Note 41 — Chapter VIII

"Caste, though distinctly denounced by their sacred hooks, and ostensibly disavowed by the Singhalese themselves, still exists in their veneration for rank, whether hereditary or adventitious. Thus every district and every village has its little leader, a preeminence accorded to birth rather than property; and, by a descending scale, certain members of the community, in right of relationship or connection, assume an undefined superiority, and are tacitly admitted to the exercise of what is technically called an 'influence.' In the hamlets, so universal is this feeling amongst the natives, so habitual the impulse to classify themselves and to look up to some one as their superior in the scale of society, that the custom descends through every gradation of life and its occupations, and in some of the villages the missionaries found it necessary to appoint two schoolmasters, even where there was less than occupation for one—'influence,' as well as ability to teach, being an essential qualification; and if the individual did not possess the former, it was most indispensable to associate with him some other who did.[A] Again, if a village could not furnish a master competent to teach, it was in vain to procure one from a distance; his 'influence' did not extend to that locality, and no pupils could he got to attend. Nor was caste itself without the open avowal of its force, the children of a Vellala or high-caste family being on no account permitted to enter the school-house of a lower-caste master. These are obstacles which prevail in all their original force even at the present day; and in the purely Singhalese districts, such as Matura, the prestige of caste is so despotic, that no amount of qualification in all other particulars can overcome the repugnance to intercourse with those who are deficient in the paramount requisite of rank."—SIR J. E. TENNENT's Christianity in Ceylon, p. 286.