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GE

SINCE 1800.

THIRD PAPER.-IN CEYLON.

BY THE REV. EDWARD J. ROBINSON.

REEN all through the year to the water's edge and the mountain's brow, the claim of this lovely island to be called Paradise may be allowed without going up to worship the footprint of our great progenitor on Adam's Peak. Our illustration (p. 193) gives a glimpse of the roads made since 1800; of the primitive and present luggage-van of the country; of the cocoa-nut trees which fringe the island, shade every village, and cover many a broad plantation; and of the lithe native's mode of climbing, not by throwing his legs round the trunk, but by pressing against it a band held between his feet. Next to the cocoa-nut tree in importance is the equally tall palmyra, whose leaves are not only useful for thatch and fence, but for the fan and the book, and whose tough timber makes the framework of the house and the machinery of the well. Of the pearl-fishery on the west, and the famous Trincomalie harbour on the east; of fruit-groves of various kinds, and cinnamon and coffee gardens; of the railway to Kandy; of Buddha's tooth; of apes and peacocks, serpents, cheetahs, elephants, and ivory; of satin-wood, teak, and ebony; of the wonderful remains of ancient cities; of costumes, ceremonies, and countless attractive matters, we have no space to write.

The extreme length of Ceylon is 270 miles, its greatest breadth 145; and it now contains a population of 2,400,000, of whom 1,670,000 are Singhalese, being Buddhists and devil-worshippers; 534,000 Tamils, votaries of Siva and kindred deities; 164,000 Moormen or Mohammedans, who speak Tamil and are the chief merchants and bankers of the island; a few Malays, followers of the Arabian prophet, mostly connected with the Ceylon Rifles; some thousands of Burghers or Dutch descendants, whose dialects are English and Indo-Portuguese; and about 4,000 British.

A fitter field for missionary operations could not have been selected. Not only was the country intrusted by Divine Providence to the British sceptre, it was a centre of influence for our millions of fellow-subjects in Hindustan, and for the outside multitudes of Burmah and China. The Baptists began their mission in Ceylon in 1812, the Wesleyans in 1814, the American Board in 1817, the Church Missionary Society in 1818, and the

Gospel Propagation Society in 1840. High advice and patronage distributed the little band of Wesleyans, to minister in the old churches in important towns to otherwise shepherdless Burghers. While thus engaged, the separated Englishmen remembered that they were travelling preachers, and attended also to pastoral, educational, and literary duties. When their services as free colonial chaplains were no longer wanted, they were apt, on entering as itinerants into one another's labours, to improve too much and often on one another's plans. The Americans, frowned upon by the too suspicious great, eschewed the towns and English services, and settled in a group of villages, working in departments. Thus clinging together, they kept home and country with them, while their pursuits were purely and directly missionary, and their system secured continuity of operation. Experience and observation, failure and success, at last made every society many-handed like a Hindu god; and the time arrived when the missionaries, of whichever denomination, whether they were grouped or scattered, could keep all departments fairly and harmoniously going by the agency of converted natives.

The importance was soon perceived of attempting to educate the children of the country. Except as a relief to parents and a lesson to the missionaries, the first vernacular schools were not of much use, from a Christian standpoint. The abridgment and expurgation of Tamil authors was a vain precaution, whetting the appetite of teachers and taught for the fruit forbidden. The boy, by his father's command, and not hindered by the mercenary schoolmaster, brought his own ola containing the rejected passages. I seldom visited a purely Tamil school without discovering some history or poem only fit, in many parts of it, to paganize both intellect and heart, which my approach had caused to be wrapped in a cloth, placed under a mat, or thrown on a shelf or into a corner. These institutions have since improved, and perhaps done some missionary service, the masters employed in them being at length not of necessity double-faced heathens, but persons trained under a deepening and broadening Christian influence.

