CEYLON. – The name C. means “Island of the Lions,” from the warriors who accompanied, in the 6th century B.C., its Indian conqueror. It is the ancient Taprobane, well known to classical writers for its commercial importance but rarely mentioned in their literary sources. An insular appendage of the Indian peninsula (Deccan), it is connected to the mainland by the piers of a bridge only partially collapsed (Adam’s Bridge, with in the middle the islet of Rameswaram, one of the favored destinations of Indian pilgrimages).
C. consists of a block of crystalline terrain, which rises in terraces toward the central-southern part of the island,
where high peaks (Adam’s Peak, 2,243 m; Pidurutalagala, 2,527 m) overlook a broad plateau. The block is surrounded along the entire oval perimeter of the island by wide coastal plains, which border a flat zone of recent sediments and coral limestones to the north. Accompanied as they are by a thin strip of sea, the coasts are generally low, but they sometimes open, where the bedrock emerges, into excellent bays, such as that of Trincomalee, easily transformed by the English into a formidable naval station.
The southern position of the island (from 6° to 10° N approx.) and its limited extent (65,600 sq km) give it a predominantly equatorial-monsoonal climate, hot and humid even in its mountainous interior. Average temperatures range throughout the year between 26° and 28° along the coastal margin and between 23° and 26° in the regions farther from the sea; rainfall, however, which is more abundant in the southwestern sector exposed to the monsoon (from 2 to 6 m annually), becomes less copious and regular to the north and east. The equatorial vegetation gives rise to dense jungle in the plains and magnificent forests on the slopes of the plateau. Among the crops that occupy about one-fourth of the island’s surface, those of tea, coconut palm, rice, and rubber tree prevail. Livestock raising is of little importance; mineral resources are limited to graphite and corundum. Industry is practically nonexistent (87% of the population is rural).
The administrative division of the island is as follows:
The administrative division of the island is as follows:
Of the 6.7 million inhabitants (1946; there were 890,000 in 1827), nearly two-thirds are Sinhalese, of Indo-European language and Buddhist religion; one-fifth are Tamils, who speak Dravidian dialects.
Evangelization in the 16th century was limited to the island of Mannar, where St. Francis Xavier sent a cleric in 1544. Most of the neophytes suffered martyrdom at the hands of the king of Jaffna; however, from 1560 onward the Jesuits, under Portuguese protection, reduced the island of Mannar to the faith. In the 17th century, Franciscans, Dominicans, Jesuits, and Augustinians spread their beneficial evangelizing activity from the center of Colombo. At the same time, the Jaffna peninsula was effectively evangelized by Jesuits, Franciscans, and Dominicans. Around the middle of the century, the Portuguese were driven out of C. by the Dutch, who in 1656 occupied Colombo and in 1658 Jaffna, and immediately began a violent suppression of the Catholic religion by expelling missionaries and imposing very strict measures against the faithful. The savior of the mission was the Goan Oratorian José Vaz, who from 1687 worked in disguise among the Catholics and in 1691 found refuge in the independent kingdom of Kandy within the island: from this center, the Oratorians assisted the Catholics until 1746. Fr. Jacome Gonçalves created a rich Christian literature in the Singhalese and Tamil languages. Expelled from Kandy in 1746, the Oratorians took refuge in Vanni and took advantage of the greater freedom granted by the Dutch.
The English occupied C. in 1796, declaring it a Crown colony in 1802, and proclaimed religious freedom in 1806. At that point, the mission was able to develop and organize freely. In 1834 and again in 1836, the island, until then under the diocese of Cochin, was erected into an Apostolic Vicariate. The Goan Oratorians, whose convent in Goa was suppressed in 1834, were soon replaced by European priests, mainly Oblates of Mary Immaculate and Silvestrines. The Apostolic Vicariates of Colombo and Jaffna, erected in 1847, passed in 1857 into the hands of the Silvestrines (Colombo) and the Oblates (Jaffna). The latter worked with excellent results to renew Christian communities, reorganize Christian life, create schools, and train an indigenous clergy. The great animator of this work was Msgr. Ernesto Cristoforo Bonjean, 1883 in Jaffna, 1883–92 in Colombo. In 1883, Colombo was also entrusted to the Oblates; the Silvestrines took over the Apostolic Vicariate of Kandy, erected that year. In 1886, the hierarchy was established: Colombo was elevated to an archdiocese with the suffragans of Jaffna and Kandy. In 1893, the dioceses of Galle and Trincomalee were added, entrusted to the Jesuits, who also oversee the central seminary for India in Kandy. In 1939, the diocese of Chilaw was erected and entrusted to the Ceylonese secular clergy. Since 1947, the archbishop of Colombo has also been indigenous. – See Pl. LXXXIV.