16 



JOURNAL, R.A.S. (CEYLON). 



[Vol. XIX. 



scope sixty years ago. The first President remarked at the outset 

 on the great deficiency in statistical information. The administra- 

 tion of the Colony was then in a very primitive state, confined 

 almost entirely to Kachcheries and Law Courts, and thes^ 

 comparatively few and far between, without the many separate 

 Departments dealing with Public Instruction, Public Health, 

 Registration and Vital Statistics, Crime, Police, Prisons, the 

 Botany and Agriculture of the Island. Very thin and inadequate 

 Palmers on rainfall and climate were welcomed by the Society at 

 a time when systematic meteorological observations and valuable 

 annual reports such as are now issued by the Surveyor-General, 

 were undreamt of ; and until the era of Annual Administration 

 Reports from the Heads of Departments and Revenue Officers, in 

 time followed by Manuals for the different Provinces, until the era 

 of Annual Blue Books and "Ceylon Handbooks and Directories," 

 and the taking in 1871 of the first regular Census of the people, 

 this Society had to encourage and utilize as best it could much 

 primitive preparatory work from gentlemen interested in the 

 history, antiquities, the agriculture, trade, and general advance- 

 ment of the Island. 



Nevertheless, there are large stores of information not only of 

 permanent interest, but of practical value, contained in the long 

 record of the Society's publications, which up to date number no 

 fewer than fifty-five Journals contained in some eighteen volumes. 



Take, for instance, a topic very much in evidence at the 

 present time and none more generally vital and important, that 

 of Public Instruction, and I have been greatly surprised to find 

 from valuable papers contributed by the Rev. J. D. Palm in the 

 early years on Dutch Ecclesiastical and Educational Adminis- 

 tration, how great was the progress made within the seaboard 

 districts of Ceylon more than 150 years ago. We are accustomed 

 to think of the Dutch rulers as selfish and mercenary ; but the 

 records of a long list of schools in the Colombo, the Galle and 

 Matara, the Jaffna, Mannar, Trincomalee, and Batticaloa Districts 

 show that between 1750 and 1780 there must have been at times 

 as many as 91,509 children attending school, and more wonderful 

 still, a very large proportion of these — a preponderance in the 

 Colombo District — were girls. Considering how small a portion 

 of the Island the Dutch really held, as may be judged from one 

 of the old maps shown here for the first time to-night, and the 

 comparatively limited total population, this attainment in schools 

 and scholars was truly wonderful. In holding slaves in Ceylon, 

 the Dutch rulers merely followed the general rule ; but it is greatly 

 to their credit that they provided schools for the slave children, 

 who were taught to the number of 2,180 in 1786. They also had 

 a seminary for the training of native teachers as well as native 

 " preachers," and it is curious to note that the latter held the 

 same rank and remuneration as Mudaliyars of Korales. The way 

 in which 350,000 so-called Protestant Christians among the 

 natives rapidly disappeared in early British times shows the 

 unreality of the work done by State-paid Dutch ecclesiastics ; 

 but we may believe that the generations who passed through the 



