KANDY AND PEASANT LIFE.
Ernst Haeckel in his book about Ceylon says that the Cinghalese, though
a long civilised race, are as primitive as savages in their dress,
cabins, etc.; and this remark strikes me as very true. As soon as you
get off the railways and main roads you find them living in their
little huts under their coco-palms in the most primitive fashion, and
probably much as they did when they first came to Ceylon, 2,000 or
3,000 years ago.
On the 4th of this month (December), my friend “Ajax” landed at
Colombo from England. He is on his way to Assam, in the tea-planting
line, and is staying a week in the island to break the journey. He is
a thorough Socialist in feeling, and a jolly fellow, always bright
and good-natured, and with a great turn for music. We came up here
to Kandy, and shortly after our arrival went to call on a Cinghalese
peasant whose acquaintance I had lately made--Kalua by name--and found
him in his little cabin, about a mile out of the town among the hills,
where he lives with his brother Kirrah. Leaving Kandy by footpaths
and alongside hedgerows overrun by a wild sunflower, and by that
extraordinary creeper, with a verbena-like blossom, the _lantana_,
which though said to have been introduced only about fifty years ago
now runs in masses over the whole island, we came at last to a lovely
little glen, with rice-lands laid out in terraces at the bottom, and
tangles of scrub and jungle up the sides, among which were clumps of
coco-nut and banana, indicating the presence of habitations. Under one
of these groves, in a tiny little mud and thatch cabin, we found Kalua;
in fact he saw us coming, and with a shout ran down to meet us. We were
soon seated in the shade and talking such broken English and Tamil as
we could respectively command. The brothers were very friendly, and
brought us coco-nut milk and _chágeri_ beer (made by cutting the great
flower-bud off the _chágeri_ palm, and letting the sap from the wounded
stem flow into a jar, where it soon ferments; it has a musty flavor,
and I cannot say that I care for it). Then their father, hearing of
our arrival, came from half a mile off to have a look at us--a regular
jolly old savage, with broad face and broad belly--but unfortunately,
as we could not speak Cinghalese, there was no means of communicating
with him, except by signs. This little valley seems to be chiefly
occupied by the brothers and their kindred, forming a little tribe, so
to speak. Kalua and his father both own good strips of rice-land, and
are perhaps rather better off than most Cinghalese peasants, though
that is not saying much. Married sisters and their children, and other
relatives, also occupy portions of the glen; but Kalua and Kirrah are
not married yet. It seems to be a point of honor with the Cinghalese
(and indeed with most of the East Indian races) not to marry till their
sisters are wedded. Like the Irish, the brothers work to provide a
dowry for their sisters; and generally family feeling and helpfulness
are very strong among them. To strike a father or a mother is, all
over Ceylon (and India), a crime of almost unheard-of atrocity. Kalua
gives a good deal of his earnings to his parents, and buys additions
to the family rice-lands--which as far as I can make out are held to a
considerable extent as common property.
[Illustration: KALUA.]
There was a native king and kingdom of Kandy till about eighty years
ago (1814), when the British overthrew it; and it is curious that
the old Kandian law--which was recognised for some time by the
British--contains very evident traces of the old group-marriage which
is found among so many races in their pre-civilisation period. There
were two kinds of marriage treated of in the Kandian law--the Deega
marriage, in which the wife went (as with us) to the house of her
husband, and became more or less his property; and the Beena marriage,
in which he came to live with her among her own people, but was liable
to expulsion at any time! The latter form is generally supposed to be
the more primitive, and belongs to the time when heredity is traced
through the woman, and when also polygamous and polyandrous practices
prevail. And this is confirmed by a paragraph of the Kandian law,
or custom, which forbade intermarriage between the children of two
brothers, or between the children of two sisters, but allowed it
between the children of a brother and a sister--the meaning of course
being that two brothers might have the same wife, or two sisters
the same husband, but that a brother and sister--having necessarily
distinct wives and husbands--would produce children who could not be
more nearly related to each other than cousins. It is also confirmed by
the fact that a kind of customary group-marriage still lingers among
the Cinghalese--_e.g._ if a man is married, his brothers not uncommonly
have access to the wife--though owing to its being discountenanced by
Western habits and law, this practice is gradually dying out.
Kalua has seen rather more of the world than some of his people,
and has had opportunities of making a little money now and then.
It appears that at the age of twelve or thirteen he took to
“devil-dancing”--probably his father set him to it. He danced in the
temple and got money; but now-a-days does not like the priests or
believe in the temples. This devil-dancing appears to be a relic of
aboriginal Kandian demon-worship: the evil spirits had to be appeased,
or in cases of illness or misfortune driven away by shrieks and frantic
gestures. It is a truly diabolical performance. The dancers (there are
generally two of them) dress themselves up in fantastic array, and then
execute the most extraordinary series of leaps, bounds, demivolts, and
somersaults, in rhythmical climaxes, accompanied by clapping of hands,
shrieks, and tomtomming, for about twenty minutes without stopping,
by the end of which time the excitement of themselves and spectators
is intense, and the patient--if there is one--is pretty sure to be
either killed or cured! When the Buddhists came to the island they
incorporated these older performances into their institutions. Some
two or three years ago however Hagenbeck, of circus celebrity, being
in Ceylon engaged a troupe of Kandians--of whom Kalua was one--to
give a native performance for the benefit of the Europeans; and since
that time the old peasant life has palled upon our friend, and it
is evident that he lives in dreams of civilisation and the West.
