Town Life in 19th Century Ceylon

The Two Societies: A Study of Town Life in Nineteenth-Century CeylonAuthor(s): Yasmine GooneratneSource: The Historical Journal, Vol. 9, No. 3 (1966), pp. 338-359Published by: Cambridge University PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2637985Accessed: 08/10/2009 06:53

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The Historical Journal, IX, 3 (I966), pp. 338-359

Printed in Great Britain

V. THE TWO SOCIETIES: A STUDY OF TOWN LIFE IN NINETEENTH-CENTURY CEYLON

By YASMINE GOONERATNE

University of Ceylon

THE English-speaking society of nineteenth-century Colombo, as in other areas in Ceylon gradually acquiring an urban character, was composed of two main units-the European, and the native. Within both were intricate subdivisions, which 'Sampson Brown' described in a comic sketch of i842:

Glibb and I have had some rather long chats about the natives and their moral character. They certainly are a most repelling race: there's no making anything of them as yet, and I doubt if we ever shall ... A native of one particular caste will not marry into or associate with another and so the whole race of them is split into small factions. This is bad enough say you, but... the white man's caste rages [sic] as widely and deeply as that of the Buddhist. . . In Ceylon you find the Burgher caste, the Civil caste, the Military caste, and the Mercantile caste, all little worlds distinct from each other, travelling in different orbits. They would not dine with each other, I suppose, if their existence depended on it.1

The divisions in society were reflected in the topographical arrangement of the various stations. In Colombo, for instance, within the walls of the old Dutch Fort stood the governor's residence, the barracks of the European troops, most of the public and mercantile offices, the banks, a library, and a chamber of commerce, together with an Anglican, a Presbyterian, and a Methodist church. The houses of European residents were scattered along the shores of the Beira Lake, in the cinnamon gardens which adjoined it, or along the sea- shore. Outside the walls of the Fort, and on the other side of the Lake was the Pettah, occupied principally by Burghers, which was laid out after the manner of Dutch towns, in streets that ran parallel or at right angles to one another, lined with suriya or 'tulip-trees' that cast a pleasant shade. A mixed population inhabited the rest of the town.2 The casual visitor in the sixties was apparently struck by the beauty of the city, but its social divisions and per- vading military atmosphere were equally manifest. Charles Wentworth Dilke crossed the moat of the Fort of Colombo in I867, and found himself

in what is perhaps the most graceful street in the world-a double range of long low houses of bright white stone, with deep piazzas, buried in masses of bright foliage, in which the fire-flies were beginning to play. In the centre of the Fort is an Italian campanile, which serves at once as a belfry, a clock-tower, and a light-house ... As

1 'Life in the Jungle, or Letters from a Planter to his Cousin in London', no. 6, Ceylon Magazine, vol. II, no. I7 (January I842), 234.

2 Cf. L. F. Liesching, A Brief Accoulnt of Ceylon, (Jaffna, I86I), p. 5, for a detailed description of Colombo in the sixties.

TOWN LIFE IN NINETEENTH-CENTURY CEYLON 339

we looked landwards from the campanile, the native town was mirrored in the lake, and outside the city the white-coated troops were marching by companies on to the parade-ground, whence we could faintly hear the distant bands.3

Social intercourse between European and Ceylonese was as limited as in other British colonies4 but, since each group in English colonial society was responsible for some aspect of the management of the native population, members of the group were continually in touch, professionally at least, with certain sections of the latter.

The civil servants above all belonged to a corps pledged to support traditional institutions, and trained in oriental languages,5 which helped those who were interested to maintain a sympathy with traditional society. Divinity does not appear to have hedged the governors of Ceylon as it did the viceroys of India. The governor's style of living was less ostentatious than that of his counterpart in India, and he was much more accessible to some classes among the subjects he ruled. Their succession to the throne of the Sinhalese kings demanded that the governors should replace their predecessors as the true centre and spring of the island's society, and they did their best to achieve this ideal. Sir Edward Barnes was not only honoured and respected by all classes of the Ceylonese, but his statue became san object of veneration.6 ie went 'on progress' through the rural districts, compelling his subordinates to acquire a sound knowledge of the country lest they should appear inefficient

3 C. W. Dilke, Greater Britain (London, i868), II, I72-3.

4 For one of the best early descriptions of a situation that needs little documentation, cf. Lord William Bentinck's observations on the subject, printed in the advertisement to Dubois's Description of the Character... of the People of India, quoted James Mill, The History of British India (London I8I7), I, preface, p. xxi. As late as I882, Vereker XVI. Hamilton's illustration for Steward Fasson's verses on Galle Face

'Colombo's " Park " or " Prater' And here the world, starched, brushed, and curled, Appears at four or later'-

shows a colonial 'world' that is almost exclusively European. Natives figure mainly as coach- men, grooms, and vendors of sweetmeats. Cf. Fasson and Hamilton, Scenes in Ceylon (London, 1882).

5 A. L. Lowell's study of the selection and training of colonial civil servants and H. Morse Stephens's account of Haileybury unite in stressing the effectiveness of the system in pro- moting a sense of fellowship among the men and an intellectual sympathy for oriental culture. Cf. A. L. Lowell, Colonial Civil Service (New York, I900), pp. 3-II2, 233-346. G. 0. Trevelyan emphasizes the power of corporate traditions over the Civil Servant, in The Competition-Wallah (London, I864), pp. I49-50. The Conservative traditions and orientalist training of the service did not begin to attract marked criticism until the sixties, when the authoritarian attitude recommended by liberals like James Mill to the rulers of India combined with early imperial sentiment to promote firmness and efficiency at the expense of the intellectual and sympathetic appreciation of oriental culture. Cf. M. Monier-Williains, An Elementary Grammar of the Sanskrit Language (London, I846), preface, p. iii, for a statement of the bases of the traditional Conservative position, and an analysis of the aspects of anti- intellectualism current in Victorian society that were rising to challenge it.

6 Cf. Major Thomas Skinner, Fifty Years in Ceylon: An Autobiography, ed. Annie Skinner (London, I89I), pp. I87-8.

340 YASMINE GOONERATNE

and uninterested.7 As late as i86i, scholarly Buddhist monks saw no in- congruity in addressing to Sir Charles MacCarthy a petition in which he figured regally as

the good Lord of Lanka, (who) shines like the moon, causing the blossoming of the entire grove of kumudu flowers, namely the learned, whose wisdom is its mass of pollen; reviling the rows of serpents, the foolish ones, though they are many in number, and dispelling the darkness of varied defilements (that exist) unchecked in the world,

That savant, who is like a beloved father of the Ceylonese, seeking to prevent their calamities and promote their welfare. . .8

While the governors' influence helped to preserv7e oriental literary traditions from neglect and destruction, their subordinates were engaged in labours of investigation and translation. Not all, of course, were equally conscientious or interested. Major Skinner reported in I849 that the merit of a Government Agent in the charge of a Province consists (as I have known it to be estimated) in his giving no trouble, in being rarely heard of or from at headquarters.9

The exceptions to this rule were, however, very great ones. Sir John D'Oyly, the resident at Kandy, employed in the Ceylon civil service from i802 until his death in i824, was the first of a line of sensitive, scholarly men whose labours benefited the island. The first Sinhalese translation of the Bible in British times was partly the work of William Tolfrey, a civil servant who succeeded D'Oyly as chief translator to the government. George Turn- our, born in Ceylon in I799, educated in England under Sir Thomas Mait- land's guardianship, entered the C.C.S. in i8i8. As a public servant he had to acquire the languages of the country, but Turnour went in addition to Pali, the root of written and spoken Sinhalese. The first volume of his translation of the Mahavamsa or Great Chronicle of Ceylon was published in Ceylon in 1837, and Turnour returned, ill, to die at Naples in April 1843 before his work could be completed. Another civilian who understood the people through their literature was Hugh Nevill, who arrived in Ceylon in I865 as private secretary to the chief justice, at the age of seventeen. In I 869 he was appointed a writer in the C.C.S., and he served in this and in other capacities until his retirement in i886. Nevill published an orientalist Journal called the Tapro-

I Cf. Major Thomas Skinner, 'Memorandum with reference to the past and present Social Condition of the Native Population of Ceylon... referred to in... Evidence, before a Select Committee of the House of Commons, July 1849', reprinted in Fifty Years (pp. 214-36),

p. 217. 8 Quoted James Alwis, Leisure Hours (Colombo, I863), pp. 263-4, in the original Pali.

