mind the influences of the society from which they have been rescued, and the moral stagnation and impurities of the atmosphere which they have been accustomed to breathe. Christian life and its characteristics are of infinitely slower growth than belief and Christian profession. Evil habits, alike national and hereditary, and superstitions irreconcilable with the simplicity of truth, may sub- sist long after the manifestation of deep and ge- nuine conversion. The traces are not yet eradicated in England of the paganism which preceded Chris- tianity ; and even the pure and exalted mind of Sir Matthew Hale was not proof against the delusion of witchcraft. We have therefore no grounds for alarm, if, in conjunction with the newly-received doctrines of Christianity, the Singhalese converts should ex- hibit in some instances their long-associated respect for the ancient customs of Buddhism, or still shrink at the remembrance of the terrors of demon worship. Political changes are usually rapid, and often the offspring of a single cause ; but all moral revolutions are of gradual development, and the result of innu- merable agencies. Progressive growth is the law and Chap. VI. IN CEYLON AND IN INDIA. 327 process of Nature in all her grand operations. Philo- sophy, science, and art, all the moral and intellectual developments of man, are progressive ; and under the influence of Christianity itself, the march of civiliza- tion, though controlled and directed by its ascendancy, is regulated by those eternal laws of social progress which have been ordained by Omnipotence. The pace may be slow and unequal, but the ten- dency is onward, and the result may be eventually rapidly developed ; and such, it is my firm conviction, will be the effect of what is now in progress, not in Ceylon alone, but throughout the continent of India. A large proportion of the labour hitherto has been prospective, but its effects are already in incipient operation ; and, on all ordinary principles, a power once in motion is calculated to gather velocity and momentum by its own career. When the time shall have arrived for the mighty masses of India to move with a more simultaneous impulse, it is impossible to calculate the effect ; but looking to the magnitude of the operations which have been so long in process, to the vastness of the agencies which have been organized, it is not unrea- sonable to suppose that the last conquests of Christi- anity may be achieved with incomparably greater rapidity than has marked its earlier progress and sig- nalized its first success ; and that in the instance of India, " the ploughman may overtake the reaper, the treader of grapes him that soweth the seed," and the 328 PROSPECTS OF CHRISTIANITY Chap. VI. type of the prophet realized, " that a nation shall be born in a day." I have lingered over this- portion of my task much longer than was my original design ; impressed by the permanent interest of the inquiry, and allured by the illustrations which it presents of the influence exercised by their religion over the national character of the natives. Nor can I turn from the subject without recording my deliberate dissent from the startling theories of the Abbe Dubois, as to the im- mutability of Indian idolatry, and the still bolder conclusion which he derives from the imperfect success hitherto of Christian labours on the continent of Hindostan, that the mission of Christianity has reached its limits in the East, " that the time of conversion has passed away," and " that the oracle of God has been fulfilled as regards the Hindoos." ^ I shrink instinctively from the idea that one hundred millions of human beings throughout our dominions in India are thus consigned to hopeless reprobation ; and on looking around me to what is now in progress in Ceylon, I see abundant grounds for resisting that belief. In the history of Brahmanism itself there are successive records of innovation ; and in the worship of the Hindoos, as it presents itself at the present day, there are indelible marks of changes which it * Letters on the State of Christianity in India, by the Abbe J. A. Dubois, p. 42. Chap. VI. IN CEYLON AND IN INDIA. 329 has already undergone. ^ And narrowing the survey to the limits of Ceylon, whilst it is undeniable that the influence of race prevents the religion of the natives from undergoing any alteration by their association with each other, whilst no Tamil em- braces Buddhism, and no Singhalese adopts the religion of Brahma ; both have more or less yielded to the truth of Christianity, and afforded proofs in their own person that their idolatry is not immutable.^ ^ Even in the leading tenet, which prohibits the taking away of life, there is more than grounds for conjecture that the doc- trines of the Hindoos have undergone change ; and that, at an earlier period, it was customary to make offerings of animals to Brahma. And it is no little remarkable, that in the Epic of the Ramayana, which recounts the expedition of Rama for the conquest of Ceylon, mention is more than once made of the sacrifice of the cow. In the obsequies of the Father of Kama, a purified animal was slain and flung upon the hill, the cow and her calf were offered, and ghee oil and flesh were scattered on every side. — Book ii. sec. 61. See Notes of Colonel Sykes, On the Political State of India before the Mahomedan Inva- sion, AsiAT. Journal, vol. xii. p. 269. See also Professor Wilson's Oxford Lecture to the same effect. Buddhism presents instances of similar changes, and even in the same particular affecting the respect for animal life, its doc- trines at the present day are not reconcilable with the records of its sacred books and traditions, in which one of the early Buddhus, Sakya Muni, is stated to have died of