Kalua is remarkably well-made, and active and powerful. He is about
twenty-eight, with the soft giraffe-like eyes of the Cinghalese, and
the gentle somewhat diffident manner which they affect; his black hair
is generally coiled in a knot behind his head, and, with an ornamental
belt sustaining his colored skirt, and a shawl thrown over his
shoulder, he looks quite handsome. Kirrah is thinner and weaker, both
mentally and physically, with a clinging affectionateness of character
which is touching. Then there are two nephews, Pinha and Punjha, whom
I have seen once or twice--bright nice-looking boys, anxious to pick
up phrases and words of English, and ideas about the wonderful Western
world, which is beginning to dawn on their horizon--though alas! it
will soon destroy their naked beauty and simplicity. To see Punjha go
straight up the stem of a coco-nut tree fifty feet high is a caution!
He just puts a noose of rope round his two feet to enable him to grasp
the stem better with his soles, clasps his hands round the trunk,
brings his knees up to his ears, and shoots up like a frog swimming!
The coco-nut palm is everything to the Cinghalese: they use the kernel
of the nut for food, either as a curry along with their rice, or as
a flavoring to cakes made of rice and sugar; the shell serves for
drinking cups and primeval spoons; the husky fibre of course makes
string, rope, and matting; the oil pressed from the nut, in creaking
antique mills worked by oxen, is quite an article of commerce, and
is used for anointing their hair and bodies, as well as for their
little brass lamps and other purposes; the woody stems come in for the
framework of cabins, and the great leaves either form an excellent
thatch, or when plaited make natural screens, which in that climate
often serve for the cabin-walls in place of anything more substantial.
When Ajax told Kirrah that there were no coco-palms in England, the
latter’s surprise was unfeigned as he exclaimed, “How do you live,
then?”
[Illustration: PLOUGHING IN THE RICE-FIELDS, WITH BUFFALOS.]
The other great staple of Cinghalese life is rice. Kalua’s family
rice-fields lay below us in larger patches along the bottom of the
glen, and terraced in narrow strips a little way up the hill at the
head of it. The rice-lands are, for irrigation’s sake, always laid
out in level patches, each surrounded by a low mud bank, one or two
feet high; sometimes, where there is water at hand, they are terraced
quite a good way up the hillsides, something like the vineyards in
Italy. During and after the rains the water is led onto the various
levels successively, which are thus well flooded. While in flood
they are ploughed--with a rude plough drawn by humped cattle, or by
buffalos--and sown as the water subsides. The crop soon springs up,
a brilliant green, about as high as barley, but with an ear more
resembling oats, and in seven or eight weeks is ready to be harvested.
Boiled rice, with some curried vegetable or coco-nut, just to give it
a flavor, is the staple food all over Ceylon among the natives--two
meals a day, sometimes in poorer agricultural districts only one; a
scanty fare, as their thin limbs too often testify. They use no bread,
but a few cakes made of rice-flour and ghee and the sugar of the
_chágeri_ palm.
The brothers’ cabin is primitive enough--just a little thatched place,
perhaps twelve feet by eight, divided into two--a large wicker jar or
basket containing store of rice, one or two boxes, a few earthenware
pots for cooking in, fire lighted on the ground, no chair or table, and
little sign of civilisation except a photograph or two stuck on the
wall and a low cane-seated couch for sleeping on. The latter however
is quite a luxury, as the Cinghalese men as often as not sleep on the
earth floor.
We stayed a little while chatting, while every now and then the great
husked coco-nuts (of which you have to be careful) fell with a heavy
thud from the trees; and then Kalua came on with us to Kandy, and we
went to see the great Buddhist temple there, the Devala Maligawa, which
contains the precious tooth-relic of Buddha.
[Illustration: BUDDHIST PRIEST.
