alore, "What religion are you of?" "Oh!" he answered
with a smile, "no religion at all, sir." But I need not trouble the reader
with further evidence to show that a man may drop his religion altogether
without dropping his caste, and that therefore religion and caste have no
necessary connection with one another whatever.

[41] "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.

[A] MS. account of Baptist Mission.

[42] In the large towns this remark might not, perhaps, be justifiable.

[43] Since this chapter was written, I have received well authenticated
information of a Pariah,