My own special attention was naturally most directed to the Mohammedans.
Mohammedanism, as is well known, entered India from two separate sides and under two separate conditions. Its first appearance was on the western seaboard in the shape of Arab traders, who came with the double mission of propagating the faith and making money. These were peaceful preachers, who relied for success not upon the sword but upon the power of persuasion, and the Mohammedanism implanted in this form is still to be found on the west coast, in the Kokhnis of Bombay, the Moplas of Malabar, and the Moormen, or Moors (“os Moros” of the Portuguese) of Ceylon. They are a busy, prosperous people--shopkeepers, pedlars, jewellers, or plying certain handicrafts, and notably that of house-building.
It was extremely interesting to me to find at Colombo the descendants of the ancient Arab settlers of the eighth and ninth centuries still keeping up the commercial tradition of Arabia intact. They number in the whole island of Ceylon about a quarter of a million, and are among the most prosperous of its inhabitants. I found them an old-fashioned community, more occupied with this world than with the next, and only to a very small degree affected by modern thought. Indeed, such change as was to be noticed among them was of as recent growth as the advent in Ceylon of Arabi and his fellow-exiles, whose larger experience of the great outside world of Islam and the prestige of their late championship of the faith had begun to make its impression on their thoughts. Until their arrival no Mohammedan in the island had ever sat down to meat with men of another faith, and very few had sent their children to any secular school. The example, however, of the exiles was beginning to be followed, and I found the Moormen already anxious for wider instruction, and to come into communication with the general body of the faithful. It will be a curious result of Egypt’s misfortunes if the persecution of her patriot chiefs shall have brought ideas of religious liberty to the Mohammedans of Southern India; yet it is what seems to be happening. It would be well if these Moormen were more widely spread than they are, for their commercial instincts are a healthy element, and one much needed in the Mohammedan community of India proper.