(_Librarian at the Temple at Kandy, with palm-leaf MS. book in lap._)]
Architecturally nothing, the temple is interesting for the antique
appearance of its gardens, shrines, priests’ cottages, library,
fishponds, etc.; sacred fish and turtles coming to be fed by the pious;
rude frescoes of the infernal torments of the wicked, not unlike our
mediæval designs on similar subjects; the sacred shrine itself with
ivory and silver doors; the dirty yellow-stoled priests arriving with
huge keys to open it, but first washing their feet in the forecourt;
the tomtoms and horns blowing; flowers scattered about; and then the
interior chamber of the shrine, where behind strong bars of iron
reposes a golden and bell-shaped cover, crusted with jewels--the
outermost of _six_ successive covers, within the last of which is the
tooth itself (reported by Emerson Tennent to be about two inches long,
and probably the fang of a crocodile!); then the little golden and
crystal images of Buddha in various little shrines to themselves; and,
most interesting of all, the library with its old MS. books written
on strips of talipot palm leaf, beautifully done in Cinghalese,
Pali, Sanskrit, etc., illuminated with elegant designs, and bound by
silk cords in covers of fretted silver. The old librarian priest was
a charming specimen of a Buddhist priest--gentle, intelligent, and
apparently with a vein of religious feeling in his character--and spoke
with interest about the various texts and manuscripts. It is a pity
that so much cannot be said of the Buddhist priests generally, who are
as a rule--in Ceylon at any rate--an ignorant, dirty, betel-chewing and
uninviting-looking lot.
At the botanical gardens at Peradeniya--three or four miles out of
Kandy--we saw a specimen of the talipot palm in full flower. This
beautiful palm--unlike the coco palm--grows perfectly erect and
straight; it flowers only once, and then dies. Haeckel says that it
lives from fifty to eighty years, and that the blossom is sometimes
thirty or forty feet long. The specimen that we saw in blossom was
about forty-five feet high in the stem; and then from its handsome
crown of huge leaves sprang a flower, or rather a branched spike of
numerous white flowers, which I estimated at fifteen feet high (but
which I afterwards saw described in the newspapers as twenty feet
high). Baker says that the flower bud is often as much as four feet
long, and that it opens with a smart report, when this beautiful white
plume unfolds and lifts itself in the sun. The natives use the great
leaf of the talipot--which is circular and sometimes eight or nine feet
in diameter--as an umbrella. They fold it together along its natural
corrugations, and then open it to ward off sun or rain.
[Illustration: GENERAL VIEW OF KANDY.
(_Native street on left, Buddhist temple on right, English church in
centre._)]
Kandy is very beautiful. It stands nearly 2,000 feet high, by the
side of an artificial lake which the old kings of Kandy made, and
embosomed in hills covered by lovely woods full of tropical plants and
flowers and commanding beautiful views from their slopes and summits.
There is a small native town containing the usual mixed population of
Cinghalese, Tamils, and Moor-men; there are one or two English hotels,
a church, library and reading-room; a few residents’ houses, and a
scattered population of English tea-planters on the hills for some
miles round, who make Kandy their _rendez-vous_.
Ajax makes great friends with the native youths and boys here; he has
an easy friendly way with them, and they get hold of his hand and walk
alongside. Of course they are delighted to find any _Mahate_ who will
treat them a little kindly; but I fear the few English about are much
shocked at our conduct. When I first came to Ceylon my Tamil friend A.
chaffed me about my way of calling him and the rest of the population,
whether Tamil or Mahomedan or Cinghalese, all indiscriminately
_natives_, “as if we were so many _oysters_.” I told this to Ajax, and
of course there was nothing for it after that but to call them all
oysters!
We find the few British whom we have come across in our travels very
much set against the “oysters.” There is something queer about the
British and their insularity; but I suppose it is more their misfortune
than their fault. Certainly they will allow that the oysters are not
without merit--indeed if one keeps them to it they will often speak
quite warmly of the tenderness and affectionateness of servants
who have nursed them through long illnesses, etc.--but the idea of
associating with them on terms of equality and friendship is somehow
unspeakable and not to be entertained. It seems almost _de rigueur_
to say something disparaging about the oyster, when that topic turns
up--as a way of showing one’s own breeding, I suppose; after that has
been done, however, it is allowable to grant that there are exceptions,
and even to point out some kindly traits, pearls as it were, which are
occasionally found in the poor bivalve. It strikes me however that
the English are the chief losers by this insular habit. They look
awfully bored and miserable as a rule in these up-country parts, which
must almost necessarily be the case where there are only five or six
residents in a station, or within accessible distances of each other,
and confined entirely to each other’s society.
One day Ajax and I went up to Nuwara Ellia. The railway carriage was
full of tea-planters (including one or two wives and sisters), and
there were a few at the hotel. It was curious to see some English faces
of the cold-mutton-commercial type, and in quite orthodox English
attire, in this out-of-the-way region. The good people looked sadly
bored, and it seemed a point of honor with them to act throughout as if
the colored folk didn’t exist or were invisible--also as if they were
deaf, to judge by the shouting. In the evening however (at the hotel)
we felt touched at the way in which they cheered up when Ajax and I
played a few familiar tunes on the piano. They came round, saying it
reminded them of home, and entreated us to go on; so we played for
about two hours, Ajax improvising as usual in the most charming way.
Nuwara Ellia is 6,000 feet above the sea--a little village with an
hotel or two--a favorite resort from the sultry airs of Colombo and the
lowlands. Here the Britisher finds fires in the sitting-rooms and thick
mists outside, and dons his great-coat and feels quite at home. But we,
having only just come from the land of fogs, did not appreciate these
joys, and thought the place a little bleak and bare.