The Two Societies: A Study of Town Life in Nineteenth-Century Ceylon

Author(s): Yasmine Gooneratne

Source: The Historical Journal, Vol. 9, No. 3 (1966), pp. 338-359
Published by: Cambridge University Press
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2637985
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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 certainlyare a most repelling race: there's no making anything of
them as yet, and I doubt if we ever shall... A native of one particularcaste will not
marryinto or associatewith anotherand so the whole race of them is split into small
factions.This is bad enough say you, but... thewhiteman'scasterages[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, travellingin differentorbits. 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 popula-
tion 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 perhapsthe most gracefulstreet in the world-a double rangeof long low
houses of bright white stone, with deep piazzas,buried in masses of bright foliage,
in which the fire-flieswere 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 de-
scription of Colombo in the sixties.
 TOWN LIFE IN NINETEENTH-CENTURY CEYLON 339
we looked landwardsfrom the campanile,the native town was mirroredin the lake,
and outside the city the white-coatedtroops were marchingby companieson 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 tradi-
tional 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 sanobject 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 com-
bined 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 blossomingof the
entire grove of kumuduflowers, 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 darknessof varied defilements(that exist) uncheckedin
the world,
That savant, who is like a beloved father of the Ceylonese, seeking to prevent
their calamitiesand promote their welfare. . .8
While the governors' influence helped to preserv7eoriental 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 rarelyheardof 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.
 TOWN LIFE IN NINETEENTH-CENTURY CEYLON 341

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 de-
scriptions 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 apartfrom the pathosof the poet's own story, how deeply the Buddhistlore
could sink into the hearts of the people, and how spontaneouswas 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 drawbackin the Colonial Service that an officeris tempted and beguiled to
remainon, from year to year, until his interestin a new country,in which he is made
useful, overcomesthe ardourof 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
differentfrom everythingin London and Cambridgeto 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.
342 YASMINE GOONERATNE

bred... I did not idealizeor romanticizethe people or the country; I just liked them
aestheticallyand 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 considerableperiod,
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 Memorandumof 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, in-
debted 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 anzdPolitical, London, I 877, p. 278).
10 Lt.-Col. James Campbell, Excursionzs,Adventutres, and Field-Sports in Ceylon (2 vols.,
London, 1843), HI, 19.
 TOWN LIFE IN NINETEENTH-CENTURY CEYLON 343
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 tuskerwith an old cut-down flint musket at the first shot I would, at
any period of my life, have consideredrathera feat; but that the first elephantI had
seen, or come in contactwith, should fall to a boy of fifteen... was an event. I would
have given anythingto have remainedto gloat over my prey, but at once felt that it
would have been unsoldierlikeand undignifiedto appearat all elated at the exploit
... and I then walked back to my quarters,pretending to be as indifferentas if I
had bagged hundredsof elephantsbefore... I waited patientlyin my quartersuntil
I thought ... the men had returnedto the fort for their breakfast,when I stole out
quietly and unobservedto 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 indif-
ference 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 con-
duct 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 edu-
cated English amateur in drawing, design, and water-colour. Through their
21 22 23
Cf. Fifty Years, p. I36. Ibid. p. 57. 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.'
344 YASMINE GOONERATNE

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 in-
dividuals 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 characterhad previouslybeen 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 evi-
dently 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.
 TOWN LIFE IN NINETEENTH-CENTURY CEYLON 345
To men drawn from widely different spheres of English society, the plant-
ing life appears to have given, besides quick profits, a lasting sense of com-
munity 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 sur-
vived 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.31The 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 pre-

sented 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 essen-
tially 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'sassistant-
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.
346 YASMINE GOONERATNE

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 accu-
rately 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 mercantilepursuits, and as writers and clerks
they fill places of trust in every administrativeestablishmentfrom the department
of the ColonialSecretaryto the humblest police court. It is not possible to speaktoo
highly of the servicesof this meritoriousbody of men, by whom the whole machinery
of governmentis put into action, under the orders of the civil officers. They may
fairly be described in the languageof 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 identi-
fied 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 advances34and 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 educa-
tion 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 edu-
cation 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).
 TOWN LIFE IN NINETEENTH-CENTURY CEYLON 347
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 familiarobjects and arrangementsof a college being combinedwith the remark-
able appearanceand unwontedcostumesof the students... The sleepingapartments,
the dining hall, and the cooking room are in purely Indian taste, but all accurately
clean; and, steppingout of these, the contrastwas strikingbetweenthem, and the...
laboratorywith its chemical materials,retorts, and electro-magneticapparatus.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 com-
munities, 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).
348 YASMINE GOONERATNE

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 atmos-
phere 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 deservethe high complimentpaid 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 in-
fluence 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).
 TOWN LIFE IN NINETEENTH-CENTURY CEYLON 349
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 Missionarywho separateshimself from his father's house;-forgoes the com-
forts of civilised society, and submits to behold the barbarousspectacles of savage
life, though he cannot escape the pains which they inflict,-endures to be deprived
of the opportunityof cultivatinghis own mind in useful knowledge,and tasting the
sweets of intellectualpleasures,and at the same time plunges himself among com-
parativeintellectual darkness,with the heavenborndesire of shedding forth some
rays of borrowedlight; I say, such an one surely is offeringno unacceptablesacrifice
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 TheJaffna 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 degradinglymercantile.They would appro-
priately apply to the grazier or stock breeder, who has scientificallytested some
stalled quadrupedto ascertainits marketablevalue! Without much of modification,
the slave-dealermight adopt them as an estimateof a herd of slaves, who have been
estimatedby the feed required,and the return of labour realized... The represen-
tative of Western culture and authorityin Ceylon needs something beyond a capa-
city to guage [sic] the neck of this people with a view to adjust the yoke; he needs
somethingmore than the curiosityof the antiquary,or the fluctuatinginterestof the
experimenter;he needs to have a very high regardfor humannature,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.
350 YASMINE GOONERATNE