I am indebted to Dr R. M. Handurukande for this English translation. It was recorded in I854 that the Buddhist priesthood bestowed its 'benediction upon the British Governor at his Levees, as they had previously been wont to bestow it on solemn occasions upon their own Kings', cf. Barcroft Boake, A Brief Account of the Origin and Nature of the connexion between the British Government and the Idolatrous Systems of Religion Prevalent in the Island of Ceylon (Colombo, I854), p. 91.

" Skinner, 'Memorandum', p. 233.


banian from I885 to I888 at his own expense. He collected Sinhalese verse, folk ballads, epic poetry, and literature of all kinds in the original palm leaf manuscript, and his catalogue of the collection includes translations and descriptions of each piece that bear witness to his insight into the character of Sinhalese rural society. Of the Sama J7itaka Kavi, Neville wrote that

it shows apart from the pathos of the poet's own story, how deeply the Buddhist lore could sink into the hearts of the people, and how spontaneous was their song.10 Sir Alexander Johnstone, a chief justice of Ceylon, knew Tamil and codified Tamil law."

In this kind of life and labour, the traditions of Sir William Jones and the eighteenth-century orientalists of India lived on, although such men were not found in large numbers. D'Oyly's fondness for oriental languages and his appreciation of the Sinhalese way of life were singular enough in his time to make him the subject of uncharitable gossip among fellow-Europeans.12 His family could understand neither the fascination his work had for him, nor his distaste at the idea of returning to Europe, although the prudent D'Oyly apparently allowed this last to be implied rather than stated in his letters.'3 Tennent records, similarly, that Turnour's Pali researches were conducted without the sympathy of a single brother-officer, except Major Forbes, who was interested in the island's archaeology.14 Among certain exceptionally gifted men, the moving ideals even of 'duty' and 'service' which the civil service built up seem to have been superseded by an inclination of a more personal, even passionate kind. Skinner, writing of General Fraser, reflected

it is a drawback in the Colonial Service that an officer is tempted and beguiled to remain on, from year to year, until his interest in a new country, in which he is made useful, overcomes the ardour of his zeal for his profession.15

A similar feeling moved Leonard Woolf in the first decade of the present century, when, disillusioned by his experience of imperialism in action, untouched even by the orientalist tradition that had inspired D'Oyly and Turnour, he still

fell in love with the country, the people, and the way of life which were entirely different from everything in London and Cambridge to which I had been born and

10 Sinhala Verse (Kavi), collected by the late Hugh Nevill, F.Z.S. (I869-86), ed. P. E. P. Deraniyagala (Ceylon, 1954-55), part I, p. 72.

11 Cf. Jennings and Tambiah, The Dominion of Ceylon (London, I952), p. 263. 12 Osborne, a missionary, wrote of the i8I8 rebellion that 'we have every reason to expect

this is a judgement to a Christian Nation for their iniquity. The Chief Civilian Servant in Kandy has for a long time been a worshipper of Budhu, & Gen. Jackson told me & Mr Erskine that Mr D. was a Budhite. He takes off his Shoes & offers flowers &c. &c. to Budhu. Will not a Holy God visit for these things?' (Osborne to J. Benson, Trincomalee, 4 March i 8 i 8, Methodist Mission Society Records/I I A/I 817-1836.)

13 Cf. Letters to Ceylon 1814-1824, ed. P. E. Pieris (Cambridge, 1938), especially Mrs Bridget D'Oyly's letters to her son.

14 Cf. Sir James Emerson Tennent, Ceylon (London, 1859), I, 313.

1" Skinner, Fifty Years, p. 249.


bred... I did not idealize or romanticize the people or the country; I just liked them aesthetically and humanly and socially.. . I became completely immersed, not only in my work, but in the life of the people.16

Between the authors of a nineteenth-century account of the structure of Kan- dyan society17 and of the most perceptive study yet made of the intimate life of a southern Ceylon village18 there seems little that is obviously common, beyond a shared Cambridge background and a tradition of duty and service. Yet intellectual training and shared ideals originally created the mental attitude that made possible to this group alone, among all other European communities in Ceylon, a genuine understanding of the life of Sinhalese and Tamil, and a sympathy for their culture. From the knowledge that their official work brought them, and the sympathy that allowed them to interpret that knowledge intelligently, came their contribution to Ceylonese literature.

Lacking, for the most part, the intensive intellectual training that char- acterized the best type of English civil servant, the military officer who served in Ceylon shared with him, however, most of the ideals of service in a corps. Military budgets were more elastic than official, and soldiers could travel more freely about the country, and record what they found.19 Not all made use of their opportunities; it was remarked in 1843 that

the officers, in general, some of whom have been here for a considerable period, seem to know as little of it as when they first arrived.20

But, again, the exceptions to the rule were men of outstanding ability. Dr John Davy, brother of Sir Humphrey Davy, served in Ceylon as a military surgeon, and published an account of the island in his The Interior of Ceylon (London, I82I), which goes to rural sources for facts about native life and customs. Major Thomas Skinner, removed from school at the age of fourteen, and pitchforked into a rifle regiment serving in Ceylon, worked in the island for fifty years, planned and carried out the network of roads that covered the island in all directions by I87o, and used his great knowledge of the island and its people in his Memorandum of 1849. Through his lifelong association with Ceylonese people, Skinner unconsciously helped to build what came to be a popular ideal, the image of the Englishman as honest, courageous, in-

16 Leonard Sidney Woolf, Growing. An Autobiography of the Years 1904-1911 (London, I96I), pp. I80, 225.

17 Cf. Sir John D'Oyly, A Sketch of the Constitution of the Kandyan Kingdom (i832); new ed. Colombo, 1929).

18 Cf. L. S. Woolf, The Village in the Jungle (London, 1913). 19 Sydney Smith referred to Captain Robert Percival's Ceylon as being 'such an account as

a plain military man of diligence and common sense might be expected to compose; and narratives like these we must not despise. To military men we have been, and must be, indebted for our first acquaintance with the interior of many countries. Conquest has explored more than ever curiosity has done; and the path for science has been commonly opened by the sword' (Essays Social anzd Political, London, I 877, p. 278).

10 Lt.-Col. James Campbell, Excursionzs, Adventutres, and Field-Sports in Ceylon (2 vols., London, 1843), HI, 19.


dependent, and efficient, devoted to ideals of duty and service. Skinner was intensely proud of his race and its traditions. He was no D'Oyly or Turnour; far from living like a native, Skinner confessed that he found the Dutch staff at Batavia very odd in their adoption of Indonesian costumes and habits.21 His conception of masculinity was essentially British, and he recoiled from what he considered the effeminacy of Frenchmen.22 An appealing picture of Skinner at fifteen, conducting himself with the stoic reserve that he felt was expected of a British officer, reveals something of the barrier that generally reared itself between self-conscious European and excitable native in their mutual relations:

To kill a huge tusker with an old cut-down flint musket at the first shot I would, at any period of my life, have considered rather a feat; but that the first elephant I had seen, or come in contact with, should fall to a boy of fifteen ... was an event. I would have given anything to have remained to gloat over my prey, but at once felt that it would have been unsoldierlike and undignified to appear at all elated at the exploit ... and I then walked back to my quarters, pretending to be as indifferent as if I had bagged hundreds of elephants before... I waited patiently in my quarters until I thought ... the men had returned to the fort for their breakfast, when I stole out quietly and unobserved to gaze in private at my trophy.23