indigestion from eating pork ; and in an earlier stage of existence, his humanity had led him to turn himself into a roasted hare, in order to satisfy the hunger of a famishing Brahman. — Vide the Mahawanso and Sut- pitako, quoted by Mr. Turnour, Journal Asiat. Soc. Bengal, vol. vii. p. 1003. * For a detailed account of the changes which have taken 330 PROSPECTS OF CHRISTIANITY Chap. VI. To this extent at least the position of the Abbe may be based upon truth, that of all the religions of the East, that of Islam excepted, the genius of Brah- manism is that which presents the most dauntless front to Christianity. But this is a dictum with which it would be unsound to associate the religion of Buddhu in the aspect under which it now exhibits itself in Ceylon. Buddhism has rejected the impure mythology of the Hindoos, and removed from its own path the great barrier of caste, behind which the Brahman scorns the simplicity, whilst he shrinks from the charities, of the Christian faith. Caste^ especially among the Kandyans, and to a more, limited extent amongst the low-country Singhalese, is still more or less an obstacle to the free course of conversion ; but in the case of the convert from Buddhism, even under the influence of caste, there is no dread of that fearful vengeance for apostacy which, in the instance of the Hindoo, divests him at one fell swoop of kindred and of friends, of possessions and inheritance, and even of a recognized position amongst civilized men. ^ The Buddhist, when he opens the place in the Brahmanical system, and its aspect in India at the present day, as contrasted with its development in its own sacred books, see Chap. iv. of Mountstuart Elphinstone's Hist, of India, b. ii. ' " What chiefly prevents the spread of Christianity in India is the dread of exclusion from caste and its privileges, and the utter hopelessness of their ever finding any respectable circle of society of the adopted religion, which converts or would-be con- Chap. VI. IN CEYLON AND IN INDIA. 331 divine records of Christianity, does not recoil with instinctive prejudice like the Hindoo, on discovering that its founder was the son of a carpenter and the associate of fishermen ; nor does he shudder as he reads in the annals of the chosen race that the temples of Jehovah were consecrated by the blood of oxen and bulls, and that the patriarch of old dared to kill the sacred calf in order to do honour to the angels who presented themselves at his tent. Whilst" the Hindoo, in the debasement of his sanctified sensuality, despises the spiritual purity of the Gospel, the Buddhist, already familiar with the refinement and dignity of its morals, is not altogether unprepared for the announcement of its divine au- thenticity. He does not start at the idea of ascending to the same heaven with the pariah and the outcaste, nor have the gentler tendencies of his nature been chilled and proscribed by the inhumanities of a creed which uproots all the social sympathies of the heart, and exalts prejudice and scorn into attributes of religion. ver(s now everywhere feel. I have, since I have been in India, had at least a score of Hindoo grass-cutters turn Mussulmans merely because the grooms and other grass-cutters of my esta- blishment happened to be of that religion : they could neither eat, drink, nor smoke with them. Thousands of Hindoos, all over India, become every year Mahomedans from the same motive; and we do not get the same number of converts to Christianity, merely because we cannot afford them the same advantages." — Colonel Sleeman's Recollections of India, vol. ii. p. 164. vy 332 PROSPECTS OF CHRISTIANITY Chap. VI. What has been done, and what is still in progress in Ceylon, are in themselves demonstrative evidences that the idolatry of India is not impregnable, and that so far from the mission of Christianity being ex- hausted, at no period of our history have its mani- festations been so apparent, or the measures taken so successful for ensuring its ultimate triumph. The human means by which that consummation is to be hastened have already been indicated in the course of the foregoing narrative ; the Scriptural education of the young, the intellectual culture of the adults, and the instrumentality of preaching, and the printing press with all. The mere elementary teaching of the many, unaccompanied by the pro- founder instruction of the few, will never succeed in elevating the spiritual character of the people ; — the one may assist in weakening "the influence of their ancient superstition, but without the aid of the other the task would prove all but hopeless to elevate Christianity in its stead. For the realization of such a system the assistance of native agents is indispens- able ; and for the training of these education must be carried to the point at which the pupil becomes transformed into the teacher. The pastors whom the Apostles inducted to watch over the Churches which they planted amongst the heathen were natives of the country : thus Christianity ceased to be exotic, became an institution of the land, and was che- rished and supported as such. None but familiar Chap. VI. IN CEYLON AND IN INDIA. 