191 
Manners and Customs of the Ceylonese, 
announces its proprietor to have been born in a certain rank. 
This strong trait of barbarism is of course more glaring among 
the inhabitants of the interior, than among those who have 
been civilized by an intercourse with Europeans. The Candians 
are not allowed to whiten their houses, nor to cover them with 
tiles, that being a royal privilege, and reserved solely for the 
great King. Even among the Cingiese there is still something 
more than the difference of riches which affects their domestic 
economy. 
It is difficult to say whether it be the remains of a tyrannK 
cal prohibition, or a superstition arising from the danger of elec- 
tricity in this climate, that the Ceylonese never employ nails in 
the construction of their houses. Their small, low huts, which 
are too frailly united to admit of above one story, are fastened 
entirely with withes made of ratan, or coya rope. They are 
constructed of slender pieces of wood or bamboe, daubed over 
with clay, and covered with rice-straw, or leaves of the cocoa- 
tree. Round the walls of their houses are small banks or 
benches of clay, designed to sit or sleep on. The benches 
as well as the floors of their houses are ail laid over with 
cow-dung, which keeps away vermin, preserves the surface 
smooth, and is not so easily rendered dirty by rain as clay. 
In such a state of society, and where luxury seems almost 
unknown, sumptuous furniture is not to be expected even in 
the best houses. That of the cottages is in the last stage of 
simplicity, and consists merely of the indispensable instruments 
for preparing their victuals. A few earthen pots to cook their 
rice, and one or two brass basins out of which to eat it ; a 
wooden pestle and mortar for grinding it, with a flat stone on 
which to pound pepper, turmeric, and chillies for their curries; 
9 
