No national system of religion, no prevailing superstition that has ever fallen under my observation presents so dull a level, and is so pre-eminently deficient in popular influences, as Buddhism amongst the Singhalese.  It has its multitude of followers, but it is a misnomer to describe them as its votaries, for the term implies a warmth and fervour unknown to a native of Ceylon.  He believes, or he thinks he believes, because he is of the same faith with his ancestors; but he looks on the religious doctrines of the various sects which surround him with a stolid indifference which is the surest indication of the little importance which he attaches to his own.  The fervid earnestness of Christianity, even in its most degenerate forms, the fanatical enthusiasm of Islam, the proud exclusiveness of Brahma, and even the zealous warmth of other Northern faiths, are all emotions utterly foreign and unknown to the followers of Buddhism in Ceylon.

Yet, strange to tell, under all the icy coldness of this barren system, there burn below the unextinguished fires of another and a darker superstition, whose flames overtop the icy summits of the Buddhist philosophy, and excite a deeper and more reverential awe in the imagination of the Singhalese.  As the Hindus in process of time superadded to their exalted conceptions of Brahma, and the benevolent attributes of Vishnu, those dismal dreams and apprehensions which embody themselves in the horrid worship of Shiva, and in invocations to propitiate the destroyer; so the followers of Buddha, unsatisfied with the vain pretensions of unattainable perfection, struck down by their internal consciousness of sin and insufficiency, and seeing around them, instead of the reign of universal happiness and the apotheosis of intellect and wisdom, nothing but the ravages of crime and the sufferings produced by ignorance, have turned with instinctive terror to propitiate the powers of evil, by whom alone such miseries are supposed to be inflicted, and to worship the demons and tormentors to whom their superstition is contented to attribute a circumscribed portion of power over the earth.

DEMON WORSHIP prevailed amongst the Singhalese before the introduction of Buddhism by Mahindo.  Some principle akin to it seems to be an aboriginal impulse of uncivilised man in his first and rudest conceptions of religion, engendered, perhaps, by the spectacle of cruelty and pain, the visitations of suffering and death, and the contemplation of the awful phenomena of nature—­storms, torrents, volcanoes, earthquakes, and destruction.  The conciliation of the powers which inflict such calamities, seems to precede, when it does not supplant, the adoration of the benevolent influence to which belong the creation, the preservation, and the bestowal of happiness on mankind; and in the mind of the native of Ceylon this ancient superstition has maintained its ascendancy, notwithstanding the introduction and ostensible prevalence