333 , associates can exhibit to the natives of India in practice the example of that Christian life which the European instructor can only delineate in theory; and none but he can so effectually accommodate his ministrations to the habits of his hearers as to gain upon their confidence, and exert an influence over their opinions and habits of thought. Above all, in the instance of the Buddhists, none but a teacher of their own race, and familiar with their language, can ever aspire to become so thoroughly master of their dialect as to grapple successfully with their meta- physical abstractions, and demonstrate the nothingness of their contemplative idolatry. It could only be after long periods of critical study that an European linguist would find himself qualified to discuss with them the dim distinctions which they are accustomed to draw between the creation and procession of the universe, the essence and the attributes of matter, or the annihilation and extinction of the spirit ; — and yet on these and similar subtleties hang the whole law and philosophy of Buddhism. ^ The apostolic reformers of modern times have all achieved the grand triumphs of their tenets amongst those with * Conceive the difFefence of meaning which will attach to the words of the English Liturgy, " We have done those things which we ought not to have done ;" and for which the only equi- valent in Singhalese is the atheistical confession of Buddhism, " To us all sin happens." — MS, Notes of the Rev. A. Douglass Gordon. 334 PROSPECTS OF CHRISTIANITY IN CEYLON. Chap. VL whose tongue they were familiar. Europeans and foreign missionaries may effect individual conversions, or pave the way for more extended revolutions of belief; but if the Luthers and the Wickliffes of an Eastern Reformation are ever destined to arise in Ceylon, they will come not from the universities of Europe, but from the educational institutions of Jaffna and the collegiate seminaries of Cotta and Colombo. . Buddhist Priests. p. 217. Chap. VI. THE SACRED BO TREE. 335 NOTES TO CHAPTER VI. ( A. ) THE SACRED BO TREE. The drawing prefixed to this chapter represents one of the sacred Bo trees (Ficus religiosa), one of which is to be found within the precincts of every Buddhist temple in Ceylon, and frequently in deserted localities, or near the site of ancient villages. The oc- currence of a solitary Bo tree, with its circular buttress of stone- work round the stem, indicates the existence, at some former period, of a Buddhist temple in the vicinity. The planting of the Bo tree, a ceremony coeval with and typical of the introduc- tion of Buddhism into Ceylon, is one of the most striking pas- sages in the Mahawanso ; and a tree of unusual dimensions, which occupies the centre of a sacred enclosure at Anarajapoora, is still reverenced as the identical one which the sacred books record to have been planted by Mehindu, 307^ years before the Christian era. So sedulously is it preserved, that the re- moval of a single twig is prohibited, and even the fallen leaves, as they are scattered by the wind, are collected with reverence as relics of the holy place. On the altars, at the foot of these sacred trees, the Buddhists place offerings of flowers, and perform their accustomed devotions in honour of the Divine Author. 336 MEHLNTELAI— ANARAJAPOORA. Chap. VI. (B. ) SACRED MOUNTAIN OF MEHINTELAI AND RUINS OF ANARAJAPOORA. The view of Mehintelai, which accompanies this chapter, repre- sents one of the most interesting and extraordinary scenes in Ceylon in connexion with Buddhism. Mehintelai, " the Moun- tain without Fear," * is a precipitous rock about seven or eight miles to the north-east of Anarajapoora, but connected with the ancient city in the time of the kings by one continuous street, along which were conducted the solemn processions of the priests. The ascent to the summit is effected by series of stone steps, about two thousand in number, winding past the ruins of former buildings, temples, dagobas, and shrines ; and on the loftiest peak, which commands a view over the forest country beneath to the very verge of the horizon, there exists one of those prodigious structures of brickwork, under which is deposited a sainted relic of Buddhu — a hair which grew on a mole between his eyebrows. With such veneration have the Singhalese been accustomed to regard this sacred mountain, that every crag has some tradition, and every rock has been scarped into sites for religious buildings, amidst the ruins of which are to be traced the fragments of broken statues, and inscriptions in the Nagari character, the most ancient in which the dialect of Pali has been written. The ruins of Anarajapoora, of one of which a drawing by Mr. Nicholl has been given, form one of the most con- spicuous objects in the grand panorama which is beheld from Mehintelai. Their description must occupy a large portion of any work on Ceylon, covering as they do an extent of ground equal to sixteen miles square, once surrounded by a wall sixty- four miles in circumference. The city is to be found on the map of Ptolemy, in its proper site and ancient name, Anuro- grammum. » Travels of the Chinese Fa Hian, p. 333. Chap, VI. THE GREAT TANKS OF CEYLON. 337 ( C. ) THE GREAT TANKS OF CEYLON. No monuments of antiquity in the island are calculated to impress the traveller with such a conception of the former power and civilization of Ceylon as the gigantic ruins of the tanks and reservoirs, in which the water during the rains was collected and preserved for the irrigation of their rice lands. The number of these structures, throughout vast districts now comparatively solitary, is quite incredible, and their individual extent far surpasses any works of the kind with which I am acquainted elsewhere. Some of these enormous reservoirs, con- structed across the gorges of valleys in order to throw back the streams that thence issue from the hills, cover an area equal to fifteen miles long by four or five in breadth ; and there are hundreds of a minor construction. These are almost universally in ruins ; and some idea of their magnitude and importance may be derived from the following extract from my diary, of a visit made to one of them in the year 1848. The tank to which I rode was that of Pathavie-colom, in the "Wanriy, about seventy miles to the north of Trincomalie, and about twenty-five miles distant