226 Terms of address in use 



particular Deliberative Assembly, for which it is a designation. 



Mr. Stark proceeds to an investigation of the Titles and 

 Titular ranks amongst the Singhalese, and finds nothing of 

 the nature of the English nobility, (p. 71.) If the learned 

 writer here refers to the peculiarity of the relation in which 

 the Nobility of England stands to the Commonalty, he is 

 right. For Ceylon has no nobility, which, as in England, 

 sends down members to mingle with the people. Here the 

 distinction of caste and class is the barrier which divides the 

 nobleman from the commoner. Whilst there, in England, the 

 ranks of the nobility are largely recruited from among others, 

 there is here a wide gulf between them which neither wealth, 

 interest, nor education enables the plebeian to cross. There 

 it is regarded as s no disparagement for the daughter of a 

 Duke, nay of a royal Duke, to espouse a distinguished com- 

 moner.'* Here it is quite the reverse. | Whilst therefore, there 

 are these and other differences which distinguish the English 

 nobility from all hereditary aristocracies in the world, there is 

 also some similarity between the English and Singhalese 

 nobility. As no title raised any one to the rank of f Thane ' 

 amongst the German Saxons, except noble birth and the 

 possession of land ; so amongst the Singhalese, in an early 

 age, none were regarded as of the nobility who were devoid 

 of those qualifications. 



A long line of ancestry descended from good blood in the 

 highest caste (the Goi wanse, the cultivators or vellalesj) 



* Macaulay's History of England, pp. 37, 38. 



f " The marriage of a man with a woman of a superior caste to himself is pro- 

 hibited, and even carnal connection between the sexes of different castes is penal, 

 especially the connection of a higher caste woman with a low-caste man." — Sawer's 

 Kandian Law, p. 26. 



\ "The Goi wangsa, Goi gama. Ratte, or Handuruwo, compriseth the Bandara 

 waliya; families of the highest rank, who claim descent from Princes/ 7 — Armours 

 Kandian Laic, p. 3. 



