{"id":110900,"date":"2021-01-22T18:04:15","date_gmt":"2021-01-23T01:04:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/?p=110900"},"modified":"2021-01-22T18:04:15","modified_gmt":"2021-01-23T01:04:15","slug":"an-englishman-calls-the-sinhalese-a-very-highly-civilized-race","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/2021\/01\/22\/an-englishman-calls-the-sinhalese-a-very-highly-civilized-race\/","title":{"rendered":"An Englishman calls the Sinhalese ‘ a very highly civilized race ‘"},"content":{"rendered":"

Senaka Weeraratna<\/em><\/span><\/h2>\n\n\n

Sinhala Buddhists are the most demonized ethnic group in\nSouth Asia, despite their tolerance of other races and religions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The following is an account written by an Englishman named\nCampbell in 1932, on his trip to Australia from Ceylon, accompanying a group of\nabout 500 (largely Sinhalese), on the ship SS Devonshire, in 1882:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

” The Cingalese were a very highly civilised\nrace…They have  deep pride of the Island’s  historical and\nspiritual continuity.   They burn with enthusiasm in their religious\ndevotion and live up to it.. they are a race of  primitive simplicity,\nknow no malice,  are hospitable, peaceful and cheerful  minded. \nThe rich  Cingalese  in Ceylon can say as Job said I was eyes to the\nblind and feet was I to the lame; I was father to the poor, and the cause which\nI knew not I searched out “<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Every traveller to Ceylon cannot help but notice the\nfriendliness of the natives; everything looks clean and bright  as if\nto  show off before strangers that they felt it was good to be\nalive…They have  left their footsteps in sands of time over a century as\nloyal British  subjects.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Over 50 years ago,  the  hymn from Greenland\u2019s icy\nmountains was composed by Bishop Heber, the suffragan bishop of Madras, India,\nafter paying a short visit to Colombo.  The hymn contains the two\nfollowing lines: \u201dWhere every prospect pleaseth, but only man is vile\u201d  As\na matter of fact, the native of Ceylon was never vile\u201d to any one, in any\nway.  It is a subject on which extreme exaggerations have prevailed. \nIt is an obvious criticism that if they were as bad as some writers imagined\nthey never could have subsisted if this view of their human nature had been a\njust one.  Ceylon would have been like a cage full of wild beasts, and the\ninhabitants would have soon perished in constant internecine war.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Vile\u201d was in the spirit of poetry\u201d in rhythm with Isle\u201d\nbut lacked the spirit of truth and piety\u201d.  Evangelists use the hymn in\ntheir so-called missionary services and Sunday Schools composed of white people\nin the fervent hope it will give nourishment to the spiritual life of those who\nsing it and enlarge the collection of the Almighty Dollar\u201d.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

According to the most recent statistics there are no fewer\nthan 187 sects of Christians, and they all more or less, bear very strange\nnames.  Some must flout the Bible in their numerous complex faiths. Some\nmake a religious taboo of the Lord\u2019s Supper, some of infant baptism, some of\nmixed marriages, and they are all  antagonistic  to each other\ntheologically and overlap each other with churches, therefore the heathen in\nhis blindness\u201d is not safe getting into theological holts with their would-be\nsaviours.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

See<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Memoirs of a Pioneer – 50 years ago<\/p>\n\n\n\n

http:\/\/www.worldgenweb.org\/lkawgw\/acampbell.html<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Senaka Weeraratna<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Senaka Weeraratna Sinhala Buddhists are the most demonized ethnic group in South Asia, despite their tolerance of other races and religions. The following is an account written by an Englishman named Campbell in 1932, on his trip to Australia from Ceylon, accompanying a group of about 500 (largely Sinhalese), on the ship SS Devonshire, in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":true,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[165],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-110900","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-senaka-weeraratna"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/110900","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=110900"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/110900\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=110900"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=110900"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=110900"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}