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The Historical Journal, IX, 3 (I966), pp. 338-359
Printed in Great Britain
By YASMINE GOONERATNE
University of Ceylon
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
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
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
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
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
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
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.