Skinner's secret pride in the incident reveals the essential simplicity of his character. He was by no means capable of the acute self-analysis that led George Orwell in a similar situation, to probe the motive and the law that ruled his action.24 Skinner never analyses his own actions: he feigns indifference simply because he thinks it right to do so. His autobiography dis- covers to the reader a man who instinctively acts according to ideals and traditions that have become as natural to him as the air he breathes. Where so much was written and said in these years of Justice and Honour as English ideals, Skinner was for many Ceylonese the uncomplicated embodiment of those ideals. He had learned from his hero, Sir Edward Barnes, how to conduct his life among the Ceylonese untroubled by the barrier that reserve and ignorance erected between European and native. Like Skinner, Major Forbes was a military officer who had received an engineer's training, and in his Eleven Years in Ceylon (London, I 840) Forbes reveals his appreciation of the architectural values of Ceylon's ancient civilization. A great deal of pre- liminary work on Indian and Ceylonese archaeology was done by the educated English amateur in drawing, design, and water-colour. Through their

21 Cf. Fifty Years, p. I36. 22 Ibid. p. 57. 23 Ibid. 24 Cf. George Orwell, Shooting an Elephant (I936) in Selected Essays, Penlguiln Books,

I960), pp. 95-6: 'I perceived in this moment that when the white man turns tyrant, it is his own freedom that he destroys. He becomes a sort of hollow, posing dummy, the convention- alized figure of a sahib. For it is the condition of his rule that he shall spend his life in trying to impress the "natives", and so in every crisis he has got to do what the natives expect of him. He wears a mask, and his face grows to fit it. . . A sahib has got to act like a sahib; he has got to appear resolute, to know his own mind and do definite things ... My whole life, every white man's life in the East, was one long struggle not to be laughed at.'


cultivated interest in the work of the orientalists, and of archaeologists like Layard and Schliemann, civilians and soldiers alike were sometimes able to get the better of the prejudices inculcated by religious attitudes.25

What 'Sampson Brown' referred to as the 'Mercantile caste' was to be found in the island's towns, and comprised members of commercial firms that had sprung up to supply the needs of the growing colony, and to market the coffee produced by planters in the interior. The planting community formed an important part of the mercantile group, and its interests and needs were identical with those of the Colombo merchants. As early as I826, F. C. Bar- low, aide-de-camp to Sir Edward Barnes, wrote that 'a few spirited individuals have grants of land and as the coffee of this Island is highly esteemed I hope they will reap the benefits due to industry '.26 Coffee-planting soon became such a profitable enterprise that Europeans were drawn to the island by the powerful attraction of a quickly made fortune. English society in Ceylon changed almost overnight, as the settlers poured in. Contemptuously called 'Interlopers' or 'Adventurers' by the civilians and the military, it was remarked that among them there

were not a few whose habits and conduct tended much to diminish the respect in which the English character had previously been held by the natives.27

When extended to Ceylon, the economic ideology then current in Britain- that private enterprise and the expenditure of individual capital must in the long run benefit society as a whole-created a situation in which planters and speculators eager to buy land for new estates were met by a Government willing to sell land as quickly as possible.28

25 Being part of an intellectual, scholarly tradition imparted an element to the services that did much, in the words of Sir Henry Maine, 'to abate national prejudices', cf. Lectures on the Early History of Institutions (London, I875), pp. i8-i9. Some idea of the other side of the picture can be obtained from George Calladine, The Diary of Colour-Serjeant George Cal- ladine, lgth Foot, 1793-1837, ed. M. L. Ferrar (London, I922). See especially the pQem Cal- ladine composed on sentry duty during the uprising of i8i8, p. 63. Also p. 74.

26 Barlow to the bishop of London, Pavilion, Kandy, 27 July I826, SPG/FP/i, 284-285- 27 Skinner, 'Memorandum', p. 222. Others noted, however, that 'as a class, the body of

emigrants was more than ordinarily aristocratic' (Tennent, op. cit. II, 231). Planting was evidently considered a respectable pursuit for younger sons of English upper-class families. Fasson's improvident 'John Folingsby, Bart.' is presented as saying to his son Adolphus:

Sir Jellaby Jingle and Admiral Sneeze Have each got a son in Ceylon.

If I stand you five thousand, you can, if you please, Make a fortune. Come, say, are you on? (Op. cit.)

28 Cf. Ralph Pieris, 'Society and Ideology in Ceylon during a "Time of Troubles" I795-

i850', 3 parts, University of Ceylon Review, Ix, no. 3 (July I95I), I7I-85; IX, no. 4 (October I95I), 266-79; x, no. I (January I952), pp. 79-I02. Pieris analyses the ideological background of the landsales of the thirties and forties in especial detail. Cf. also I. H. van den Driesen, 'Plantation Agriculture and Land-Sales Policy in Ceylon-The First Phase I836-I886, part 2, University of Ceylon Review, XIV, nos. I and 2 (January and April I956), 6-25. Also ' Land Sales Policy and Some Aspects of the Problem of Tenure I836-I 886, part 2, University of Ceylon Reviezw, xv, nos. I and 2 (January and April I957), 36-52.


To men drawn from widely different spheres of English society, the planting life appears to have given, besides quick profits, a lasting sense of community and union. Within the general structure of English colonial life there gradually grew up a group which developed its distinctive dress, ideals, manners, customs, and turns of phrase, despite the isolation of individual members of the group on scattered hill-country estates during the greater part of a year. The early pioneers of coffee-planting created a legend that survived the fall of the industry,itself, and supports the teaplanter of today, a legend whose hero is the English planter, strong, practical, brave, resolute, generous, realistic.29 The identification of the merchant and planting classes with one another, and the limitations of their outlook were obvious, even to the visitor; as a group they showed a spirit of indifference and distrust, border- ing on hostility, towards the native Ceylonese.30 Yet, their influence upon the development of Anglo-Ceylonese literature was an important one, for the periodicals in which the earliest literary steps were taken were edited chiefly by merchants and planters.31 The journals existed to serve planting interests, and literary activity was affected by this fact in various ways.

The Burgher community of Ceylon formed a body unique in Asia. While the social structure of traditional Ceylon kept the people bound to an agrarian economy, the British found in these descendants of the Dutch a group trained in the law, and accustomed to mercantile pursuits. In the change from the old

29 At least two writers found the planter a worthy subject for verse. William Skeen presented him as a modern Knight of the Round Table in The Knuckles and Other Poems (Col- ombo, I868). Some of the same elements are present in Fasson's treatment of the unpolished but admirably direct manners of the hunting planter:

No smirking ceremony here! No dainty social form! With bold and pitiless attack The groaning board they storm; The pie's crisp ramparts quickly fall Beneath the glittering blade; The loaf's proud head, with brown crust crowned Soon in the dust is laid. (A Hunting Morning, op. cit.)

30 The planters' attitude to the natives drew ironic comment from Dilke, cf. Greater Britain (London, i868), ii, i82. Trevelyan noted a similar phenomenon in India, and put it down to the lack of educated and sensitive men in the planting community, and to the essentially commercial relationship existing between the native and the planter or merchant, cf. The Competition-Wallah (London, I864), pp. 446-7, 305.

31 John Capper, born I8I4, helped to edit an English weekly, The Mining and Steam Navigation Gazette, before he arrived in Ceylon in I837, as assistant to the firm of Ackland and Boyd. He edited the Ceylon Magazine (I840-42), returned to Britain after I848, and contributed sketches of Ceylon Life to Dickens's Household Words, and became sub-editor of The Globe. He returned to Ceylon in I858, bought the Ceylon Times and edited a satiric paper entitled Muniandi (I869-7I). Alastair Mackenzie Ferguson (I8I6-92) published his early poems in the Inverness Courier, and arrived in Ceylon under the patronage of Governor Stewart Mackenzie in I837. Between I837 and I846, when he became the Observer's assistant- editor, he was successively in business, planting, a customs officer, and acting magistrate in Jaffna. In i85o he succeeded Dr Christopher Elliot as editor of the Observer. William Knigh- ton (I823-89) planted in the coffee districts before editing the Ceylon Herald, and writing Forest Life in Ceylon, his two-volune novel, in i854.


order to the new, the Burghers formed a 'middle class' in all the chief towns, and served an important function as interpreters of English ideas to the Cey- lonese. Their position in colonial society between I8I5 and I878 was accurately described by Tennent in I859:

They have risen to eminence at the Bar, and occupied the highest positions on the Bench. They are largely engaged in mercantile pursuits, and as writers and clerks they fill places of trust in every administrative establishment from the department of the Colonial Secretary to the humblest police court. It is not possible to speak too highly of the services of this meritorious body of men, by whom the whole machinery of government is put into action, under the orders of the civil officers. They may fairly be described in the language of Sir Robert Peel as the 'brazen wheels of the executive which keep the golden hands in motion '.32

In their homes, the Burghers maintained Dutch traditions, and for some years continued to speak Dutch.33 As time went on, however, the Burghers identified themselves more and more with English ways and customs, took easily to the English language and enthusiastically to English literature, and led the Ceylonese communities in social and political advances34 and literary experiment.

