s' house
to teach the word of Buddha.

Celibacy is the rule of the priesthood. Nothing can be less obtrusive
than the demeanor of the brethren. Visitors to their temples are
welcomed, and courteous replies are always made to inquiries.

Cremation is general in the priesthood, but apparently optional with
others of the faith. When a dignitary of the priesthood passes away his
confreres assemble from far and near at the funeral pyre to do him
honor. The incineration usually takes place in a palm grove. The corpse
is surrounded with dried wood, made additionally inflammable with oils.
The rites of the pyre include nothing of a sensational character; the
assemblage chants for a time, then a priest of high rank applies the
torch, and in an hour nothing remains but a mound of embers and ashes. A
cremation may be readily witnessed at Kandy or Colombo, or other place
possessing a considerable population.

The peoples of low caste of the East are too numerous to be catalogued.
India teems with them, of course, and the paradise island of Ceylon has
a considerable percentage of human beings denied by their betters of
almost every privilege save breathing the free air of heaven. The
lowlands and coastal regions have been so commercialized that human
pariahs are there almost overlooked--but they are at every turning of
the road in every hamlet, everywhere. Kandy, once royal city, knows the
abhorred low caste to-day as it did five hundred years ago, for in plain
view of the capital in the hills there are settlements of men and women
still excluded from communion with the world by reason of a royal curse
pronounced centuries ago--and it is a condition worse than death itself.

Representatives of the Rodiya caste may be seen any day by pedestrians
in the city's outskirts. There are not many of them,
fortunately--perhaps a thousand all told. Tradition has it that hundreds
of years ago a vengeful monarch condemned their race to never-ending
degradation for having supplied the royal table with human flesh instead
of venison. Custom forces these poor mortals to ford or swim a stream,
instead of using a ferry; and forbids their drawing water at public
wells. They must not live in houses like other people, but in hovels
constructed usually by leaning a hurdle against a rock, and their men
and women must never clothe their bodies above the waist. Until recent
years courts of justice have been closed to them, and if overtaken on
their trav