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It seems that the Kandyans and we reciprocally misunderstood the ranks, orders, precedencies, titular distinctions, and external honours attached to them in our several nations. But none are so deaf as those that have no mind to hear.
Both Marshall and Davy mention, that during the march of troops in the mountains, when the Kandyans were in rebellion, in 1818, the soldiers, and especially the Madras sepoys, with the pioneers and coolies, suffered so severely from this cause that numbers perished. Bose. Blainv. These pests are not, however, confined to Ceylon, they infest the lower ranges of the Himalaya.
The Kandyans have a strong prejudice against engaging in trade, and indeed dislike to mix at all with strangers. They therefore, when able, perch their residences in the most out-of-the-way and inaccessible positions. The latter are the Highlanders, while the Singhalese are the Lowlanders of Ceylon.
Suddenly he rose up, stiff and gory; dying and delirious, as he felt himself, with misery from exhaustion and wounds, he swam rivers, threaded enemies, and moving day and night, came suddenly upon an army of Kandyans; here he prepared himself with pleasure for the death that now seemed inevitable, when, by a fortunate accident, for want of a fitter man, he was selected as an ambassador to the English officer commanding a Kandyan garrison and thus once more escaped miraculously.
The persons engaged in this wandering trade are chiefly Moors, and the business carried on by them consists in bringing up salt from the government depots on the coast to be bartered with the Kandyans in the hills for "native coffee," which is grown in small quantities round every house, but without systematic cultivation.
When good Kandyans discourse in flowery vein, they say Kandy is only forty miles from heaven. Visitors who have fallen under the charm of the place are more likely to wonder at their moderation than question their ability to measure celestial distances. If Gautama Buddha's "eternal rest" were to be had on earth, Kandy would surely be the reward of Nirvana promised those who have acquired merit.
Now in Ceylon, the central district, answering to this peach-stone, constitutes a fierce little Liliputian kingdom, quite independent, through many centuries, of the lazy belt, the peach-flesh, which swathes and enfolds it, and perfectly distinct by the character and origin of its population. The peach-stone is called Kandy, and the people Kandyans.
The Kandyans have a strong attachment and veneration for their chiefs, by whom, however, they were cruelly oppressed, and both races possess the vices inherent to a long-continued slavery a want of truthfulness and honesty; at the same time they possess the virtue of strong family affection and respect for their parents and elders.
There are two varieties of the native bullock; one a somewhat coarser animal, of a deep red colour; the other, the high-bred black one I have just described. So rare was a white one of this species, under the native kings, that the Kandyans were compelled to set them apart for the royal herd. They were sent as a present from the King of Atchin.
For, as Mr Bennett observes, the principal features of these Kandyans are merely "human imitations of their own indigenous leopards treachery and ferocity," as the circumstances may allow them to profit by one or the other. Sugarcandy, however, appears to have given very little trouble to us; and, at all events, it is ours now, together with all that is within its gates.
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