3 so Voyage of the Novara. 



a wealthy man makes his appearance in several of these habili- 

 ments, worn one above the other. The Cingalese are shorter in 

 stature than the Europeans, their average stature being 5 feet 4 

 inches to 5 feet 5 inches, English. Their jjhysiqiie, though 

 graceful and delicate, is powerful and muscular, with a brawny 

 breast, broad shoulders, the muscles of the thigh strongly de- 

 veloped, but with disproportionately small hands and feet. 

 Their colour is commonly a light-brown, their hair black and 

 quite straight. The women are beautifully formed, but even 

 when they can, like Asokamalla of historic fame, boast all 

 the forty and six marks of the Cingalese ideal,* they must fall 

 far short of the European standard of female beauty, with 

 their bodies anointed with oil, and their mouths stained with 

 the betel-nut. As the Cingalese girls usually marry so early as 

 12 years of age, they speedily lose the bloom of youth, and 

 • frequently have the appearance of crones at 20. Another 

 especially loathsome habit of the Cingalese is the chewing the 

 betel-nut, a custom so universally prevalent among all Indian 

 races, that not merely the men and women, but the very chil- 

 dren exhibit an extraordinary predilection for it. The ingre- 

 dients of this masticatory consist of the green tender leaves of 



* Of these foi-ty-six perfections of womanly beauty we extract tlie following by 

 way of example, from a Cingalese author : — hair, glossy as the tail of a peacock, and 

 hanging in ringlets to the knee, eye-brows like the rainbow, eyes like sapphii-e, and 

 the leaves of the manilla flower, a hawk nose, lips lustrous and red as coral, teeth 

 small and regular, lilic the buds of the jasmine, neck tliick and round, haunches 

 broad, breast firm, and conical like the cocoa-nut, the figiu-e shght, capable of being 

 spanned by the hand, the limbs spindle-shaped, the sole of tlie foot witliout any 

 hollow, the skin free from any prominence of the bones, sweeping in rounded curves, 

 soft and tender. 



