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CEYLON BRANCH ROYAL ASIATIC SOCIETY". 



GENERAL OBSERVATIONS ON THE TRANSLATED 

 CEYLONESE LITERATURE. 



BY W. KNIGHTON, Secy. C. B. It. A. S. 



[Read on the 1st May, 1845,] 



The contrast between Eastern and Western civilization, 

 and that between Eastern and Western manners, is not more 

 striking than between the literature of Asia and that of 

 Europe. The same peculiarities are discovered, forming a 

 contrast with each other in each of these particulars. The 

 Government, the manners, the habits, the principles, the 

 religions and the ideas of the various Eastern communities, 

 have all a certain degree of affinity with each other, totally 

 at variance with those of Europe and America. Submission 

 to despotism, politeness, mildness, obedience, religious fervour, 

 and a glittering imagination, are the characteristics of the 

 Asiatic world, and in these we find precisely the reverse of 

 the gradual advance to democracy, the daring rudeness, the 

 fondness for innovation, and the utilitarian ideas of the Euro- 

 peans, and their descendants, whatever part of the world they 

 may inhabit. How unsuited these Eastern peculiarities are, 

 to the mental conformation of the Western races, we may 

 perceive by regarding the fate of Asiatic Philosophy, when 

 first introduced into Europe. From Egypt Pythagoras bore 

 to his native country, the transmigration of the oriental 

 philosophers, their rigid discipline, their inculcation of rever- 

 ence for existing institutions, their fanciful theories, their 

 imaginative harmonies ; — but how soon were these changed 

 into the innovating independence of Plato and Aristotle, the 

 simplicity of Socrates, and the scepticism of Pyrrho ! In 

 the philosophy of Greece, notwithstanding its obviously 