from the sea. " After a rest of a few days at Trincomalie, to recruit our foot runners and coolies, we resumed our course towards the north. My design was to keep the line of the sea coast as far as Lake Kokelai, and thence to turn westward into the great central forest of the Wanny, in order to reach the ruins of the tank at Patha- vie — the largest as well as most perfect of these gigantic works in Ceylon. * * * ♦ " The lake of Kokelai is a very remarkable spot. It is about twenty miles in circumference, and believed to have been at one time a rich and fertile plain, on which the cultivation of rice was carried on by means of the enormous reservoir of Pathavie, some twenty miles inland ; but by a calamity of frequent occurrence in Ceylon, the sluices of the great tank became decayed, the Z 338 THE GREAT TANKS OF CEYLON. Chap. VI. embankments gave way, and the overcharged channels sud- denly inundated the plains below, whence the collected waters burst their way into the sea; which, once admitted to enter, has never since been excluded, but now ebbs and flows with every variation of the tide, the bottom of the lake being never wholly dry, but its deepest spots never much exceeding six or seven feet. In fact it is so shallow at all times that, in the S.W. monsoon, when the rains are light and the waters low, the surf forms a bar of sand across the entrance, and it ceases for a time to com- municate with the sea. Were advantage taken of this peculiarity, it might be permanently and effectually excluded ; but unfor- tunately with the change of the monsoon the bar disappears, the pent up waters of the lake again force a passage, and the salt water returns to renew and perpetuate its barrenness. " We came out of the forest upon the southern extremity of the lake, at the little village of Amara-vayal, and rode eastward along the shore to the opening which admits the waters of the sea. It was a sultry day, and on the exhalation from the salt encrusted over the sand, we witnessed one of the most beautiful instances of the Fata Morgana which I had seen in Ceylon. The water appeared in the distance to cover the direction by which we were to pass ; and right before us in the midst of this we saw a fairy island, covereil with the most graceful vegetation, and the shadows of its tall trees reflected in the surrounding waves of the imaginary lake. A ride of a quarter of an hour, however, dispelled the beautiful deception ; without entirely disappearing, the lines and features became fainter as we approached, till they melted into air, but not without leaving a doubt whether a scene so perfect in all its parts could really be an illusion. " The Tamil village of Kokelai is close by the junction of the lake with the sea ; and in the vast pastures around it, which are enriched by the proximity of the water, numerous herds of cattle were grazing — the finest and most numerous I have seen in the province. At Kokotodowey we came up with the Govern- ment Agent of the northern province, Mr. Dyke, whom we found encamped with five tents and a large suite of followers, beside a salt lake close to the village, and with him we resumed the fol- lowing morning our tour around the lake, completing the circuit Chap. VI. THE GREAT TANKS OF CEYLON. 339 at Amara-vayal, whence we had started two days before. In order to do this we had to cross the river by which the lake is formed, after flowing out of the great tank of Pathavie. The dimensions of the latter may be inferred from the fact that the stream that issued from its ruins was between 200 and 300 feet broad, and so deep and impetuous, that it was with the utmost difficulty our horses got over it in safety. The country along the bank of the river is rich, and would be fertile, but it is so neglected that herds of wild buffaloes were rolling in the marshes, and elephants so abundant that the water was still running into the foot marks which they had left a moment before in the sand, where they had crossed a branch of the river on our approach. " As the immediate vicinity of the tank is so infested with malaria, from the escape of the water, as to render it dangerous to pass the night close by it, we took up our quarters at a Tamil village, about ten miles to the south-west of it, called Liende- hittehammelawa ; and having a long day's journey before us to get to Koolancollam, another village eighteen miles beyond the tank, after having inspected it in the forenoon, we were on horseback by torchlight, some hours before the sun. It was tedious work, the path under the trees being only used by the natives on foot ; the branches, thorns, and climbing plants closed overhead, so low that it was impossible to ride in the gloom, and we were obliged to get down from our horses and have them led for a great part of the way. The direction of the pathway had never been chosen with a view to the convenience of horsemen, and it ran along the embankments of neglected tanks, and over great rocks of gneiss which occasionally diversify the monotonous level of the forest, and on the sloping sides of which it was difficult to keep a secure footing. So little is the country known or frequented by Europeans, that the Odear, or native headman, who acted as our guide to the great tank, told me I was the third white man who had visited it in thirty years. " Owing to the richness of the soil, and the abundance of water, the trees were of extraordinary growth, especially the varieties of Strichnus, which rose into vast mounds of verdure covered profusely with their rich orange fruit. The Palu — by far the most valuable timber-tree of the north — attains here gigantic dimen- z 2 340 THE GREAT TANKS OF CEYLON. Chap. VI. sions, and its topmost branches are the favourite resort of the Buceras, the