PUBLIC RECORD OFFICE
Reference :-
TLC.O. 882
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ALLY WITHOUT PERMISSION OF THE BE REPRODUCED PHOTOGRAPHIC- COPYRIGHT PHOTOGRAPH-NOT TO
PUBLIC RECORD OFFICE, LONDON
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It is still further to be traced in the broad and palpable fact, that a semi-barbarous people are not only impatient of their civilized rulers, but excited by unavoidable innovations; irritated by the sup- pression of old customs, and the substitution of new forms and habits, to which they have never been accustomed; and excited by the premature intro- duction of institutions which they are unprepared either to appreciate or adopt.
It is barely thirty-five years since our intercourse with this uncivilized people can be said to have commenced; to the present hour it is limited and imperfect; and yet our policy presupposes them already civilized, educated, and prepared to enjoy with advantage the liberal institutions, and exercise the enlightened privileges of the most refined and intellectual nations of Europe.
There is no example that I am aware of, of so rapid a revolution from barbarism to civilization, as that which is expected of the Kandyan races; and yet I believe the fact to be, that those who have been longest conversant with them admit with regret, that improvement is hardly perceptible between the social and intellectual condition of the Kandyans at the present moment, and that in which we found them in 1815.
It is an illustration of this absence of all change in this remarkable people, that to this hour, the work which every one conversant with Kandy admits to be the most correct and minute descrip tion of the manners, customs, the economy, morals, and social condition of the Kandyans at the pre- sent day, is one written in the reign of Charles II, (A.D. 1680) by Robert Knox, an English mariner, who was detained in captivity for about twenty years by the King of Kandy, from 1855 A.D. to 1678 A.D.
Between the Kandyans and the Singhalese, the Highlanders and Lowlanders of Ceylon, there is a strong national antipathy, arising out of the wide distinction between them in everything that denotes education, civilization, and progress.
of the 15th January, 1818 (p. 1), "the inhabitants of five pro- vinees, constituting more than half the Kandyan kingdom;" and
The priests universally were opposed to --; they told Sir R. Brownrigg plainly in 1815, that they could never have conßdende in the salaty of the Buddhist religion, without the support of a native Singhalese King-(Ses Be B. Beowasigy's Despatch. Parliamentary Proceedings). Mollegodde, the first Adigar, con- fessed to Sir R. Brownrigg that within two months after the convention of 1815, the Kandyan Chiefs entered into a general resolution to shake off the British yoke, to which they had only submitted in order to get rid of their Malabar tyrants.
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Bo strong is this feeling of dislike that it was one of the exciting causes of the rebellion of 1834, that on the recommendation of the Commissioners of 1833, part of the Kandyan Provinces was at- tached to the Government of the Maritime Dis tricts, in the hope, hitherto abortive, of allaying their jealousies and more effectually incorporating the Kandyan with the low country, Singhalese. (See Appendix to State Trials, 1834, pp. 103, 105.) The low country Singhalese have acquired their superiority by 300 years of intimate intercourse with Europeans, the Portuguese, the Dutch, and the British in succession, whilst the Kandyans have been only known to us thirty-five years.
Down till the conquest of the country in 1818, no Europeans were permitted to reside in the Kandyan Kingdom, or even to traverse it.
There were no roads leading to it from any di- rection", and it was one of the principal fendal services of the tribes who lived along the border to thicken the forest-boundary, by planting the formid- able thorny trees and jungle-plants which abound in those kills, and thus form a natural fortification impervious to all, except to those in the secret of the passes.
Within this vage frontier, there reigned the most gloomy tyranny, the power of the King being absoluta, and law dependent on his interpre- tation of local custom.
The people had neither education, instruction, liberty, nor even property; the whole land of the country being at the disposal of the Sovereign. Trade was prohibited, and money unknown.
A frequent cause of quarrel batween us and the King of Kandy, and the ostensible ground of our final rupture with him, was the mutilation of native merchnais, British subjects who had passed his border in pursuit of trude, and whom he sent back deprived of their nowon, ears, and arms.
Of the social and moral condition of the Kan- dyazs ona chreumatizmoe alone is amply expressive that at all times, and so this hour, the practice of polyandry prevails amongst all classes, even the
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to cash it. And this