While the Burghers effectively bridged the two societies, the Sinhalese and

32 Ceylon, II, 156-7. 33 See William Digby, Forty Years of Official and Unofficial Life in an Oriental Crown Colony

(The Life of Sir Richard Morgan) (2 vols., London, i879), for a good contemporary account of the Burghers by an observant and impartial journalist. Cf. Liesching, op. cit. pp. 26-7, for a description of the growing attachment among Burghers to an English way of life. As late as I 854, however, Charles Lorenz found it strange, when visiting Holland, 'how the decorations in the house, the curious brass lanterns in the passage, the brass screen work in the fire screen, the foot stools, the social manner of the people, and the Zuiker Brood on the table all so strikingly reminded me of Home-Home-Home. It was as vivid a reproduction of Grandmother's House... as possible' (Journal of the Dutch Burgher Union of Ceylon, XIV, no. 2, October 1924, p. 57).

34 The first requests for an English school had come from the Burgher community. In I835 Joseph Marsh informed the secretary of the Church Missionary Society that 'a great number of the most respectable people' of Maradana had petitioned the governor against his removal from Colombo, where he had opened a private Academy in Hill Street for their children. He added that he had been requested by the same people to open 'a female school. The names of nearly 6o girls that are ready to attend have been sent to me' (Marsh to D. Coates, Colombo, 30 November I835, CMS/C. CE/O. 6i). The enthusiasm of the Burghers for women's education contrasts sharply with the prejudice among Sinhalese parents 'against having their Girls taught to read ... The ill use they fear the Girls will make of learning in holding epistolary correspondence with the men will not at all be counterballanced [sic] by the good they will derive from it' (Hume to J. Taylor, Matura, 28 August i820, MMS/iiA/i820-i 822). As late as I874 J. Nicholson protested that Christian education had not reached the 'high-born donnas' of the old Matara families, most of which were 'darkly, densely, totally heathen on the female side' (Nicholson to Boyce, Matara, 27 November I874, MMS/IX/I875-I876). The Tamils were not quite as backward as the Sinhalese in the matter of women's education; English education for women prospered earlier and better in Jaffna than in the South, for missionary attempts to regenerate the Tamils were directed through the conversion and education of women-. Cf. Minnie Hastings Harrison, Uduvil 1824-1924 (Tellippalai, I925), for the history of one of the oldest girls' schools in Asia. The 'Jaffna Female Seminary', a model of women's education in I864, provided 'a complete En-glish eduLcation', with 'accomplish- ments' that included French, Drawing, Music, Needlework, and the makinig of artiflcial flowers (Walter J. Sendall, Report upon Aided and Other Schools in the District of Jaffna i864, MMS/vIII/i858-I867).


the Tamils remained, in their own and in European eyes, members of what was then called 'Native Society'. Of these two groups, the Tamils in the north seemed better able to come to terms with the new influences, judiciously selecting what they considered worth adopting. In Jaffna, where the American missionaries were dispensing an ambitious literary and scientific education to Tamils in English, Tennent found

the familiar objects and arrangements of a college being combined with the remarkable appearance and unwonted costumes of the students ... The sleeping apartments, the dining hall, and the cooking room are in purely Indian taste, but all accurately clean; and, stepping out of these, the contrast was striking between them, and the... laboratory with its chemical materials, retorts, and electro-magnetic apparatus.35

The appearance of Jaffna College in I830 reflected, in fact, the remarkable ability of the Tamil to adapt himself to exterior conditions and yet retain his cultural individuality. The modern Tamil who is completely at home in a sophisticated, urban community, and yet doffs that personality the moment that he re-enters his family compound in Jaffna is an illustration of the same thing. Of the Sinhalese it could be said that they were the more vitally affected, culturally, of the two racial groups. The Sinhalese social system seems to have been more vulnerable to the transforming touch of western liberal ideas than the Tamil. Castes being arranged among Sinhalese Buddhists on a functional basis, and related to certain trades and professions, the old order could be jolted with the first effects of English rule, as the new professional classes of lawyers, government clerks, and traders cut across the original divisions, and created a society in which men who still adhered to the old caste-groupings now shared professional interests, ideas, and a common language with men of other groups.

The Ceylonese writers whose work distinguished these years were drawn, with few exceptions, from the higher classes of the Burgher, Sinhalese, and Tamil communities that composed the small group intensively educated in English.36 Despite the conservatism and mutual exclusiveness of their communities, men such as Charles Ambrose Lorenz (I829-7I), James Alwis (I 823-78), and Mutu Coomaraswamy (I 820-79) were brought together first by the English education that they had in common, and later by their interest in politics and their pursuit of a single profession. The remarkable concentra- tion of the island's talent in the study and practice of the law was merely the result of circumstances that made it the only intellectual, profitable, and socially acceptable pursuit available to Ceylonese whose ambitions led them to

35 Sir James Emerson Tennent, Christianity in Ceylon (London, i850), p. 178. 36 The English-educated Ceylonese formed a very small minority of the total population,

and to this minority the Burghers contributed the most. At the I9II census, over 75 per cent of the Burghers were literate in English. Cf. S. J. Tambiah, 'Ethnic Representation in Cey- lon's Higher Administrative Services i870-1946', in University of Ceylon Review, XIII, nos. 2 and 3 (April and July 1955), 113-34. 'The literacy among low-country Sinhalese-more westernized than the Kandyan-was very low... The Ceylon Tamils, though a little superior in this respect to the low-country Sinhalese, fell very far short of the Burghers' (pp. 128-9).


look higher than the lowest rungs of the government service ladder, and whom inbred prejudices made reluctant to venture into trade. Their professional interests affected their contribution to literature in quantity as well as in quality, for lawyers were forced to keep moving continually between Colombo and the provincial courts, and their literary work was necessarily a product of hard-won leisure time. Yet, while legal interests restricted literary output, they inspired the ideals and purposes that Ceylonese writers of the period express consistently in their work. Despite their different communal backgrounds certain writers regarded themselves as a body pledged to their country's political advancement, literary improvement, and social reform. The atmosphere of a select, self-conscious, intellectual elite communicates itself in the tone of a letter that C. A. Lorenz wrote to Alwis on 23 July I863:

MY DEAR JAMES,-

Your lecture last night was to me a rich treat, and, I need not assure you, was a great success. I could have heard you with pleasure for several hours more. You richly deserve the high compliment paid you by the Rev. Mr Hardy. It should make your name go down to posterity with honour. But, speaking of posterity, how few there are to supply our places when we are no more. Please let me have the perusal of your MS.37

Like other members of their group, Lorenz and Alwis adopted standards derived in part from their education at Marsh's Colombo Academy, and in part from the attitudes that permeated colonial society.