Indian Toucan. " Before daybreak we entered on the bed of the tank at its south-eastern angle, and proceeded to cross it diagonally to the centre of the main embankment, a ride which occupied us nearly two hours. The tank itself occupies the basin of a broad and shallow valley, formed by the approach of two low lines of hills, which gradually sink into the plain as they stretch towards the sea. The extreme breadth of the enclosed space may be ten miles, narrowing to six or seven at the spot where the retaining bund has been constructed across the valley ; and when this was in effectual repair, and the reservoir filled by the rains, the water must have been thrown back along the basin of the valley for at least twelve or fifteen miles. It is difficult how to determine the precise distances, as the recent overgrowth of wood and jungle has obliterated all lines left by the original level at its junction with the forest. Even now the space we rode over from the ex- tremity of the tank to its centre, a distance of five miles, is deeply submerged during the monsoons; so that, notwithstanding the partial escape of the water, it must still cover an area of ten miles in diameter. Its depth, too, must be very considerable ; for high on the branches of the trees which grow in the area of the tank, the last flood had left quantities of drift wood and withered grass, and the rocks and highest banks were coated with the yeasty foam which remains after the subsidence of an agitated flood. " The bed of the tank was difficult to ride over, being still soft and treacherous, although covered everywhere with tall and waving grass ; and in every direction it was poached into deep holes by the innumerable elephants who congregate to roll in the soft mud, to bathe in the collected water, and luxuriate in the rich herbage and under the cool shade of the trees. The ground, too, was thrown up into hummocks like great mole hills, which the natives told us were formed by a huge earth-worm, which is common in Ceylon, nearly two feet in length, and as thick as a small snake. Through these inequalities the water was still running off in small natural drains towards the great channel in the centre, which conducts it to the broken sluice ; and across Chap. VI. THE GREAT TANKS OF CEYLON. 341 these we sometimes found it difficult to find a safe footing for our horses. "In a lonely spot, towards the very centre of the tank, we came unexpectedly upon a very extraordinary scene. A sheet of still water, two or three hundred yards broad, and about half a mile long, was surrounded by a line of tall forest trees, whose branches stretched over it. The sun had not yet risen, when we perceived some white objects seated in large numbers on the tops of the forest ; and as we came nearer, we discovered it to be a colony of pelicans, who had formed their settlement and breeding place in this solitary retreat. They covered the trees literally in hundreds ; and their heavy nests, like those of the swan, con- structed of large sticks, formed great platforms, which rested across the horizontal branches. In each nest there were three eggs, rather larger than those of a goose, and the male birds stood patiently beside the female as she sat upon them. " Nor was this all j along with the pelicans prodigious numbers of other large water birds had selected this for their dwelling- place, and in thousands they covered the trees, standing on the topmost branches — tall flamingoes and cranes of every variety, ibises, egrets, and many other descriptions of waders. We had come upon them thus early, and before their habitual hour for betaking themselves to their usual fishing fields. By degrees, as the light increased, we saw them beginning to move upon the trees : they looked around them on every side, stretched out their awkward legs, extended their broad wings, rose slowly in groups, and soared away in the direction of the sea shore. " The pelicans were apparently later in their movements ; they allowed us to approach as near them as the swampy nature of the soil would admit, and even when the gun was discharged amongst them, those only moved off whom the particles of shot had dis- turbed. They were in such numbers at this favourite place, that the water over which they had taken up their residence was swarming with alligators, attracted by the frequent falling of the young birds ; and the natives refused, from fear of them, to wade in for one of the larger pelicans which had fallen, struck by a rifle ball. It was altogether a very remarkable sight. " About seven o'clock we reached the point of our destination, 342 THE GREAT TANKS OF CEYLON. Chap. VI. near the great breach in the embankment, having first with diffi- culty effected a passage over the wide stream which was flowing towards it from the basin of the tank. The huge bank itself was concealed from us by the trees with which it is overgrown, till we suddenly found ourselves at its foot. It is a prodigious work, nearly seven miles in length, at least three hundred feet broad at the base, upwards of sixty feet high, and faced through- out its whole extent by layers of squared stone. The whole aspect of the place, its magnitude, its loneliness, its gigantic strength even in its decay, reminded me forcibly of ruins of a similar class described by recent travellers at Uxmal and Palenke, in the solitudes of Yucatan and Mexico. " The fatal breach through which the waters escape, is an ugly chasm in the bank about two hundred feet broad and half as many deep, with the river running slowly away below. Tliis breach affords a good idea of the immense magnitude of the work, as it presents a perfect section of the embankment from summit to base. As we stood upon the verge of it above, we looked down upon the