THE BUDDHISTS AND GOVERNMENT

[The Theosophist, Vol. V, No. 1(49), Supplement to Oct., 1883, p.5.]

The statement is circulating through the Indian Press, that “considerable indignation is felt in Ceylon at the attempts which the Buddhists are making to pose before the world as the favorites of Government.” This false and malicious rumor is based upon the fact that in one of the temples the simple-minded priests, anxious to show their loyalty, have emblazoned the Royal Arms upon the wall! The simple fact that the fiction was started by that truculent sheet—the Ceylon Observer—is quite sufficient to satisfy any one who knows anything of Ceylon affairs not only of its groundlessness, and also its malicious intent. The Editor never loses an opportunity to inflict pain and harm upon the peaceable Buddhists of that island. He is a sectarian Protestant with a nature as bitter as gall, and is seldom without a libel suit to defend. The poor Singhalese Buddhists are so far from even dreaming that they could “pose before the world as the favorites of Government,” that they are now appealing to the Home Authorities for simple justice—denied them after the murder and maiming of their people by the Roman Catholic mob in the late riots. We are sorry to see our respectable contemporary, the Christian College Magazine, misled by so transparent a humbug as the Observer’s paragraph in question. Whenever the Editor may wish trustworthy data about Ceylon Buddhism or Buddhists, he should apply to some other quarter.