peculiar system was early introduced
into the country from India, but was previously unknown here. It is
difficult for the uninitiated to understand its real import. There are
twenty or more castes rigidly adhered to, which may be rendered in
numerical order of importance as follows: The husbandman's occupation
comes first in dignity, followed by that of the fisherman; goldsmiths
rank as third, blacksmiths as fourth caste, and so on in the following
order: braziers, cinnamon peelers, washermen, barbers, potters,
tom-tom-beaters in the temples, etc. Domestic intercourse between
persons of different castes is inadmissible, and to marry below one's
caste is considered to be disgraceful. Feelings of intolerable pride
on the one hand and of abject humiliation on the other are thus
created and perpetuated. In each caste the children must follow the
occupation of the father; a carpenter's boys must be carpenters, and
his daughters must marry carpenters. Caste is therefore absolute death
to all promptings of ambition, according to native ideas. No one can
hope to rise above the grade in which he is born, and no one makes the
attempt. Nearly a century of English control has only served to
confirm these Asiatics in the thralldom of caste. How could it be
otherwise when the ruling power is itself a slave to the same idea?
Sir Matthew Arnold says: "Aristocracy now sets up in our country a
false ideal, which materializes our upper class, vulgarizes our
middle class, and brutalizes our lower class."

Both men and women among the natives in town and country are often
tattooed on their arms, legs, and bodies, while a few, but this is
rare, are decorated on their faces. A child less than ten years of age
was seen in the Pettah at Colombo, whose body was absolutely covered
with crude designs fixed indelibly by this process. One could not but
imagine how the little fellow must have been made to suffer during the
worse than useless operation, which is, even to a hardened adult,
little short of slow agony. This instance struck the author as being
the more remarkable because the Singhalese and almost all savage or
semi-civilized races are found to be remarkably kind to their
offspring, even as wild animals are. We are compelled in some degree
to qualify this assertion, since the missionaries tell us that in
certain parts of the island female infants are often destroyed at the
time of birth. If this is the case to any considerable extent, it