CEYLON BRANCH — ROYAL ASIATIC SOCIETY. 



11 



be said, as they themselves speak of one of their castes, 

 that none can tell their varieties. Generally speaking, how- 

 ever, they are well made, athletic and firmly knit together 

 — their features sharp, their eyes dark, quick and bold, — 

 their language guttural and continuous, and in the general 

 character of its tone, scolding or remonstrative. They are 

 the horsekeepers, grass cutters, and coolies of the land : — 

 not indeed, perhaps, from any natural inferiority of char- 

 acter, but by the force of circumstances. Here are the 

 Moors, the Jews of the East, every where presenting the 

 same general features of character, personal moral and eco- 

 nomical — every where busy, gregarious, accumulating, and 

 all with their house, their trade and their mosque. And here, 

 in the Singhalese, we have a people older than the Roman 

 commonwealth, and yet knowing nothing of the great in- 

 struments of European civilization, banks and newspapers: 

 who have not been able to improve their Gansabe, the same 

 common feudal court out of which arose the English par- 

 liament, and probably also our trial by jury, the bulwarks 

 of English liberty ; and who, with a softness at which the 

 heart bleeds, have with equal quickness imbibed the man- 

 ners of the Malabars, the Portuguese, the Moors, and the 

 English, according as they have been thrown among those 

 various people. The softness of the Singhalese in the low 

 country is indeed quite peculiar. He is European in ge- 

 neral outline, and commonly well made both in form and 

 feature ; but with his soft outline, his dark swimming eyes, 

 his long black hair carefully combed back into a knot be- 

 hind, and his large tortoise shell comb, he may be regarded 

 as the female form of the male sex, and is the waiting man 

 of the English in Ceylon. 



In reference to this difference in the natural character, it 

 would be interesting to know the comparative amount of 

 population, or in other words, the relative increment or de- 

 crease of the different races — Moors, Malabars, and Sin- 

 ghalese. To observation there appears a daily encrease in 

 the number of Moors, as there is also perhaps a decrease 

 in the Singhalese population. 



The Dutch and Portuguese have also their peculiar char= 

 acter. 



But besides the nations we have mentioned, and others 

 which might be named, all agreeing in this that they 

 have the oval, symmetrical or European form of the head, 

 we have here in the Malays on the one hand, and the 