tops of the highest trees, and a pelican's nest, with three young birds, was resting on a branch a considerable way below us. " We walked about two miles along the embankment to see one of the sluices, which remains so far entire as to permit its original construction to be clearly understood, with the exception that the principal courses of stones have sunk lower towards the centre. From its relative position, I am of opinion that the breach through which the water now escapes was originally the other sluice, which has been carried away by the pressure at some remote period. The existing sluice is a very re- markable work, not merely from its dimensions, but from its ingenuity and excellent workmanship. It is built of layers of hewn stones varying from six to twelve feet in length, and still exhibiting a sharp edge and every mark of the chisel. Tliese rise into a ponderous wall immediately above the vents which regulated the escape of the water ; and each layer of the work is kept in its place by the frequent insertion endways of long plinths of stone, whose extremities project from the surface with a flange, to prevent the several courses from being forced out of Chap. VI. THE GREAT TANKS OF CEYLON. 343 their places. The ends of these retaining stones are carved with elephants' heads and other devices, like the extremities of Gothic corbels ; and numbers of similarly sculptured blocks are lying about in all directions, though the precise nature of the original ornaments is no longer apparent. " About^the centre of the great embankment advantage has been taken of a rock about 200 feet high, which has been built in, to give strength to the work. We climbed to the top of it ; the sun was now high and the heat intense ; for in addition to the warmth of the day, the rock itself was still glowing from the accumulated heat of many previous days. It was covered with vegetation, which sprung vigorously from every handful of earth that had lodged in the interstices of the stone ; and amongst a variety of curious plants we found the screwed Eu- phorbia, ^ the only place in which I have seen it in the island. But the view from this height was something very wonderful — it was in fact one of the most memorable scenes I remember in Ceylon. Towards the west the mountains near Anarajapoora were dimly visible in the extremest distance ; but between us and the sea, and for miles on all sides, there was scarcely a single eminence, and none half so high as the rock on which we stood. To the farthest verge of the horizon there extended one vast unbroken ocean of verdure, varied only by the tints of the forest, and with no object for the eye to rest on except here and there a tree a little loftier than the rest, which served to undu- late the otherwise unbroken surface. " Turning to the side next the tank, its prodigious area lay stretched below us, broken into frequent reservoirs of water and diversified with scattered groups of trees. About half a mile from where we stood a herd of wild buffaloes were lumbering through the long grass and rolling in the fresh mud. These, and a deer which came to drink from the watercourse, were the only living animals to be seen in any direction. " As to human habitation, the nearest was the village where we had passed the preceding night ; but we were told that a troop of unsettled Veddahs had lately sown some rice on the verge of ' Euphorbia tortilis. 344 THE GREAT TANKS OF CEYLON. Chap. VI. the reservoir, and taken their departure after securing their little crop. And this is now the only use to which this gigantic undertaking is subservient — ^it feeds a few wandering outcasts, and yet such are its prodigious capabilities, that it might be made to fertilize a district equal in extent to an English county. " And who were the constructors of this mighty monument ? It is said that some one of the sacred books of Ceylon records the name of the king who built it ; but it has perished from the living memory of man. On the top of the great embankment itself, and close by the breach, there stands a tall sculptured stone with two engraved compartments, that no doubt record its history ; but the Odear informed us that the characters were * Nagari and the language Pali, or some unknown tongue which no one now can read.' " "What, too, must have been the advancement of engineering power at the time when this immense work was undertaken ? It is true that it exhibits no traces of science or superior inge- nuity, and in fact the absence of these is one of the causes to which the destruction of the tanks of Ceylon has been very rea- sonably ascribed, as there had been no arrangement for regu- lating their own contents, and no provision for allowing the superfluous water to escape during violent inundations. But irrespective of this, what must have been the command of labour at the time when such a construction was achieved ? The Government engineer calculates that, taking the length of the bank at 6 miles, its height at 60 feet, and its breadth 200 at the base, tapering to 20 at the top, it would contain 7,744,000 cubic yards, and at 1*. 6d. per yard, with the addition of one half that sum for facing it with stone and constructing the sluices and other works, it would cost 870,000/. sterling to con- struct the front embankment alone. " But inquiry does not terminate here. What must have been the numbers of the population employed upon a work of such surprising magnitude ? and what the population to be fed, and for whose use- not only this gigantic reservoir was designed, but some thirty others of nearly similar magnitude, which are still in existence, but more or less in ruin, throughout a district 150 miles in length from north to south, and about 90 from sea to Chap. VI. SINGHALESE PROVERBS. 