The Singhalese believe that all ills in life are inflicted as punishment, and that evil spirits are the agents of Providence to apply the same. They think that they are under penalty not alone for sins committed during their present lives, but also for their wrongdoing in some previous state of existence. They may have been "rogue" elephants, thieving crows, vicious buffaloes, or vile cobras, all of which is quite in accordance with their creed as promulgated by the Buddhist priests.
They seem to have no skill whatever in the treatment of the most simple illness. The author has never, even among the most barbaric tribes, quite isolated from contact with white men, known a people so deficient in this respect. Some few of the Singhalese planters regularly set aside a small portion of their rice-fields, and leave them unharvested, for the use of the demons! It is intimated that the priests manage to secretly reap these portions for their own benefit, representing it to have been done by the evil spirits, whose good-will has thus been secured in behalf of the credulous planter. The base and groveling superstitions and credulity of the natives of Ceylon are simply disgusting. There are said to be three thousand devil-priests supported in the island, living with unblushing assurance upon the ignorance of the masses. How closely akin is all this to the Roman Catholic priests, who pretend "on liberal terms" to pray departed souls out of purgatory.
Does it not seem extraordinary that the idea of worshiping or propitiating some powerful evil spirit should prevail almost universally among barbarous and half-civilized races? It is not the force of example which inculcates such an idea, since the author has met with it as a native custom among various tribes situated as far apart as the poles. The Alaska Indians, the denizens of "Darkest Africa," the Maoris of New Zealand, and the cannibal tribes of the Fiji Islands, all yield more or less to this instinct. Nor were the Indians of North America devoid of an equivalent custom when the European settlers first came among them. It is only natural that all people, civilized or otherwise, should be exercised by an instinct leading up to the worship of a great Heavenly Father of mankind, but the belief in the existence of an opposing and more important power, which must first be propitiated, is certainly as singular as it is universal among the barbarous races of both hemispheres. When visiting the famous temples of Nikko, in Japan, the author saw a priest sitting before a temple in the open air, beside a collection of prepared pine chips with which he was feeding a small fire upon an open stone slab, and accompanying the burning process by beating at intervals upon a tom-tom. On inquiring as to the significance of this singular ceremony, we were sagely told by the native guide that the priest thus solicited the good-will of the god of fire, who was very powerful and inimical to man, unless his favor was frequently sought by such means.