CHAPTER II.KANDY AND PEASANT LIFE.
Ernst Haeckelin 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, thelantana, which though said to have been introduced onlyabout 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 andchágeribeer (made by cutting thegreat flower-bud off thechágeripalm, 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.
KALUA.
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 theBritish—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 appearsthat 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 sustaininghis 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 inEngland, the latter’s surprise was unfeigned as he exclaimed, “How do you live, then?”
PLOUGHING IN THE RICE-FIELDS, WITH BUFFALOS.
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 curriedvegetable 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 thechágeripalm.
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.
BUDDHIST PRIEST.(Librarian at the Temple at Kandy, with palm-leaf MS. book in lap.)
BUDDHIST PRIEST.(Librarian at the Temple at Kandy, with palm-leaf MS. book in lap.)
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 hugekeys 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 ofsixsuccessive 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 talipotpalm 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.
GENERAL VIEW OF KANDY.(Native street on left, Buddhist temple on right, English church in centre.)
GENERAL VIEW OF KANDY.(Native street on left, Buddhist temple on right, English church in centre.)
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 theirrendez-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 anyMahatewho 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 indiscriminatelynatives, “as if we were so manyoysters.” 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 affectionatenessof 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 almostde rigueurto 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.