English ideas and influences passed from one group in this divided society to another through certain well-defined channels. An important link con- necting European and Native society, and the subdivisions in both societies with one another, was the missionary group, which exerted a powerful influence in colonial society,38 but which 'Sampson Brown' tactfully omitted from his critical analysis of it.39 Missionaries had arrived in Ceylon in i8I2,

and were well established in their various denominations throughout the island by the mid-century. Church-going had been made obligatory on em- ployees of the Dutch Company in Dutch times, and remained as a sign of respectability in British times. The Sermon and the Tract were important means of communicating to the native society the ideas and religious con- victions that the European society believed to lie at the heart of Western

3 Quoted James Alwis, Memoirs and Desultory Writings (Colombo, 1878), p. i. Under Lorenz's editorship the Examiner represented 'the Ceylonese', and not an exclusively Burgher interest (cf. Digby, op. cit. I, 40).

38 Tennent's description of colonial society in the fifties suggests its sensitivity to missionary influence, cf. Ceylon, II, 158-9.

39 As time went on, the periodicals grew less delicate. In I869 Muniandi's comment on contemporary proposals for the Disestablishment of the Church of England in Ceylon was to print a 'memorial' as from the Colonial Chaplains, protesting their selfless bestowal of 'the chaste pleasure of their genial society at tea-meetings, and their mild influence at croquet- parties', and their constant endeavour 'to secure the approval of the Governor and his Execu- tive, the attachment of the chief administrators of colonial affairs, and the awe of the lower classes of the community' (Muniandi, I, no. 5, 14 August I869).


civilization. Englishmen of all classes generally supported the religious bodies, and considered their work both necessary and useful; Ceylonese acknowledged the missionaries' selfless benevolence, and regarded them as the source of intellectual as well as of spiritual benefit. Robert Carver voiced a general assumption when he wrote in i8I8 that

that Missionary who separates himself from his father's house;-forgoes the com- forts of civilised society, and submits to behold the barbarous spectacles of savage life, though he cannot escape the pains which they inflict,-endures to be deprived of the opportunity of cultivating his own mind in useful knowledge, and tasting the sweets of intellectual pleasures, and at the same time plunges himself among com- parative intellectual darkness, with the heavenborn desire of shedding forth some rays of borrowed light; I say, such an one surely is offering no unacceptable sacrifice to God.40

The fact that they had voluntarily sacrificed all hope of social advancement or elevation in the Church at home, inspired by an ideal, and by concern for people they had never seen and knew very little of, suggests the remarkable reserves of moral and physical courage that lay in the men who answered Wilberforce's call for missionaries to the East. Their letters, preserved in the archives of missionary societies of varying denominations, reveal an intensity of feeling that sometimes transcends the limitations of the political situation in which they were called upon to work. Not by political influence, but simply by 'living close to God and cultivating a deep acquaintance with him' they hoped to be 'made the honord Instruments of Extending the boundaries of the Redeemer's Kingdom '41 Lacking the gentleness of Joseph Marsh of the Academy, but equally determined and high principled, was John Kilner, a missionary who publicly condemned the growing commercialism of colonial society as hostile to the Christian ideal of fellowship among all men. To 'Some remarks made on The Jaffna Tamil by a European of some official eminence, a representative man', that 'The Jaffna Tamil... in his natural state... is a well constituted and decently conditioned animal', Kilner re- torted with vigour:

To say the least, these sentiments are degradingly mercantile. They would appro- priately apply to the grazier or stock breeder, who has scientifically tested some stalled quadruped to ascertain its marketable value! Without much of modification, the slave-dealer might adopt them as an estimate of a herd of slaves, who have been estimated by the feed required, and the return of labour realized ... The representative of Western culture and authority in Ceylon needs something beyond a capa- city to guage [sic] the neck of this people with a view to adjust the yoke; he needs something more than the curiosity of the antiquary, or the fluctuating interest of the experimenter; he needs to have a very high regard for human nature, as such.42

40 Robert Carver to the Methodist Missionary Society Committee, Trincomalee, 29

December i 8 i 8, in Extracts from Quarterly Letters, MMS/i A/I 817-I 820. 41 Benjamin Clough to Dr Clark. 27 Seotember i814. MMS/IA/i8l4-i8T7. 42 'J. K.', 'Some reflections on " The Jaffna Tamil "', in The Friend, 2nd ser., I (June I870),

66-7.


Such sensitivity to the situation of the native appears rarely in print, however. The passionate force of Kilner's indictment betrays a conscious loneliness. The kind of sensitivity that prevailed among missionaries to the problem of race relations is more accurately represented by Lynch, who wrote in I8I4 that, 'while we abhor the Antichristian conduct' of Europeans who refused to allow a native to sit in their presence, yet 'we feel very delicate at once to break through the custom, lest we expose ourselves to censure on the one hand, & such a degree of familiarity on the other, as might cause contempt . 'Christianity was never designed to over-turn the civil rights of men', was the opinion of John Callaway in i8zo.

There was never a European from India who would not pronounce association like that, the last stage of absurdity; and the direct way to overturn the British authority over the people. A thought of that kind never enters their mind, any more than the West India Slaves dream of dining with the Supreme Council. To draw any parallel from the different classes of people in Britain would mislead-you are all whites & of one language-yet mighty distinctions exist. But between tne Indian aborigines & respectable Europeans the difference is immense.44

The task of bridging an immense social chasm thus fell to men who were not altogether fitted for it. Lacking the cultivated outlook and the training of the civil servants, few missionaries could find anything to praise in colonial society; the intellectuals among the civilians and the military aroused their distrust; while few could give Ceylonese rural life more than the reaction of fear and disgust.45 Stead lived in Trincomalee, separated by a barrier of contempt and fear from the native life around him. The pen of Inspiration points out many awful traits in their character [he wrote in I820]. In the abuse of those privileges with which God had favoured them, they were given up to a reprobate mind, and to vile affections. They are vain in their imagina- tions and their foolish heart is darkened. Professing themselves to be wise they are become fools, and have changed the image of the incorruptible God into an image like unto cor- ruptible Man, and to birds, andfourfooted beasts, and creeping things.46

The task of comprehending and displacing philosophical doctrines that were enshrined in little-known literary languages fell to men who had been selected according to the classic Evangelical principle that valued faith above

43 J. Lynch to the Methodist Missionary Committee, Jaffnapatam, 9 September I8I4, MMS/i A/I8I4-I8I7.

44 Callaway to Joseph Taylor, Colombo, 9 October i820, MMS/I I A/I8I8-i82I. 45 Clough warned headquarters in I8I4 that the Ceylon missionary had to 'mix with two

Classes of people; the first is English Gentlemen all of whom have had a Classical education. And sometimes he will have to contend with a little fashionable D-ism, delivered in rather a pretty manner. The other Class is the Natives who though they are Strangers to the corrup- tions of Europe... have... received educations which he will find it his duty to counteract' (Clough to Dr Clark, 27 September I8I4, MMS/IA/I8I4-I8I7).

46 A. Stead to the Methodist Missionary Committee, Trincomalee, 9 August i820, MMS/ iiA/i8i8-i82I. Cf. Ralph Pieris (ed.), 'The Brodie Papers on Sinhalese Folk-Religion', Uniiversity of Ceylon Review, xi, no. 2 (April I953), I IO-28, with John Callaway's preface to Yakkun Nattanazva (London, I829). A. 0. Brodie's individual approach was unique even among laymen.


intellect, and moral uprightness above an academic training. Their chosen work lay in the field of translations from oriental languages into English, but their approach to the task inevitably differed in spirit from the tradition represented in Ceylon by such men as D'Oyly and Turnour. They had not been led to expect an intellectual struggle of any great proportions, and their letters convey an abiding impression of the humility and self-distrust experienced by missionaries at the difficulties of the work before them.

For my own part I am fully persuaded if I had been sensible of the qualifications necessary for an Eastern Indian Missionary I could not have been prevailed upon to have left my native Shore [wrote Benjamin Clough, later to become the compiler of a Sinhalese-English dictionary that is still a standard work]; a sense of my own unfitness for so arduous an undertaking has cost me many anxious moments and private groanes-However as I am here I am determined by the help of God to make the best I can of a bad matter.47

Clough's distress was echoed by Robert Spence Hardy, one of the most important literary personalities of the period, nearly thirty years later:

The structure of my mind does not fit me for metaphysical research; I am not acquainted with Pali, it is now too late for me to attempt to acquire it, and without it no one can properly understand Budhism.48

Twenty-three years later, Hardy was still demanding a change in unenlightened missionary policy in the selection and training of recruits for overseas.