Yet secular knowledge alone may be enough

to undermine and explode their heathenism. pices, the most important of them sprang up A single illustration will suffice to show this. at Colombo, Jaffna, and Batticotta, for boys, Vesuvenathar, an aged Brahmin of Batticotta, and at Oodooville, Jaffna, and Nellore, for in North Ceylon, was the most learned girls. Attendance at pagan temples was native astronomer. In the calculations pub-impossible to the inmates of these institutions; lished in his almanac respecting an eclipse of they were required to dispense with sectarial the moon, to take place on the 20th of marks and religious badges, and kept from March, 1829, three errors were discovered heathen society; and they were obliged to by the accomplished American missionaries. join in morning and evening prayer at the The true reckoning showed that the eclipse family altar, to go to the Sunday school, to would commence a quarter of an hour attend the public services in church or chapel, sooner than he had said, that it would con- and to observe other rules and duties of tinue twenty-four minutes longer, and that it which the direct and undisguised aim was to would cover three digits more of the moon's win them to the Saviour. Of course no one disc. After having repeatedly, with the was forced into these institutions; admission assistance of brother-astronomers, reviewed was voluntary, but these were the well-known his calculations, and confirmed himself in conditions under which admission was obtheir accuracy, Vesuvenathar rejoiced in an tained. Many difficulties had to be overopportunity to discomfit and expose the come before these Church nurseries were of strangers. The country watched, and won- service. The people entertained the wildest dered which party would be triumphant. A fancies as to the designs of the missiontrusty pandaram applied himself to ascertain aries. Were the poor children wanted to be precisely the questions in dispute, and learned reared for slaves, trained for soldiers, sent to use a watch, and compare our mode of into the interior of the island, or transported reckoning time with that of the natives; and to some foreign country? It was incredible he openly testified that in all the three that, from mere motives of benevolence, men points the missionaries had won the day. and women of another race had travelled The failure of the great professor was re- thousands of miles to receive, support, and garded as a heavy blow to the religion of educate children of persons they had never North Ceylon. Not that religion could be seen. To the astonishment of the public, true or false because of the truth or error of six little boys were at length confided by the predictions of its upholders; but so it their parents to the persuasive foreigners; was regarded by the people, and their con- but some time elapsed before other heads of clusion was sound, whatever may be said of families followed the example. After the the reason for it. people were satisfied that the children were taken good care of, the missionaries still considered it expedient to yield for a time to certain prejudices. When the brethren from America opened the Batticotta seminary, to become one of the most efficient and popular educational establishments in the East, no boys could be discovered who would consent, or whose friends would permit them, to take their food within the mission premises. A cooking and eating house was, therefore, erected on an adjoining piece of land belonging to a heathen; and more than a year passed before the missionaries ventured on transferring the kitchen establishment to their own enclosure. When the removal was effected, several of the youths, rather than endanger character and caste, "took up their beds, and walked," most of them to return thankfully after their friends had found time for consultation. Another difficulty in the same school was with the three or four wells, abundantly sufficient for all demands, within the mission boundary. The hopeful pupils agreed that, since these excellent wells had

If it had been enough to convey secular instruction, it might have been difficult to find better teachers than the missionaries; but they had higher aims, and avowedly did their utmost to impart a Christian education. Nothing but such an aim would have reconciled them to spend many hours every day among urchins, some of whom were only interesting as children of God, and destined to immortality. By means, in part, of the word of God, the missionaries learned the native language and taught their own, gave lessons in history and geography, and preached the way to heaven. Natives have followed their example. There are Tamil pastors who testify that the beginning of their training for the ministry was in the school use of the Holy Bible. Catechisms are daily taught in the chief schools.

The missionaries went on to establish boarding-schools, chiefly houses of residence and discipline in connection with large central academies, to which day scholars were admitted. Under different names and aus

all been used by persons connected with the mission family, the water they contained could not be pure enough for Tamils, and that every drop should be drawn out of one of them, and the well undergo a thorough cleansing. It being the rainy season, they found it more easy to exhaust themselves than the well, which was nearly as full as ever after they had toiled with the waterbaskets a whole day. The time had come for them to bring their minds, if possible, to their circumstances; and sure that at least as much water had been drawn as the well contained when they commenced their efforts, there could be no doubt, they reasoned, that the spring now issued purely. Such are samples of the minor, yet by no means insignificant obstacles to his work which the missionary has to bear with and overcome. These institutions, however, are now eagerly sought, and candidates for admission are more numerous than can be accommodated in them.