345 sea ? Another mysterious question is still behind and unan- swered. What was the calamity or series of calamities which succeeded in exterminating this multitude ? which reduced their noble monuments to ruin, which silenced their peaceful in- dustry, and converted their beautiful and fertile region into an unproductive wilderness, tenanted by the buffalo and the elephant, and only now and then visited by the unclad savage who raises a little rice in its deserted solitudes, or disturbs its silent jungles to chase the deer, or rob the wild bee of its honey?" These are all unsatisfied speculations ; nor do even the few inquiries I have suggested serve to open up the full extent of interest which attaches to this singular district. I have men- tioned the existence of numerous other tanks as large as that of Pathavie ; some are of even greater dimensions, and one, known as the Giant's Tank, the main embankment of which is 15 miles in length, was calculated to enclose an expanse of water equal in extent to the Lake of Geneva. It was to have been supplied by directing into it the largest river which now flows into the Gulf of Manaar ; and the causeway commenced for this stupendous purpose, composed of blocks of stone of almost Cyclopean mea- surement, has been completed for a great portion of the way ; but from some unknown cause the work appears to have been suddenly abandoned and never resumed. The vast area of the Giant's Tank is now the site of some thirty prosperous villages, each with a smaller tank sufficient for its own rice-grounds, and all enclosed within the boundary of the original tank. Nor is this all ; for in addition to these immense construc- tions, some thirty in number, there are from 500 to 700 smaller tanks, scattered over the whole face of the country, the ma- jority in ruins, but many still serviceable, and all susceptible of effectual restoration. 2 A 846 SINGHALESE PROVERBS. Chap. VI. ( D. ) SINGHALESE PROVERBS. 1. Prudent people do not grasp at a heap of oranges, but take one by one. (Grasp all, lose all.) 2. Having drunk of the river, they pray for the long life of the sea. (Having received favours from one person, they speak the praises of another.) 3. The hand that one cannot cut he kisses. (The wicked, when they cannot injure a man by open means, have recourse to flattery and fraud.) 4. In the pond where there is no loola (a fish), kanapaddi (a small fish) is the Pundit. 5. Why do you commit sin by killing ratsnakes 'i (Spoken of persons wantonly injuring the poor and humble.) 6. One can bear the bite of an alligator, but not the pricking of kolula' thorns. (One can bear the harsh treatment which he may receive from a great man, but cannot bear with equanimity the haughty demeanour and petty insults of underlings and de- pendants.) 7. You can see the white colour of the kanakoka " when he is flying only. (The latent talents of a clever man shine forth when he is acting in his proper sphere.) 8. For a medicine which the doctor has no intention to give, he requires the fat of eye-flies, seven measures and a little more. (When a man has no intention to perform any work, he proposes terms which it is impossible to comply with.) 9. Do not sharpen the thorns of a tree. 10. The man who received a beating from a firebrand runs away at the sight of a firefly. ' A prickly plant that grows on the banks of rivers and marshy places. '^ A bird so called, which appears to be of a dark colour except when flying, when the inner feathers, which are white, become visible. Chap. VI. SINGHALESE PROVERBS. 347 1 1 . When the blacksmith sees a soft iron, he jumps and beats with redoubled energy. (If you show a yielding disposition, you will soon be overpowered.) 12. When a man is disabled (by bodily infirmities), the dis- tance to the fireplace is seven gows. 13. When new, even gunny-bags are stiffened with starch. (Equivalent to the English proverb, " A new broom sweeps well.") 14. Like the man who went to Roona to avoid eating kurak- kan (a kind of grain, nacherene). (In Roona kurakkan forms the chief article of food.) 15. Even a Rodia will cast a stone at you if you cast one at him. 16. Before looking at the face he looks at the hand. (Re- ferring to the prevalence of bribery — the reception which a man receives depends upon the presents he carries.) 17. Are all the fingers of the hand of the same size? (There must be various grades of rank in society.) 18. When the boat was upset the man said, "This side is better than the other." (Though a man miscarries a favourite project by his folly, he pretends to be satisfied with the result.) 19. A snipe to-day is better than an elephant to-morrow. 20. Why awake sleeping chetas ? 21. Like the kokka (crane) who waited till the waters of the sea were dried up. 22. Trade is trade, friendship is friendship. 23. A full pot of water does not shake. (A really learned man is not proud of his learning, nor a really great man of his power or wealth.) 24. Though a bad man puts a yellow robe on, where will his wickedness go ? 25. Though a dancing master falls, it is reckoned as a ma- noeuvre of his art. 26. Can the alligator catch cold ? 348 SINGHALESE PROVERBS. Chap. VI. 27. When water goes over the head, it does not signify whether it goes a span high or a cubit high. 28. Even in Gilimala there are white-teethed persons. (Gili- mala is the name of a village where great quantities of betel are grown, chewing which turns the teeth red. Hence it means that even among the best people there are some bad ones.) 29. A foreigner to a village and a creeper to a tree are both alike. (A foreigner will prove as ruinous to a place as a creeper does to a tree.) 30. The lakes will not become full with dew, but with rain. (Men become rich by fair dealing, and not by mean and deceit- ful tricks.) THE END. PRINTED BY W. CLOWES AND BONS, STAMFORD STREET. Albemarle Street, London. Janimi^y, 1851. . jHurra^^s itist tA HISTORY AND ANTIQUITIES. BIOGRAPHY AND MEMOIRS. VOYAGES AND TRAVELS. DOMESTIC AND RURAL ECONOMY. CONTAINING HAND-BOOKS FOR TRAVELLERS. RELIGIOUS WORKS AND THEOLOGY. POETRY AND THE DRAMA. JUVENILE WORKS. CLASSICAL AND SCHOOL BOOKS. ART, SCIENCE, AND MEDICINE. 