JP… that is John Prins [?] …. “FEMALE BEAUTY IN CEYLON”[1]
“Ladies! – Young ladies! Be advised; hear the warning voice of one, who although an ardent worshipper at the shrine of beauty, yet despises the false conceptions and grand-mistaken notions entertained of female beauty and elegance. Nothing can be beautiful which seeks for its perfection the destruction and perversion of nature’s laws – nothing elegant, which ascribes to itself the rules of art in opposition to the dictates of nature”……
To relish anything beautiful, or to be displeased with anything inelegant, we must be guided by taste the keystone of all reason. This is necessary all along our lives; but we need it mostly when we allow our feelings to be blinded in our judgment of beauty, when we admire a Canidia or a Segana with the bigotry of infatuation before an inadvertent smile or motion can disclose the false teeth of one baridan, or the towering wig of the other. And never perhaps was taste more apt to mislead one’s judgment, and to become more difficult of application than in our climate, where female beauty meets with a cold stranger in Grandeur where her only ally is mediocrity, her dearest recommendations, novelty and simplicity, and where even these sweet qualities are too often overshadowed if not wholly eclipsed, by perversion. But yet with all this taste and beauty are now what they were at the Creation, one is the common birthright of all mankind, the other can be appreciated by every one; nay it ought to be, though there are a few who think it humiliating to confess as much. Would Adam have suffered himself to be tempted by a deformed prude? Or, would Eve have considered him worth tempting were he not stampened in the beauteous image of divinity? What ever may be said against beauty, and female beauty especially; however unnaturally some great philosophers of modern days may prefer a Xantippe to a Helen, (though the first be as great a scold as the wife of Socrates, without having heart, and the latter have all the charms of Venus and the Graces) – we cannot help pitying the poor wretches for the sacrifice they make to gratify their self-love and vanity, at the risk of losing their peace of mind. Wishing all our readers therefore could be tasteful, without turning fastidious or ridiculous, let us direct our attention to the various specimens of female competitors for beauty, in this beautiful land.
And what a variety – what a number of claimants have we for the golden apple! A dozen different republics of women stand arrayed before us, and be ours the self-imposed task of an impartial Paris to give the prize to the He Kalee3! – We have first and last the graceless Caffre, sunk in such absolute anarchy of body and soul, as to make us think somewhat too seriously of the mighty curse of Canaan. We next meet the substantial charms of the Malays, superior in complexion to many other races in Ceylon, as well as in the practice of the moral virtues, which is owing more perhaps to the jealous tyranny of their men, than to their own comprehension of the great distinction between duty and desire. But with all our veneration for morality, and all our esteem for those who tread along the paths of virtue, it takes our philosophy to task verily, when we are called upon to admire people, whose particular elegancies consist of features, which seem so resolutely to deny the most distant advances of symmetry and expression, and figures which lose all their grandeur and peculiar traits, by being clad in a costume as uncouth and as ungainly, as that of the itinerant Chinese, who add their national eccentricities to the confusion of our streets. We have had the happiness however, of seeing a few very pretty Malay women, – besides several Caffres, who retained the particular features of their nation a little softened, in consequence of intermarriages with the Singhalese. The Malays on the other hand had all the peculiarities of the Singhalese character with the exception of that soul-breathing feature – the eye. But while the mouth, the nose, and the chin might have delighted a Canova, the eyes had their immutable oblique set, and revealed to any casual observer the Javanese descent. Graceful, slender, little, their complexion possessed that right bloom and transparent skin disclosing the purple veins within, with their “mantling life-blood,” which seem to belong singly enough to a “favoured few” of the East, and which when beheld in the pride of health and youth rival the snowy whiteness of Europe.
To classify the fairer portion of the genus man to Ceylon into species with any degree of minuteness and completeness, will be work to which we cannot do justice, or allow our researches even the claims of probability; – for it must strike the least attentive observer as truth undeniable, that men in common with the dogs have multiplied and spread into varieties and species in this little land, beyond anything of a similar nature, even known or experienced perhaps in the animal world. We will therefore, confine ourselves only to the leading classes of women, referring those, who desire to know more of the hybrid affections of plants and animals, and of human animals chiefly, to a volume which has been kindly recommended to us and which in our humble apprehension, ought to grace every library, and be read by every one – Dr. Prichard’s Natural History of Man.