The glorified spirits of Wesley, Fletcher, Benson, and Watson, must smile at the thought that their works alone are regarded as sufficient for the missionary who will have to grapple with the most specious arguments ever presented by man against the word and work of God.49

In the light of his inspiration, and as a result of his training, the missionary saw himself as a modern knight, pledged to an intellectual crusade against the Anti-Christ entrenched in every aspect of Sinhalese or Tamil culture that claimed a Buddhist or a Hindu origin. The spirit of his approach to oriental literature tragically limited his ability to examine it with justice or sympathy. The literary contribution made by the Ceylon missionaries were attempts, not to unravel for the English-speaking world the nature of oriental culture, but to prove to the superstitious and the ungodly that the scientific absurdities and contradictions in Hindu and Buddhist philosophy proved their origin to have been human, and not divine. In John Callaway, aesthetic pleasure warred with moral considerations as he progressed in his study of Sinhalese at Matara, the centre of learning in South Ceylon.

I am daily applying myself to the language-and feel great delight in the work [wrote Callaway in i8I7]. So far as my observation has reached I have found it

47 Clough to Dr Clark, 27 September I814, MMS/IA/i8I4-I8I7. 48 Hardy to the Methodist Missionary Committee, Negombo, 30 April I842, MMS/Vi/

I84I-I842. 49 Hardy to the Methodist Missionary Committee, Colpetty, I4 February i865, MMS/

vIII/I863-I867.

23 Hi IX


copious, elegant and expressive. The heathen songs and histories which I have heard chaunted in their worship display considerable melody. It possesses pronouns exactly suited to the rank of the individual addressed.

But the richness of Sinhalese imagery and the flowing rhythms of Sinhalese poetry could not compensate for the immorality of the system they enshrined.

A bana or heathen discourse now before me contains a long list of Budhu's honorary titles. He is compared also to a variety of beautiful objects in nature: said to be powerful as the sun, cheerful as the moon, wise as the sea is deep, bright as an image of gold, &c., &c.... There are seven celebrated fabulous histories-... plentifully stored with whatever is earthly, sensual, or devilish, and are looked on by the Cingalese as their classics.50

William Buckley Fox felt that Sinhalese folk poetry was even more morally dangerous than the prose religious texts, as they contained legends and 'Stories similar to those of Fairies goblins and Enchanters which were so plentiful in England in the dark Days of Popery'. 51 Stead, learning Tamil in Jaffna, was informed by his tutor of the Hindu creation myth contained in the shastras, and wrote

Glad should I be, if I were able to read these High Tamul Books for myself. Not that the mind can be much improved by an acquaintance with such senseless no- tions: but it is necessary that we should know them, that we may meet those who believe them on their own ground.52

This militant attitude was expressed most clearly and with devastating effect in the published work of Robert Spence Hardy. For all his lack of distinction as a poet, William Skeen mirrored Hardy's special contributions to literary developments very accurately, recalling the time

When HARDY, silver-tongued, the 'Friend', Projected, and his volumes penn'd That Budhism to the world unveil'd, A system he through life assail'd.53

Hardy influenced both the attitudes and the styles of Ceylonese writers of English. His eloquent style and well-chosen and rhythmically effective language were widely admired and mitated. The few who could read him without admiration were placed on the defensive. He entered with aggressive gusto a field particularly important to the early literary developments of the period- translation and orientalist research-and a very great deal of Ceylonese writing is a deliberate or an unconscious response to Hardy.

Their letters, written from different parts of Ceylon at different times, show that these attitudes were general among missionaries of all denominations. It is true that, in Ceylonese society, exported religious sectarianism created

10 Callaway to Richard Watson, Matura, 5 May i8I7, MMS/iA/i8I4-i8I7. 51 Fox to R. Watson, Caltura, 4 April i8i8, MMS/IA/i8,7-i8i9. 52 A. Stead, Jourrnal, Point Pedro, I7 July i82I, MMS/i I A/I8I8-i82I. 53 Skeen, op. cit. pp. 89-go.


familiar divisions; the Church of England in 'Native Society', for instance, began to be increasingly identified with the well-born upper classes.

As the Natives regard the Bishop as being a great officer of the State the more wealthy and honourable among them who are nominally Protestant, attach themselves to the Anglican Church, and those who attend our Ministry are in general poor, being of the labouring Class [wrote a Methodist missionary, D. J. Gogerly, in i858].54

It is evident, however, that the sectarianism that racked the English Church in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, though still evidently an active force when transplanted to a foreign land,55 began by degrees to seem of minor importance when placed beside the common purpose shared by the denominations. The situation called for a pooling of talent, irrespective of name or label. Literary activity was an especially unifying force, as can be seen in the task of translating the Scriptures into Tamil, which was under- taken jointly by members of the C.M.S. and the American Mission Society, and directed by Peter Percival, a Methodist missionary. The response was at times difficult to make in the face of the traditional hostility among the churches, but the consciousness of Buddhist criticism56 and the experience of working in unity has left its legacy in the sense of fellowship that has survived in the churches of the east. (It seems worth noting here the fact that the first experiments in Church reunion have come from the churches of South India and Ceylon.) An essential unity of thought and attitude can be perceived in the writing of popular Colombo preachers, of influential educationists, and of obscure outstation missionaries, of all denominations. General clerical appro- bation met the numerous and influential publications of Robert Spence Hardy.

Besides the influence of groups and individuals in transmitting English ideas from one society to the other, certain institutions and organizations sprang up in urban centres to do this in a more organized and effective way.

54 D. J. Gogerly to Elijah Hoole, Colombo, i5 March I858, MMS/vIII/I858-i863. 55 When Andrew Kessen, a young Methodist missionary, joined the staff of the govern-

ment-run Colombo Academy, he found 'it is no ordinary trial of a young man's principles & firmness to be surrounded by very high Church men-to hear his ordination unhesitatingly declared invalid-& to be despised & disregarded accordingly' (Kessen to the Methodist Missionary Committee, Colombo, 13 September I842, MMS/vI/i841-i842). Gogerly heard with some uneasiness of Bishop Chapman's innovations at St Peter's Church-'The Pulpit, I am informed ... is to be altered and made octangular for the purpose of turning about in it. All these things indicate the Man' (Gogerly to Elijah Hoole, Colpetty, I7 November I845, MMS/vI/i845). When the licences of C.M.S. missionaries were withdrawn by Bishop Copleston in I876, Nicholson declared the issue to be 'not a mere difference of opinion, or an accidental clashing of zealous partisans; but the great battle of Evangelical versus Catholic principles, introduced into the Mission Field' (J. Nicholson to Punshon, Matara, I9 August I876, MMS/Ix/i875-I876).

56 Sectarianism and different kinds of religious persecution had been judged by the Sin- halese since Portuguese times, by traditional Buddhist standards of religious tolerance. As late as the mid-century, Tennent affirmed that 'a serious obstacle to the acceptance of reformed Christianity by the Singhalese Buddhists has arisen from the distinctions and dif- ferences between the various churches by those ministers it has been successively offered to them' ('Christianity in Ceylon', p. I95).

23-2


Among the earliest of these was the Ceylon Literary Society, inaugurated in December I820, to become later on the Literary and Agricultural Society.57 There arose also various 'Improvement Societies', in which young and ambitious Ceylonese could discuss literary, scientific, and religious subjects with some person qualified to guide them in their pursuit of knowledge. Peter Percival reported from Jaffna in I836 that 'about io young men, Burghers & Natives, have formed themselves into a Society for mental improvement, over whom I preside & give them two hours of my time once a week '.58 John Scott reported from Colombo in 1859 that a Y.M.C.A. had been formed, under the auspices of which 'public lectures have been delivered in very humble imita- tion of those at Exeter Hall, by various Ministers & gentlemen which have excited great interest, & I hope effected some good '. 59Among the public lectures a young man named Edmund Gooneratne attended in I86I were two, on 'Public Education & its Advantages' (25 February i86i) and on 'The Poetry of Everyday Life' (I2 October i86i), though the last of these does not appear to have held his attention, since he returned home when the speaker 'had 2

done on account of its being the Dinner time'. On i 5 October Gooneratne heard Sir Edward Creasy, Chief Justice, speak on what appears to have been 'The British Constitution '.60 Public meetings, the Courts of Law, and the churches of various denominations, were important points of social contact, at which Cey- lonese could form their ideas and expressions with reference to English models.

