Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: June 11, 2025
There were only two other patients in the white men's ward: the purser of a gunboat, who had broken his leg falling down a hatchway; and a kind of railway contractor from a neighbouring province, afflicted by some mysterious tropical disease, who held the doctor for an ass, and indulged in secret debaucheries of patent medicine which his Tamil servant used to smuggle in with unwearied devotion.
A high school class one night presented part of the old Tamil drama of Harischandra. The heroine, an exiled queen, watches her child die before her in the forest. Having no money to pay for cremation on the burning ghat, she herself gathers firewood, builds a little pyre, and with such tears and lamentations as befit an Oriental woman lays her child's body on the funeral pile.
The Tamil men are of good height, slim, with small limbs yet well formed, and have pleasing features and bronzed skins, very similar in hue to our North American Indians. The Singhalese are of a darker complexion, not so light in figure; they affect European dress, adding much ornamentation.
An average Tamil or Moorman stays down not longer than forty-five seconds, while the broad-chested Arab thinks nothing of being under water from sixty to eighty seconds. Depth has much to do with the time, and it is admitted that divers do not suffer unduly from the trying nature of their calling except when forced to work in unusually deep water.
"It was like this, sorr, I'm country-born; me father was a sergeant in the Irish Rifles, me mother was a half-caste an Anglo-Indian from Ceylon so I'm half Irish, quarter Cingalese. I was left an orphan when I was seven years old and educated at the Lawrence Asylum. I always had a wonderful twist for languages; it came as easy as breathing to me to talk Tamil or Telugu.
For, of course, among his fellows the boy from Pondicherry spoke Hindustani mixed with Malay and perhaps with Tamil. I well remember how I made the discovery. It was odd enough to me, but far stranger, far more wonderful, far more full of mystery to my little, excitable and very dark-skinned friend. I daresay, if he lives, that to this hour he remembers the English boy who so surprised him.
The Arab managed to make himself understood, for the savage who had led us into the snare pointed to one of the caverns which ran off from the main grotto, and said: "Sports of the ocean current, which brought ye into the way whence ye may see the Great Tamil, enter there and food shall be given to ye."
The doctrine of bhakti is common to both Vishnuites and Śivaites. It is perhaps in general estimation associated with the former more than with the latter, but this is because the Bhagavad-gîtâ and various forms of devotion to Kṛishṇa are well known, whereas the Tamil literature of Dravidian Śivaism is ignored by many European scholars.
I have been informed by Tamil Pandits that at the present day the ritual in some temples is smârta or according to Smriti, but in the majority according to the Âgamas or tantric. The officiants require no special initiation and burnt offerings are presented.
Among the "Malays and other natives of the Archipelago" are included, Achinese, Boyanese, Bugis, Dyaks, Jawi-Pekans, and Manilamen. The European resident population, exclusive of the soldiers, is only 1,283. The Chinese population is 86,766; the Malay, 22,114; the Tamil, 10,475; the Javanese, 5,881; and the Eurasian, 3,091.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking