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Elsewhere it may sometimes exercise considerable influence and even command many devoted votaries but here it has been moulded into a regular religion, arranged and methodized into a system, and carefully preserved in writing: so that the amount of influence, which it exercises over the thoughts, the habits, the every day life of a Singhalese, is such as can hardly be believed by a stranger to the character of a genuine Singhalese Buddhist.Ī series of writers commencing with Knox and ending with Sir Emerson Tennent, have, at different periods, during the last 200 years, given to the public the results of their enquiries and experience in matters connected with this Island, in a number of interesting and able works of which Sir Emerson’s is the last and the greatest: yet none of these writers seem to have perceived, in any adequatedegree, the extraordinary amount of gross superstition which prevails among the people, of whose manners, customs, and history they professed to treat not that they have omitted to mention the worship of gods and demons, as well as Buddhism and a few other superstition, as existing among our countrymen, and even in some instances, gone into considerable details respecting them, but they do not appear to have been fully aware of the extraordinary degree of influence they exercise over the mind of a Singhalese. And although there is scarcely a single country in the world, in which this belief does not more or less prevail in some form or other, yet we do not think there is any, in which it has developed itself in such gigantic proportions, or such hideous forms, as in this beautiful Island. This belief has, according to the amount of intelligence and civilization possessed by those among whom it prevails, given rise to various systems of superstition, of which some are of the most debasing and revolting character. But that the belief really exists will hardly admit of a doubt. Why, or how this is so whether it is founded on any innate, morbid quality of the human heart, which men find it difficult to resist under certain circumstances, or on any intrinsic truth inherent in the nature of the thing itself, or only on mere ignorance, it is as far from my present purpose, as it is beyond my humble abilities, to discuss here.
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General Remarks on Demon Worship.Ī belief in the realities of an invisible world of evil spirits as influencing, in a certain manner, many of the ordinary concerns of human life, has not only always formed an integral part of the creed of a large majority of mankind in every age and country of the world, but has also had, and still has, to a considerable extent, a certain strange, mysterious, and unaccountable fascination for the mind of man, even when reason happens to raise its authoritative voice of condemnation against it.
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By Dandris De Silva Gooneratne, modliar. 1865 On Demonology and Witchcraft in Ceylon. THE CEYLON BRANCH OF THE ROYAL ASIATIC SOCIETY.