"Why don't they kill these nuisances?" asked one of our fellow travelers of another, while he impatiently drove away a crow from the back of his chair in the hotel at Colombo.
"They have too much respect for their dead relatives," was the reply of a companion.
"Dead relatives?" queried the first speaker. "What has that to do with it?"
"Very much. These Singhalese are believers in the doctrine of metempsychosis."
"Metempsychosis; that is, in the transmigration of the soul from human bodies into animals."
"Don't see where that idea comes in," said the obtuse querist.
"Why, if a fellow killed one of these impertinent rooks, don't you know, he might be murdering his dead grandmother!"
These Buddhists of Ceylon believe that departed spirits who have behaved badly in human shape reappear in the form of domestic animals or birds, and those who have done well are turned into wild animals. The most dreadful fate is held to be the reappearance in life in the body of a woman, a sad and significant reflection upon the treatment to which they are universally subjected.
The Singhalese and Tamils are the most numerous among the population of Colombo. Mohammedans, Malays, and Parsees, as intimated, are also here in considerable numbers, mingled with representatives of other nationalities. The Mohammedans are best known as Moormen. Though in the far past of the island's history Ceylon was so long and so intimately connected with the Celestial Empire, the author did not even chance to see a Chinaman on the island, though at the north and elsewhere in the several provinces these Mongolians are to be found. In their migrating westward, the race cease to establish a foothold in numbers beyond Penang. This latter island, as well as that of Singapore, is dominated by them, the small trade of both places being wholly in their hands. But beyond the Malacca Straits, they have not made their way westward to any considerable extent.
The Singhalese language, which is soft and flowing, is founded on the Sanskrit, an evidence in itself of the antiquity of the people. Tamil is the language of southern India, and is used here by the Moormen as well as by the Tamils proper. There is a Portuguese patois still spoken by European descendants and half-breeds, while the Dutch language is quite unknown, though that people remained here nearly a century and a half after the Portuguese were driven out of the island. The English tongue is becoming more and more common in all populous centres like Colombo, Trincomalee, Kandy, and Point de Galle. The Singhalese are nearly always Buddhists, while the Tamils, as a people, are Hindus. The latter, as we have said, are the wage-earners of the country, working alongshore at the wharves, loading and unloading ships, belonging to the coal barges, and the like. The Singhalese proper take higher rank; the sort of occupation accepted by the Tamils would not on any account be adopted by a Singhalese. Caste is imperious and imperative, though it is strictly discountenanced by the religion of the people, and especially so by the English government, which does not fail to exercise its influence against it.