The first race of people then, who invite observation by their being natives of almost the whole northern parts of the island, by their very near intercourse with the Singhalese, and their strong claims to be ranked among the populators of the soil, are the Tamils or Malabars as they are indiscriminately styled. These people taken as a class are on the whole better featured than the Singhalese; but inasmuch as their picturesque costume, neat-dressed hair, nimble movements and lively looks rouse admiration from a distance, the native shabbiness of their lower classes dispels all pleasure at a closer view. Their superiors however harm dame Nature no further, than in assisting her to enliven those invaluable gifts she has blessed them with, by wearing such apparel as necessity enjoins, uncorrupted elegance prompts all and decency (sic) dared not oppugn; without heaping up any barricades of fashion, art and drollery in Nature’s highways. Another sect again is very awkward in their dress and ornaments, and by mercilessly slitting ears, not only astonish us as much as the Shawnee Indians first did Cutlin, but despoil themselves of a portion of their beauty. We here allude to the better classes of the Hindoos and Christian Malabars severally. They have generally regular and neat features, although the rings about their noses give some of the most sage-looking among them a very supercilious cast of countenance. The Christianized branch of this community is totally and sadly different from their interesting sisterhood. Having changed their faith for the better, they must needs change their costume for the worse, and preserve nothing but the most egregious national traits of character. But we must again admit that the Malabars possess more uniformity of features than the Singhalese – and in no feature is this more remarkable than in the eyes which are universally of a deep black, or so brown as to conceal any difference.
Of the veiled beauties of the Moorwomen we have heard much; but we must confess that the greater number of those we had casually beheld, were more plain than anything extraordinary – except a grave cast of countenance. Nor can any correct notion be formed of the elegance or deformity of their figurers immersed as they, so guardedly, are in drapery.
We now turn to the genuine daughters of the soil – the Singhalese, inconsistent with themselves, uncomfortable with the Portuguese and Dutch habits, manners, and customs they have adopted, and the British ones they are acquiring; and the Kandyans glorying in their primitive nationalities, but already falling into a middle course, which may be necessary to attaining a perfect extreme, but which is more pitiful than the first stage of happy ignorance they emerged from. The less women are addicted to make art of Nature the more beautiful they are. Of the dress of the lower classes of the Singhalese and Kandyans, we have very little to say in favour of the last, and nothing at all for the first; – one is picturesque and national, but incomplete, – the other less objectionable on the score of sufficiency, but awkward and barbarous. Infinitely superior and least objectionable is the apparel of the Kandyan ladies. Seldom indeed had we the happiness of being honoured with the presence of a Highland dame, but on one or two occasions it was with the most heartfelt delight we remarked a costume which with a little “weeding” would have perfected, and made as chaste as the Jewish. And why of our readers who may have seen the likeness of the youthful queen of Sree Wickrama, the last Malabar tyrant, at the house of a young Kandyan Gentleman, will we trust agree with us in pronouncing her one of the most splendid instances of Indian loveliness and her vesture one of the most beautiful upon record. This, a little modified and less magnificent forms the state-dress of the Kandyan ladies. We will ourselves refrain from advancing anything on behalf of these fair claimants for the palm of beauty, begging to substitute instead the following translation from a native work on the subject which we have been kindly obliged with; but the greater portion of which we found inserted in Dr. Davy’s admirable work on Ceylon, and from which we have preferred copying; – leaving to our readers we hope, the pleasing task of judging whether the dazzling qualities so minutely enumerated by the precision of Oriental connoisseurs can be deservedly applied to any of our aboriginal country-women.
Description of a Singhalese Beauty
Her colour should be like that of a ripe lime, her face ruddy, her cheeks rosy; her hair voluminous, like the tail of the peacock long, reaching to the knees, and terminating in graceful curls; her eye-rows should resemble the rainbow; her eyes the blue sapphire, and the petals of the blue Manilla flower; her nose should be like the bill of the hawk; her lips should be bright and red, like coral, or the young leaf of the iron-tree; her teeth should be small, regular, and closely set, and like Jessamine buds; her neck should be large and round, resembling the berredegia; her chest should be capacious; and her waist small, almost small enough to be clasped by the hands; her hips should be wide, her limbs tapering; the soles of her feet without any hollows; and the surface of her body in general soft, delicate, smooth, and rounded, without the asperities of projecting bones and sinews.
We might also add a few words from more the same distinguished author, were it only to show what his own clear observation and experience led him to conclude of the Singhalese women and their national appearance. Speaking of the former he says; “The Singhalese women are generally well-made, and well looking, and often handsome;” and of the latter he adds – “Their features are commonly neat, and rather handsome; their countenances are intelligent and animated. Nature has given them a liberal supply of hair etc.”
