No. 54.— 1903.] 
PROCEEDINGS. 
139 
neighbourhood of the present passenger jetty. It then proceeded up 
York street along the canal, which ran in a straight line the whole 
length of the road, and then at right angles as far as the opposite side 
of the fort. Those who saw Colombo as it was about thirty years ago, 
before the fortifications were removed, must remember this canal very 
well. Its course is still indicated by the lower level of the road along 
the Bristol Hotel and the Registrar- General's Office. "Beer street," 
into which the procession then turned, was, I believe, Canal road. 
The word " Beer," pronounced hare^ and still preserved in the name 
Bera Lake," has given rise to various theories. The most probable 
is, I think, that it is the name of the Dutch engineer who designed and 
constructed the work. A stone bearing the following inscription : 
DE 
BEER. 
Ao. 1700. 
may be seen at the small sluice opposite the Fort railway station. 
The men employed in the construction of this work, if they could be 
found, may be able to say where the stone was discovered at the time 
the fortifications were broken up. From Canal road, which at that 
time was not blocked up by the buildings that have since sprung up, an 
entry was made into Queen's street, where the church stood, and thus 
a complete circuit of the fort was made by the procession. The " great 
plain " referred to was probably the large open ground which stood on 
the side of the Church, where the present Queen's House grounds now 
stand. 
Remarks by Mr. D. B. Jayatilaka on Mr. W. A. de Silva's 
Paper. 
It does certainly strike one as strange that Sinhalese literature, 
fairly full in other respects, should be entirely lacking in works of a 
dramatic character. Several causes appear to have operated against 
the cultivation of the dramatic art in Ceylon. Mr. Arthur de Silva has 
pointed out the most important of them — the religious view, that 
regarded all kinds of dramatic shows and performances as vain 
and even spiritually harmful. Besides, as a nation, the Sinhalese of 
old, like the ancient Romans, seem to have looked down upon the 
profession of the dancer and the actor* Dancing, it is true, was 
performed as a religious ceremony in the Devdlas, as we read in the 
Sandesas ; but the dancers were apparently not of the Sinhalese race. 
Among the Siigihalese, dancing and singing were confined as professions 
to the lowest classes. Hence possibly arose that utter indifference to 
dramatic poetry which not even the influence of India, so powerfully 
averted in other departments of Siighalese literature, has been strong 
enough to remove. 
