No. 36. — 1888.] THE MOORS OF CEYLON. 



249 



of whom only 110 are Europeans. 1 For the purpose of 

 accounting for all this conversion, is it necessary to assume 

 that the European ministers, or their predecessors in office, 

 intermarried with the classes they had been converting ? It 

 might be said that the European clergy have either led a life 

 of celibacy or come to the scene of their labours with their 

 wives, and that the Egyptians and Arabs were situated 

 differently. It is true that the latter had the sea-borne trade 

 in their hands in the East previous to the advent of the 

 Europeans, and were to be seen in almost every port of im- 

 portance in India and Ceylon, but what evidence is there 

 that, abandoning finally their own homes and their love of 

 sea-faring life, they settled for good in South India or Ceylon 

 in vast numbers ? The mistake consists in assuming that a 

 great proportion of the Africans, Arabians, and Persians who 

 navigated the Indian Ocean made new homes for themselves 

 on these shores, as if the pressure of population in their old 

 homes was too severely felt, or the advantages of the self- 

 imposed banishment outweighed the sorrows of parting from 

 their country, family, and early associations. The truth, 

 therefore, appears to be that only a small proportion of these 

 traders domiciled themselves in South India and Ceylon, and 

 that whatever changes have been wrought in the manners 

 and customs of the native converts are due as much to con- 

 tact with the passing traders as to the more permanent 

 example and teaching of the smaller knot of resident 

 foreigners. See, for instance, what vast changes have come 

 over non-Christian Tamils and Sinhalese by mere association, 

 in the course of business, with a handful of Europeans ! But 

 change of manners and customs does not indicate change of 

 blood. Considering that not much more than 100 Europeans 

 have laboured in the cause of Christianity at any given period 

 in the Island, and have made as many as 250,000 converts 

 during three centuries, it may be concluded that the Egyp- 

 tians and Arabs who settled at Kayal could not have infused 



1 Ceylon Census for 1881. 



