24 6 
THE ISLAND OF CEYLON. 
accident touch any thing, it is reckoned polluted and accursed. 
As they are not allowed to work, they are obliged to beg 
continually for sustenance, and thus from generation to gene- 
ration become a dead weight on society. As these wretched 
people are by the iron sceptre of superstition already degraded to 
a state which cannot be exceeded in vileness and infamy, and 
cannot by any good conduct ever retrieve their condition ; so 
they have no restraint to prevent them from being guilty of 
the most detestable crimes. It would certainly be an object 
worthy the attention of any government to attempt convert- 
ing this lost body of men to some useful purpose ; and it is 
plain that the dispelling their superstitious notions by the 
introduction of another system of religion, must be the first 
step towards effecting this salutary improvement. 
These people of no cast are obliged to pay the lowest of 
the other Candians as much respect and reverence as eastern 
servility ordains the latter to pay to the king. As tradition 
among barbarous nations never wants a legend to account 
for the origin of every institution, the cruelty exercised 
towards the outcasts is justified by the recital of a crime 
said to have been anciently committed by them. It is told 
that this race of people once formed a particular cast, w ho 
were employed as the king’s hunters ; that upon some provo- 
cation they supplied his table with human flesh in place of 
venison ; and that upon the discovery of this atrocious act, 
the king dpomed them to be outcasts from society for ever. 