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 Europeanfrom India who would not pronounceassociationlike
that, the last stage of absurdity;and the directway to overturnthe Britishauthority
over the people. A thought of that kind never enters their mind, any more than the
West India Slaves dreamof dining with the SupremeCouncil. To drawany parallel
from the differentclasses of people in Britainwould mislead-you are all whites &
of one language-yet mighty distinctionsexist. But between tne Indian aborigines&
respectableEuropeansthe differenceis 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 con-
tempt and fear from the native life around him.
The pen of Inspirationpoints out many awful traits in their character[he wrote in
I820]. In the abuse of those privileges with which God had favoured them, they
weregivenup to a reprobatemind,and to vile affections.They arevain in theirimagina-
tionsand theirfoolishheartis darkened.Professingthemselvesto bewisetheyare become
fools, and have changedthe imageof the incorruptibleGod into an imagelike untocor-
ruptibleMan, and to birds,andfourfootedbeasts,and creepingthings.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.
 TOWN LIFE IN NINETEENTH-CENTURY CEYLON 351

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 re-
presented 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 persuadedif I had been sensible of the qualifications
necessaryfor an Eastern Indian Missionary I could not have been prevailedupon
to have left my native Shore [wrote BenjaminClough, later to become the compiler
of a Sinhalese-English dictionarythat is still a standardwork]; a sense of my own
unfitness for so arduous an undertakinghas cost me many anxious moments and
privategroanes-However as I am here I am determinedby 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
acquaintedwith Pali, it is now too late for me to attempt to acquireit, and without
it no one can properly understandBudhism.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 regardedas sufficientfor the missionarywho will
have to grapple with the most specious argumentsever 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 Callawayin i8I7]. So far as my observationhas 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
352 YASMINE GOONERATNE

copious, elegantand expressive.The heathensongs and historieswhich I have heard

chaunted in their worship display considerable melody. It possesses pronouns
exactly suited to the rank of the individualaddressed.
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 banaor heathendiscoursenow before me containsa 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-...
plentifullystoredwith whateveris earthly,sensual,or devilish, and are looked on by
the Cingaleseas 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 acquaintancewith such senseless no-
tions: but it is necessarythat 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 langu-
age 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.
 TOWN LIFE IN NINETEENTH-CENTURY CEYLON 353
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 honourableamong them who are nominally Protestant, attach them-
selves 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 criticism56and 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 re-
formed 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
354 YASMINE GOONERATNE

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 am-
bitious 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 lec-
tures 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 enquiriesinto the History, Religion, Literature,Arts and
Social condition of the present and formerinhabitantsof 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 scatteredrays of informationpossessed
by differentindividuals,and makethem bearwith effect on. . . topics of interest; and
The names of a few Ceylonese appear in the list of members. Cf. Ceylon Antiquary, VIII
57

(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.
 TOWN LIFE IN NINETEENTH-CENTURY CEYLON 355
in the second place it will tend to raise up and encouragea literaryand 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 import-
ant 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 informa-
tion 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 associa-
tion 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 ven-
dors 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.
356 YASMINE GOONERATNE

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 trans-
lation 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 pleasantholesomenesseand frag-
rant freshnesse, the Waters in their many Riuers and Fountaines, the Earth di-
uersifiedin aspiring Hills, lowly Vales, equall and indifferentPlaines, filled in her
inward Chamberswith 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. surmountingthose of Spaine; Fowles and Beasts,
both tame and wilde (among which is their Elephant, honoured by a naturallac-
knowledgementof excellence, of all other Elephants in the world.) These all haue
conspiredandjoyned in common League,to presentunto Zeilanthe chiefe of wordly
treasuresand pleasures,with a long and healthfull life in the inhabitants,to enioy
them. No maruellthen, if sense and sensualitiehaue 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 EdinburghReview, 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.
 TOWN LIFE IN NINETEENTH-CENTURY CEYLON 357
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.68When 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 cir-
cumstances,but upon considerationswhich can be appreciatedwith equal clearness,
in whatever country they may be discussed, or which ... can be appreciatedmore
clearlyat a distancefrom the scene of action, than in the centre of a society agitated
by the proposed applicationof 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 emigra-
tion. 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' Wanderingsin 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. Cf. T. B. Macaulay, The Government

I2.
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
358 YASMINE GOONERATNE

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 marginwh. of course I reckonupon should
make the work extravagantlydear, 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 palmedupon the world in the style of grave truths, I feel-asthough
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
obtaina God for Mr Buntingbut his orderwas for a largeugly onebut they generally
make their God hansome [sic] but I can send him an Ugly Devil which I suppose
has been worshippedfor 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.
 TOWN LIFE IN NINETEENTH-CENTURY CEYLON 359
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 conserva-
tism 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 litera-
ture 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.