We have perhaps all this while been harping on beauties which should have been left to
“The artist and his ape to teach and tell;”
but it has only made us recur to the dearer part of our subject, with greater avidity and delight. Oh! We cannot say how happily we witness the “march of intellect” in the very midst of the highest female walks of Singhalese life. We entreat of those who claim Ceylon as “the cradle and the grave” of their ancestors from time immemorial – those Saloean ancestors who were of consequence enough to send a mission of peace to Roman Claudius; we entreat of them who are looked upon as the elite of their nation to preserve in their noble work, until they see “the mind, the music, breathing form” those countenances which seem yet to be animated with the life of automatons alone. We would ask them – with due deference to their judgment and intuition – “can man be free if WOMAN be a slave?” Never we are humbly convinced was a question placed before them which claved a deeper insight into its claims, and demanded more value from its importance, than this little one. On its solution depends the heaven or hell to which their country and ours is to be doomed, – this is the hour of probation of Ceylon, and the happy choice is to be made now; – why wait till like another Rosamond, the cup and the dagger be all she has to choose between? – Woman has a mission to perform which has been enjoined upon her since the Creation, and however long the strong hand of her lord may unjustly arrest its progress, the force of example set her by other members of her sex who have contrived to comprehend their own value, and the importance of their influence and actions, must enable her to break through the barriers of prejudicial custom.
Sweetly sang the sweet ploughman-bard of Scotia in such trilling strains, –
The gust o’ joy, the balm o’ woe
The saul o’ life the heav’n below,
Is rapture giving woman!”
But alas! How charity is the blessing sought and experienced here! Far – far away seems the golden age when the women of Ceylon shall have their birth-right awarded them – when they shall reign in that state of blissful beatitude, which was all along intended them, and in which they were originally created.
It yet remains for us to notice the fragile Eurasian and the fair daughters of Brittainia. Of the domestic training of the former as well as the other Ceylonese due mention was made in a preceding number of our periodical; all therefore now left to us to do is to cry out with equal sincerity against that mistaken policy which would make beauty where she cannot be, – which would make “that bondage which is freedom’s self,” – and mar Nature’s most affectionate attempts, whenever she seeks to substitute those blessings, which alone could compensate for that beauty, which she in her infinite wisdom deemed it prudent, just perhaps merciful to withhold. But they have beauty, – a beauty which increases with each passing hour – the charm of improvement in those enchanting qualities of the heart and mind, which proved in other lands the Spirit of the Times, and bid fair, to attain a similar ascendancy over, the prospects and destiny of their own rising country. With them we have no diffidence and destiny of thei8r own rising country. With them we have no diffidence and to them we speak in the spirit of affection and truth; nor will be refrain from telling them in the language of the poet that
Mind, mind alone I bear witness earth and heav’n
The living fountains in itself contains
Of beauteous and sublime. Here hand in hand
Sit paramount the graces, Here enthroned
Celestial Venus, with divinest airs
Invites the soul to never fading joy.
These tender competitors of Eurasian beauty will we pray, forgive us for presuming to venture where their parents fear to read and during the impugn what forms the summon bonum of their worldly happiness – their Fashion. We can only excuse ourselves upon the plea of the most faithful sincerity, and tell them, that we never gaze upon their beaming orbs of black, or brown, or hazel; never glance upon the contour of their nose of Grecian or Roman mould, their pale, wan, or animating contenances, their arched brows, their jet-black hair; and never linger tongue-tied and pleased upon the words which their ‘coral lips’ pour out, without sighing that so much of what is lovely and charming, should be like
The fragile blade of grass
That springeth in the morn,
And perishes ere noon!
We hope our enthusiastic love for what is our own has not led us to draw an over-charged or distorted picture of our countrywomen; – what we have said partakes of the nature and vigour of honesty and purity, and it shall not be the fastidious taste of the professional connoisseurs of beauty, that shall compel us to set less value on the frail and partial possession of this quality by our own countrywomen. What remains more for us to say is, that they have like every other class of their sex, every good and bad quality of body and mind; that some of them we range with the fairest models in the land of personal beauty and that we look forward with the zeal of devotees for that time when their minds also will call forth the need of approbation; and that admiration be paid to the intellectual acquirements of class, which is now in the exclusive possession of a few individuals in it.
In conclusion may we be allowed to say with a Celebrated French author –
Les charmes eties graces, sont egnlement –
Des je ne sais quoi – ce sont ce qu’on veut,
Ce qu’on sent – ce sont les charmes”
“Charmes and graces are equally – I don’t know what – something
inexpressible – anything you like – what one feels – they are
charms,”
[1] Young Ceylon, Sept. 1850, I : 8 : 174-78
[3] In the absence of Greek type, we have been obliged to put the original in English type. (Note by the editors of Young Ceylon).
END NOTES 2026
I reproduce here a TEXT composed at some point in the late 1990s(?) that was meant to reproduce items that supplemented the texts presented as PEOPLE INBETWEEN (1989) produced by Roberts, Colin-Thome & Raheem and IMAGES OF BRITISH CEYLON (2001) by Ismeth Raheem.
A NOTE: Percy, alas, passed away in the 1990s. Ismeth Raheem was the main hand behind Imagesbut my secondary role could not be imprinted because Adelaide University regulations debarred any association onm y part with a tobacco firm.
PICTORIALS: The pictorials inserted here are embellishments from 2026 and were never part of the original textual designs.
