Religion of the Ceylonese. 2lB 
although they are unable to conquer their original superstitions, 
they entertain the highest reverence for the Christian religion ; 
and some of the Cinglese have been converted without being 
hardly censured by others for their apostacy. It gives us a 
striking proof of the wonderful confusion of their ideas with re- 
gard to religion, when we find that the same people who adore 
one Supreme Being more powerful than all others, should at 
the same time offer up their devotions to devils, animals, and 
the very productions of the earth. 
Besides the one Supreme Being, who is worshipped as the 
Creator and Ruler of heaven and earth, the Ceylonese have a 
number of inferior deities, as well as tormenting demons. The 
inferior deities, who watch over them for good, are supposed to 
be the souls of good men ; while the demons are looked upon 
as the spirits of the wicked; and both are supposed to act by 
the permission of the Supreme Being. The next in dignity to 
him is their God Buddou, the Saviour of souls. This idea of 
a Saviour seems in some degree to pervade every religion in 
the world, although tainted by a variety of different superstitions 
which are joined to it ; and what is remarkable, the expecta- 
tions formed from the interference of this Saviour are in almost 
every religion nearly the same. Buddou, according to the most 
general tradition, was originally the spirit of a good man, who 
was again sent to revisit the earth; and after having performed 
a prodigious number of virtuous actions, and been transformed 
into a hundred and ninety-nine different shapes, re-ascended into 
heaven, and is still employed in procuring the pardon of his 
worshippers. The introduction of the worship of Buddou into 
Ceylon is fixed at about forty years after the Christian era, at 
which time, some say, a violent quarrel took place between tlie 