In I845 the establishment of the Ceylon Branch of the Royal Asiatic So- ciety afforded Ceylonese an opportunity to pursue knowledge at closer quarters, and later even participate in historical and literary research on equal terms with educated Englishmen. The society proposed

to institute and promote enquiries into the History, Religion, Literature, Arts and Social condition of the present and former inhabitants of this Island, with its Geo- logy, Mineralogy, its Climate and Meteorology, its Botany and Zoology.6'

Justice Stark, the Society's first President, announced that he expected two beneficial results from its establishment:

In the first place, the Society will collect the scattered rays of information possessed by different individuals, and make them bear with effect on. . . topics of interest; and

57 The names of a few Ceylonese appear in the list of members. Cf. Ceylon Antiquary, VIII

(I922-23), 73-9I, i66-82, 262-83, 347-55, for an account of the Society, in 'In Ceylon a Century ago: The Proceedings of the Ceylon Literary and Agricultural Society; with Notes by T. Petch'.

58 Percival to the Methodist Missionary Committee, Jaffna, 3 I December I836, MMS/IIA/ I8I7-I836.

59 John Scott to Elijah Hoole, Mutwal, Colombo, n.d., received i9 April I859, MMS/ vIII/I 858-I863.

60 MS. diaries of Edmund Rowland Gooneratne, Atapattu Mudaliyar of Galle i86i-68, entry of I5 October I86I: 'Edward bade me go alnd hear Sir E. Creasy's Lecture this evening ... went and paid 2S. each at the door and went upstairs ... at i past 4 Creasy came and began he quoted several passages and first touched upon Mediaeval and then modern, and condemn- ing it showed the objections raised to it as early as the i8th century when Kingdoms boasted as owning the subject.' 61 CBRAS Yournal, i, no. i (I845), Rutles.


in the second place it will tend to raise up and encourage a literary and scientific spirit, so sadly wanting in the Island.62

At its foundation, the membership of the C.B.R.A.S. was exclusively Euro- pean, and included some of the most important names in the literature of the period.63 In I849 John Capper introduced James Alwis into the society, and his entrance was quickly followed by those of Dandris de Silva Gunaratna, Louis de Zoysa, and Charles Ambrose Lorenz. The C.B.R.A.S. is an important part of the literary history of the period, for it gathered the outstanding talent of colonial society into its fold, and provided a forum for the exchange of ideas and a journal for the publication of original research. Its meetings attracted literary and scientific men of all religions and communities, and sowed the seeds that produced, among other things, James Alwis's English translation of the Sidath Sangarawa in i852, William Knighton's novel Forest-Life in Ceylon in I854, and Tennent's histories in i85o and i859.64 The editors of Colombo's leading newspapers were all members of the C.B.R.A.S. Gogerly's painstaking translations of Pali religious works appeared in the Journal of the society, the volumes of which provide a useful fund of information in relation to the intellectual and literary taste of the time. Above all, the activities of the C.B.R.A.S. focused the attention of educated men upon contemporary and local problems. While the wide circulation of British periodicals, novels, and political and religious literature of all types encouraged Ceylonese to regard London as the centre of the civilized world, and the source of the purest and most correct standards of morality and art, the C.B.R.A.S. amassed a body of detailed and scientifically presented information concerning the past and present circumstances of the Island. Its researches helped to provide the foundation for the period's experiments in the writing of fiction, history, and verse, which mirror in different ways the application of Western ideas and standards to indigenous material.

Literature from overseas reached the Ceylonese reader either through direct sale, or through town libraries, which were soon established in urban centres

62 Ibid. p. 3. Stark's address was delivered on I May I845. 63 The first patron of the C.B.R.A.S. was the governor, Sir Colin Campbell, and two of its

four vice-patrons were Bishop Chapman and Sir James Emerson Tennent. Its vice-president was John Gibson MacVicar, author of a treatise on The Beautiful, the Picturesque, and the Sublime; its treasurer was John Capper, and its secretary William Knighton, who published his History of Ceylon that year.

64 The Introduction to Alwis's Sidath Sangarawa is based on two papers originally read before the C.B.R.A.S. in I850, the first of which was a retort to Hardy's provocative paper on The Language and Literature of the Singhalese, read in November I846. A fairly close association between Alwis and Knighton can be conjectured from certain references in their works, cf. Alwis, Attanagaluvansa (i866), preface, pp. xci-xcii, and compare the character of 'MIaran- dhan' in Knighton's novel; cf. a footnote to the Sidath Sangarawa, pp. 227-8, referring to a young European who improved his Sinhalese by conversing with the fish and vegetable vendors of Colombo, and compare Forest-Life (I854), I, I5. The C.B.R.A.S. library contained, in I846, James Mill's History of British India in eight volumes; Mill's attitudes are reflected in Tennent's histories, which acknowledge the aid of Gogerly, Hardy, and Alwis, all prominent members of the C.B.R.A.S.


of any importance. As early as the thirties, Colombo's Garrison Circulating Library helped to introduce English novels to Ceylonese readers. At the town libraries, British periodicals and newspapers were available to members :65

among the libraries already established in I840 were the Colombo Pettah Library, the Galle Reading Room, the Trincomalee Reading Room, the Ratnapura Library, and the Kandy United Service Library. Specifically religious literature was of course readily available to everyone in the book rooms of every missionary society.

Of special importance in this period were the books published by English people about Ceylon, which answered the demand in England for accurate information regarding the geography, history, and social characteristics of the new dependency.66 The tales brought back by early travellers to India, of a fairy-tale land whose fabulous wealth defied all attempts to recount it, had been only matched by the legends that clustered about the little island at its southern tip, which was known to the Greeks as Taprobane. Through translation from Greek geographers, and the descriptions of travellers like Marco Polo and Ralph Fitch, Ceylon had entered the English consciousness and English literature as an Eden of almost unearthly beauty and unparalleled wealth, fragrant with cinnamon and spices, blessed with all plenty and peace. So Purchas described her in his Pilgrimage:

The Heauens with their deawes, the Ayre with a pleasant holesomenesse and fragrant freshnesse, the Waters in their many Riuers and Fountaines, the Earth di- uersified in aspiring Hills, lowly Vales, equall and indifferent Plaines, filled in her inward Chambers with Mettalls and jewells, in her outward Court and vpper face stored with whole Woods of the best Cinnamon that the Sunne seeth, besides Fruits, Oranges, Leimons, &c. surmounting those of Spaine; Fowles and Beasts, both tame and wilde (among which is their Elephant, honoured by a naturall ac- knowledgement of excellence, of all other Elephants in the world.) These all haue conspired and joyned in common League, to present unto Zeilan the chiefe of wordly treasures and pleasures, with a long and healthfull life in the inhabitants, to enioy them. No maruell then, if sense and sensualitie haue here stumbled on a Paradise.67

But Purchas and Robert Knox were out of date by i802. The 'official mind', as Froude referred to it, was apt to be often confused in matters relating to the

66 Among the periodicals taken by the Colombo Pettah Library at various times between i 802 and I 887 were the Edinburgh Review, the Quarterly British Review, the Cornhill Magazine and the Nineteenth Century Magazine (Colombo Pettah Library Catalogue, I906). Periodicals listed in the i883 catalogue of James Alwis's library include the Gentleman's Magazine, Blackwood's, the Edinburgh Review, the Dublin University Magazine, the Westminster and Foreign Quarterly Review, and the Illustrated London News.

