THE ISLAND OF CEYLON. 
245 
The fourth cast includes the peasantry, and labourers of 
all descriptions, who either cultivate the lands for themselves, 
or are hired out to work for others. The preference given 
to artificers above both the husbandmen and the soldiers, 
is a very uncommon fact in the arrangement of the casts, 
and peculiar to Ceylon. The circumstance bespeaks a degree 
of civilization, and a love for the arts, which certainly do 
not correspond with the present state of these islanders, 
although by no means inconsistent with the architectural 
remains of better days, which in some parts have escaped the 
ravages of time and the foe. 
All these four casts, according to the Indian customs, 
continue unmingled : the son pursues the profession of his 
father from generation to generation, and love as well as 
ambition is confined to the cast in which a man happens to 
be born. But besides these casts, there is here as in other 
parts of India, a wretched race of outcasts, the martyrs from 
a^e to a^e of this barbarous and unnatural institution. Those 
who by any crime, or neglect of superstitious rites, have, 
according to the decree of the priests, forfeited their cast, 
are not only condemned to infamy themselves, but their chil- 
dren and childrens’ children to all generations are supposed to 
share in the guilt and contamination. No one of another 
cast will intermarry with them ; they are allowed to exercise 
no trade or profession, nor to approach any of the human 
race but the partners of their misery; nay if they even by 