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" The statesman who may be called upon to discuss or decide upon the public affairs of the Cape, the emigrant who may contemplate removing his cares thither, the curious inquirer who would ' know the rights * of what has given rise to so much controversy, will find Mr. Bunbury an intelligent and candid gvixde."— Examiner. WESTERN BARBARY, ITS WILD TRIBES AND SAVAGE ANIMALS. By Drummond Hay. Post 8vo, 2». 6d. •• A new and highly interesting work." — Greenock Advertiser, XXT. A RESIDENCE IN SIERRA LEONE, described from a Journal kept on the Spot. By a Lady. Edited by Mrs. Norton. Post 8vo, 6*. "A most animated and sprightly picture of the state of society at Sierra Leone, the point and cleverness of which is, we apprehend, to be placed to the credit of the talented editor, fully as much as to that of the original writer of the letteTa."— >oA» Bull. Mediterranean, and Asia Minor. 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A capital book, alike attractive for its narrative of travel, with its hardships and incidents, for its pictures of scenery and society, for the direct information it imparts as to Mexico and the incidental glimpses it gives us of the Ame- ricans and their armies in Mexico." — Spectator, XLIII. JOURNEYS ACROSS THE PAMPAS. By Sir Francis Head. Post 8vo, 2s. 6d. *' This book has all the interest of a novel." — Eclectic Rev. VOYAGE OF A NATURALIST ROUND THE WORLD. By Charles Darwin. Post 8vo, 8*. 6d. " The author is a first-rate landscape painter, and the jreariest solitudes are made to teem with interest." — Quarterly Review. A VOYAGE UP THE RIVER AMAZON, lND A VISIT TO PARA. By William H. Edwards. 'ost 8vo, 2s. 6d. " Full of novelty; we can hardly open a pa^re which has ot its picture for the general observer, and its product for ;ho8e who, like Sir Joseph Banks, look on the earth as one ast museum." — Athenaum. North America and IVest Indies. XL VI. A CHRONOLOGICAL ACCOUNT OF VOYAGES OF DISCOVERY to the ARCTIC REGIONS, From the earliest period. By Sir John Barrow. Maps. 2 vols. 8vo. 27s. " Records of enterprise and endurance, of resolute perseverance, and of moral and physical courage, which we take to be peculiar to English seamen, and to make one proud of the name of Englishman." — Examiner. XLVII. A FIRST AND SECOND VISIT TO NORTH AMERICA, with Observations on the United States, Canada, and Nova Scotia. By Sir Charles Lyell. 2nd Edition. 4 vols, post 8vo, 39*. "Sir C. Lyell visited America not merely as a man of science or a philosopher, but as a man of sense and of the world, eminently imbued with qualifications to constitute him an astute observer." — Literary Gazette. XLVIII. TOUR THROUGH THE SLAVE STATES, from the River Potomac, to Texas and the Frontiers of Mexico. By G. W. Featherstonhaugh. Plates. 2 vols. 8vo, 26s. 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They combine every practical information, with satisfactory descriptions and extracts from the most accomplished travellers, unencumbered with long historical details, which not unfrequently are uselessly intruded into these manuals,"— (?e«'/ewj«n'* Magazine, ' An immense quantity of minute and useful information respecting all places of interest, presented in a plain, unostentatious, an(l intelligible manner,"— C/»u7ed Service Gazette. "■ All the informgtion a traveller requires ; and supplies an answer to every difficulty which can possibly arise." — Atlas. " An excellent plan, and contains niucti in little compass, and is an amusing resource when the road is dull and our companion has fallen asleep," — Asiatic Journal. " Capital guides I A man may traverse hall the continent of Europe with them without asking a question."— L!ec/a/or. Vol. 29. HAYGARTH'S BUSH LIFE IN AUSTRALIA. " Descriptive of man, animals, nature, and society." Spectator. 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Evangelical Magazine Vol. 37. OLIVER GOLDSMITH. By Washinotoi Irving. "This excellent and entertaining life." Morning Herali The "HoMB AND Colonial Library" having been sustained during a period of Six years with unabate( success, Mr. Murray, anxious to guard against the objection of overloading the subscribers with too large &m cumbrous a series of books of one size, decided on concluding the work with its thirty-seventh volume. He is thu enabled to offer to the public'a compact and portable work, the bulk of which does not exceed the compass of a singl shelf, or of one trunk, suited for all classes and all climates— of which the interest, value, and popularity is not likel; to be impaired by lapse of time. At the same time, the large circulation of the " Home and Colonial Library," and the continued demand for bad numbers, convince him that there is an unabated desire on the part of the public for reading, at once cheap, populai and instructive ; he is therefore preparing speedily to put forth a New Library, which, though equally portable, shal be even more elegant in typography than the last, and shall surpass, or at least maintain, its literary value an general attraction. Uniform with the above Series. HUMBOLDT'S COSMOS. (Sabin^s authonsed Edition.^ 3 vols, post 8vo. HUMBOLDT'S ASPECTS OF NATURE. (Sabine's authcmsed Editim.) 2 vols, post 8vo, BRADBITRT AND KVANS, PRINTERS, WH1TEFRIAB8. 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