In the beginning of the century the prejudice against female education was strong. A few girls might be seen among the boys in the native schools; but every one knew that they were intended to be temple-women. To propose that other girls should be taught to read and write was to lay the axe to the root of all authority and virtue. They would be refusing the husbands chosen for them, and conducting correspondence on their own account. Nevertheless the Wesleyans opened small day-schools for girls in 1817. Under their auspices, in 1846, Mary J. Swamanadar, daughter of a pious moodliar, originated an excellent school in Puliantivo, over which she continues to preside. In 1821 the Americans established at Oodooville the first girls' boarding-school in Ceylon. The Methodists started one at Jaffna in 1838, and the example was followed ere long by the Church of England at Nellore. The first scholars were baited with pieces of cloth, and the promise of small marriage portions. Dreaded at the outset, these boarding-schools won so good a reputation that admission into them was soon sought with the greatest eagerness. They have led to the formation of many a home deservedly so called. The wife, a servant formerly, may in this day be a companion. To be seen in a public assembly was a disgrace; now women are present, amply veiled, in front of the congregation, and communicate in the Sacrament of the Lord's Supper. There are female Scripturereaders and class-leaders. It is perceived by the natives that women educated by the

missionaries and their wives are the most virtuous and domestic, and the most respectable.

In the year 1851, of the 1,425 children then in the 32 Wesleyan schools in the Tamil district, 3 were Singhalese, 4 English, 23 Malays, 37 children of Moormen, 104 Portuguese and Dutch descendants, and 1,254 Tamil children. In religious profession, 1 of them was a Buddhist, 60 were Mohammedans, 90 Mary-worshippers, 192 Protestants, and 1,082 worshippers of Siva and the kindred deities. Returns from South Ceylon would have been similar, the relative proportions of the Singhalese and Tamils being changed. Three permanent scholarships have been founded in connection with the Wesleyan central schools in the Tamil district, which are affiliated to the Calcutta University. There are now maintained by the various Protestant societies in Ceylon, not in all cases without Government aid, about 390 schools, containing 18,000 children.

All the societies have, with great success, worked printing establishments; but that of the Americans at Manepy has been on the largest scale, and has exerted the widest influence. Hundreds of natives have been taught the arts of printing and binding; and the style and ola are everywhere giving place to pen and type and paper. The large and ceaseless production of copies of the Bible, Prayer Books, hymn-books, treatises, tracts, lexicons, translations, school-books, and periodicals has diffused knowledge through thousands of families. With the help of the British and Foreign Bible Society, the entire Scriptures have been published in Tamil and Singhalese, the Pentateuch, Psalms, and New Testament in Indo-Portuguese, and the books of the New Testament in Pali.

In conducting services in their churches and chapels the missionaries of all the societies have, of course, been diligent. As to itinerant work, not meaning to disparage others, I can speak most confidently of my old acquaintances the Americans and Methodists. It is still their custom to start off to the villages for miles around their homes, accompanied by native preachers and catechists. In the course of their journeys many conversations are held in the name of Christ with villagers at their doors; and in every place where they halt they get as many of the people together as they can, and preach the Saviour to them, in connection with singing, prayer, tract distribution, and Bible-hawking. They are not too particular as to where they plant their standard, but

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lift up their voices wherever there are ears to | farmer might like to stack his hay under. hear. Their charity beginning at home, the first meeting is held in a place of Christian worship. The second is in a school-bungalow open at the sides and ends, a shed thatched with palmyra leaves, such as an English

VII. N.S.

The third is in the shadow of a spreading tree outside a bazaar, the next in the large compound of a friendly native, the next in a field belonging to a European planter. Suppose the meeting to be out of doors after

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sunset, some of the people sit on mats spread on the ground, and others stand about, lights and shadows flitting curiously over them from a lamp screened by an upright mat from the evening wind.