66 The first history of Ceylon to be published in the nineteenth century-The History of Ceylon, from the earliest period to the year MDCCCXV by 'Philalethes' (London, I8I7)-had subjoined a reprint of Knox's seventeenth-century Historical Relation, to answer a demand for detailed information that arose after Britain's acquisition of Kandyan territory in i8I5.

67 Purchas His Pilgrimage, or Relations of the World and the Religions Observed in All Ages and places discovered, from the Creation unto this present. In Foure Partes. By Samuel Purchas, Minister at Estwood in Essex (London, I613), p. 458.


Empire's more far-flung outposts. There was probably a good deal of truth in the anecdotes of indifference that cluster so thickly about the Colonial Office in these years, when a House could hardly be collected to debate an Indian affair.68 When a ruling was called for on some colonial matter, the Office tended to draw upon an accumulated body of past experience, on the theory that Indian, African, Canadian, or Australian developments were all meaningful aspects of certain central problems.69 Such a practice developed into a matter of principle. Lord Grey referred, for example, to the patronage of Buddhist and Hindu places of worship by a British local government (according to the terms of the Kandyan Convention of i8I5)70 as

a case in which the principles brought into debate depend not upon any local circumstances, but upon considerations which can be appreciated with equal clearness, in whatever country they may be discussed, or which ... can be appreciated more clearly at a distance from the scene of action, than in the centre of a society agitated by the proposed application of them to practice.7'

In the application of this principle, the Colonial Office was often hampered by a lack of information, and this it was the duty of local officials to provide, in the form of reports, books, and translations. The histories of Ceylon written by 'Philalethes' and by Tennent originated in this way. More popular accounts were written to satisfy the curiosity of English people interested in emigration. Campbell's Excursions (London, I843) and Bennett's Ceylon and Its Capabilities (London, I843) were directed at this public, as was Sir Samuel Baker's Eight Years' Wanderings in Ceylon (London, I855). Philanthropists in Britain were interested in the activities of missions in Ceylon, and James Selkirk's Recollections (London, I 844) was one of many books written to satisfy this need. At the same time, the growing public taste in Britain for the antique, the romantic, and the grotesque was being fed by a succession of amateur orientalists and visitors to Ceylon.72 Benjamin Clough requested that a copy

68 Cf. J. A. Froude, Oceana (London, i886), p. I2. Cf. T. B. Macaulay, The Government of India (I833), Works, vol. 8, p. I2I. Even when the question of separatism was debated in the sixties, in Parliament and outside 'it was in nine cases out of ten impossible to secure attention to colonial affairs', C. A. Bodelsen, Studies in Mid-Victorian Imperialism (Kjoben- havn, I924), p. 4I.

69 The application of Canadian and Indian experience to such a political problem as the partitioning of Africa has been recently discussed by R. Robinson and J. Gallagher in Africa and the Victorians (London, 196I).

70 The British government in Ceylon was committed to the protection of Buddhist property and the patronage of Buddhist ceremonies by Clause 5 of the Convention, which laid down that 'The Religion of Buddha, professed by the Chiefs and Inhabitants of these Provinces, is declared inviolable, and its Rites, Ministers, and Places of Worship are to be maintained and protected' (quoted Bennett, op. cit. appendix, p. lxix). The government's protection of Buddhism was a source of perpetual irritation to missionaries and Church people in Ceylon. It even roused Wilberforce, cf. R. I. Wilberforce and S. Wilberforce, Life of William Wilberforce (London, I838), III, 379-80.

71 Dispatch of i3 April I847, quoted Boake, op. cit. p. 31.

72 Maria Jane Jewsbury, a friend of Mrs Hemans, wrote with sentimental nostalgia of the island's 'romantic' beauty in i 829, in 'A Remembered Scene', Lays of Leisure Hours (London, I829), pp. I47-9. Two interpretations of the Ceylon scene that suited very different tastes


of Edward Upham's Budhism (1829) be sent him, with the sardonic comment,

I have my apprehensions, it is another catchpenny thing-However, unless the Engravings, and the fine large splendid margin wh. of course I reckon upon should make the work extravagantly dear, be so kind as send it me out.

The inaccuracies and misconceptions circulated by contemporary writers made Clough protest-

Really when I look at some of the 'books', 'Essays', and 'Remarks' on Buddhism which have been palmed upon the world in the style of grave truths, I feel-as though I could not find a screen thick enough to hide my face from them-Such Stuff! such Balderdash!... I should like to see an end of it.73

The hidden religions of the East were a new source of excitement to lovers and collectors of curiosities; sometimes, indeed, they proved hardly sensational enough to gratify their tastes. William Buckley Fox wrote apologetically in I8I9-

I sent a Sleeping Boodhu to Mr Marsden and have been trying hard and long to obtain a God for Mr Bunting but his order was for a large ugly one but they generally make their God hansome [sic] but I can send him an Ugly Devil which I suppose has been worshipped for an age.74

Such publications introduced the Ceylonese reader to the opinions of English people upon native character and society, and were of very great importance both in forming his own attitude to it, and in influencing his literary treatment of it.75 The newspapers and periodicals published in these years served a similar purpose; all together, the Memoir, the History, the Tract, and the Literary Periodical were probably the four most important means of disseminating English ideas and attitudes through print in the divided society that formed a nineteenth-century urban centre in Ceylon. It would be unwise to undertake a political or sociological study of the subject without an examination of these materials.

were Bizet's Pearl Fishers and Hannah More's The Feast of Freedom, a playlet in verse dedi- cated to Sir Alexander Johnstone. Mrs. Reginald Heber, visiting Ceylon with her husband in I 824, allowed her imagination to suggest that the mountains of the interior 'were crowned with ruins', and indulged in nostalgic reminiscence of Llangollen and Wynnstay, cf. Bishop Reginald Heber, Narrative of a Journey (London, i828), pp. 242-3.

73 Clough to J. James, Colombo, 24 September I828. MMS/Iv/i827-i829. 74 Fox to J. Taylor, Caltura, 27 February I8I9. MMS/iA/i8I7-i820. 75 The collection in Alwis's Library of 'Works on Ceylon' included the Travels of Marco

Polo, Knox's Historical Relation, the works of 'Philalethes', Percival, James Cordiner, Davy, Forbes, Campbell, Selkirk, 'Sampson Brown', Marshall, Bennett, Pridham, Tennent, Sirr, Baker, Barrow, Capper, Bishop Heber, Skeen, Casie Chitty, Ferguson, and R. S. Hardy. He also possessed Dilke's Greater Britain, and both Knighton's books about Ceylon, besides a large collection of Royal Asiatic Society papers (Catalogue of I883). His collection may have been unusually large for a private gentleman, and its completeness was the result of his special interests. But these books (which were expensive) were also available in the public libraries, and some (notably the works of Tennent) were to be found in most upper-class Ceylonese homes.


As for the sphere of Commonwealth literature, a general conclusion would seem to be that the sources tapped in a study of a small country intensively influenced by English ideas are likely to be both useful and valuable. In the case of Ceylon, it is possible to trace literary developments to such political correlates as the establishment of a reformed civil service, to such social movements as the expansion of Nonconformist Christianity in the nineteenth century into the mission field, and the beginnings of a new vision of Empire in the drive for emigration in the thirties. In the background lurk the conservatism of Sir William Jones, the liberalism of James Mill, the religious dog- matism of Paley, the romanticism of Sir Walter Scott and James Thomson, and the assurance of Macaulay. These are the familiar figures of almost every colonial landscape of ideas, but the sharpness of their outlines cannot be grasped without an understanding of what happened to the energies they released in the peculiar field of colonial life, its political tensions, and its social and moral restrictiveness. The foundations of Commonwealth literature and politics are to be found in those elements of Victorian life and thought that certain groups of English people-growing ever more conscious repre- sentatives of 'home' with every month away from it-brought with them, and transplanted according to their individual or corporate lights and abilities, in an unfamiliar setting.

Town Life in 19th Century Ceylon

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