Ceylon

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 joined to it by the piers of a bridge that has only partly collapsed (Adam's Bridge, with, in the middle, the islet of Rameswaram, one of the favorite 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, 2243 m; Pidurutalagala, 2527 m) tower over a broad plateau. The block is surrounded along the entire typically ovoid perimeter of the island by broad coastal plains, which border to the north a flat zone of recent sediments and coral limestones. Accompanied as they are by a strip of shallow sea, the coasts are generally low, but sometimes open out, where the basement rock comes to light, 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 about 6° to 10° N.) 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 oscillate throughout the year between 26° and 28° along the coastal margin and between 23° and 26° in the regions farthest from the sea; precipitation, on the other hand, is more abundant on the south-western vector, exposed to the monsoon (from 2 to 6 m. annually), and becomes less copious and regular to the N. and E. The equatorial vegetation produces a dense jungle in the plains and magnificent forests on the slopes of the plateau. Among the crops, which occupy about 1/4 of the island's surface, those of tea, coconut palm, rice, and rubber hevea predominate. Livestock raising is of little importance; mineral resources are limited to graphite and kaolin. Industries are practically non-existent (87% of the population is rural).

The administrative division of the island is as follows:

Of the 6.7 million inhabitants (1946; there were 890,000 in 1827), almost 2/3 are Sinhalese, of Indo-European language and Buddhist religion; 1/5 are Tamils, who speak Dravidian dialects, of Brahmanic religion (Hindus), and the rest are Muslims (6%), Malays, Veddas and Europeans, the latter little more than 5000 and almost all English. About 70% of the population professes Buddhism, 24% Hinduism, 7% Islam. Catholics number over 450,000.

The capital, and the most important city and port of the island, is Colombo (361,000 inhabitants), on the western coast, on the route of the great maritime communications between Europe and the Far East or Australia; no other center reaches 100,000 inhabitants.

Giuseppe Caraci
EVANGELIZZA-
FORMATION OF CEYLON. - The Portuguese had built a small fort at Colombo in 1518 and made the king of Kotte, "the emperor of C.", tributary. Missionary activity on the island was begun in 1543 through the work of the Franciscans, who under the Catholic king Dharmapala obtained great results on the coast of Colombo among the Kadayan fisher caste. In the northern part evangelization was limited, in the 16th century, to the island of Mannar, where St. Francis Xavier in 1544 sent a cleric. A large part of the neophytes suffered martyrdom at the hands of the king of Jaffna, but from 1560 onward the Jesuits, under Portuguese protection, brought the island of Mannar to the faith. In the 17th century Franciscans, Dominicans, Jesuits and Augustinians carried on their beneficial evangelizing work from the center of Colombo. At the same time the peninsula of Jaffna was effectively evangelized by Jesuits, Franciscans and Dominicans. Toward the middle of the 17th century the Portuguese were driven from C. by the Dutch, who in 1656 occupied Colombo and in 1658 Jaffna, and immediately began a violent suppression of the Catholic religion with the expulsion of the missionaries and with very rigorous measures against the faithful. The savior of the mission was the Goan Oratorian Josè

Vaz, who from 1687 worked in disguise among the Catholics and in 1691 found refuge in the independent kingdom of Kandy in the interior of the island: from this center the Oratorians assisted the Catholics until 1746. Father Jacome Gonçalves created a rich Christian literature in the Sinhalese and Tamil languages. Driven out of 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 freedom of religion in 1806. Then the mission could freely develop and organize itself. 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 of Goa was suppressed in 1834, were gradually replaced by European priests, mainly Oblates of Mary Immaculate and Sylvestrines. The apostolic vicariates of Colombo and Jaffna, erected in 1847, passed in 1857 into the hands of the Sylvestrines (Colombo) and the Oblates (Jaffna). The latter worked with excellent results to renew the Christian communities, to reorganize Christian life, to create schools and to form an indigenous clergy. The great animator of this work was Msgr. Ernest Christopher Bonjean, 1868-1883 in Jaffna, 1883-92 in Colombo. In 1883 Colombo too was entrusted to the Oblates; the Sylvestrines received the apostolic vicariate of Kandy erected in that year. In 1886 the hierarchy was instituted: 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, to whose care is also entrusted the central seminary for India at Kandy. In 1939 the diocese of Chilaw was erected, entrusted to the secular clergy of Ceylon. Since 1947 the archbishop of Colombo is also indigenous. - See Pl. LXXXIV.