A famous beater of bushes was the Rev. Ralph Stott. He would go into a village, and get into conversation with some one on the way. Another would join them, and another; and as the company increased he would gradually raise his voice till he found himself preaching the gospel to a large congregation. When he excited angry opposition, as, of course, he did sometimes, he had his own way of meeting it. In a Batticaloe village, when a furious native came up with the thick hard stalk of a cocoa-frond in his hand, and threatened to stop his eloquence, he disarmed him by kneeling down then and there among the people, and praying aloud for his assailant's salvation. He was distinguished for his practice, strange in the East, of visiting from door to door. If a heathen repelled him from his compound he would fall upon his knees, clasp his hands, close his eyes, and with unaffected simplicity, in the hearing of all around, pray for the man and his family. There was considerable iconoclasm in Batticaloe in Mr. Stott's days. Several converts gave up their idols, and the sheds that had accommodated them, to destruction. When he first lifted the axe, the people looked on with a degree of awe, thinking it possible for the gods to take care of themselves. He was more successful than a workman who tried to cut down a demonhaunted tree at Cattavelly in the north, and was hurled to the ground by the resisting spirit, that is to say, fell from the ladder. Mr. Stott's operations brought no disaster to himself or his agents. In 1844, he broke thirteen stone pilleyars, and pulled down five thatched tabernacles in which they had been kept for worship. The huts were most of them too small for Christian uses; but I remember giving tickets to a Methodist class in one of them, which its owner had presented to the mission, in a place called Carova

pancany.

The total number in Ceylon, for all the Protestant missions, were very recently 38 English ministers, 92 native pastors, 591 lay agents, 4,800 church members, and 19,000 regular hearers. About one-third of the baptisms last year were of adult persons, and there were many inquirers in catechumen classes. The first Hindoo ordained in the Church of England, the Rev. Christian David, was a Ceylonese. The Methodists

alone have now 12 native ministers among the Tamils of the island, and 34 among the Singhalese, not counting catechists and others. And the success of the Rev. John Kilner, and his able lieutenant the Rev. Edmund Rigg, in organizing these young churches and teaching them self-support, is a matter of surprise and joy.

Attempts were made, under the patronage and with the aid of the Government agent at Batticaloe, to arrest the decay of the Bintenne Veddahs; but these unhappily proved unsuccessful. Some of these wild men were supplied with agricultural implements, and induced to settle in a new village; but the native placed over them degenerated into an unfaithfulness that sent them back to their forest haunts and ways. Both agent and missionary were a little too hasty in baptizing a number of the more hopeful of them. One may frankly confess the mistake. These wild hunters were placed in a row, and christened one after another; but the foolish practice of giving new and European names was followed, and at the close of the ceremony it was discovered that no one among them remembered what he was called. It was then sagely determined to give each person his own name, plainly written, that there might be no mistake. The pieces of paper were afterwards handed with solemn concern by their respective owners, none of whom could read, to the wise head-man, to be taken care of; and he mixed them all together, making it impossible for any one in the settlement to recover the knowledge of who was who.

Whilst rejoicing in the triumphs of earnest faith and labour, I must confess that it has been a great pain to me that the Burgher population have not had the respect from the missionaries which they deserved. We began our work in their sanctuaries, and found among them exemplary Christians, like Mrs. Schrader, who translated many hymns into Ceylon-Portuguese, and was a faithful helper and ornament to the church which she joined. If the most had been made of the honest descendants of the Dutch, they would have proved an admirable middle class, speaking the proper languages of the country more fluently than stiffmouthed foreigners, and exerting themselves usefully in educational and evangelistic service. Nevertheless, since this century began, Ceylon has been the field of a brave service, a service which has in a few years overcome the habits of centuries, and is changing this kingdom of idols into a kingdom of our Lord and of His Christ.

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