From the diary of Townshend Harris, first American consul to Japan 1856. On his way there he had a stay in Ceylon. He writes, among many other interesting entries, “The extraordinary custom of polyandry, i.e., one woman having several husbands, is practiced in Ceylon and also in Thibet and parts of Nepal. The husbands are usually, (but not always) brothers, and exercise their marital rights for one week at a time. On the road from Point-de-Galle to Colombo, the guest house where coach passengers breakfast is kept by three Cingalese brothers, who have one wife. On stopping there the second time I asked the woman which she would like the best: to be one of many wives to one man, the sole wife of one man, or her present situation. She spat at the idea of polygamy, shook her head at a single union, and was emphatic in praise of polyandry. After some pressing she said the youngest of her husbands was her favorite, but that all three were kind to her.”
He was speaking to a priest of one of the Eastern religions, of which there are many, and this priest had built a shrine that Harris visited. Nevertheless, he conversed with Harris telling him, “He would not take a life under any circumstances; that, if threatened by a cobra capello or tiger, he would not attempt to secure his life by destroying either of them; that if it were God’s will that he should escape or die, that will would take effect notwithstanding his efforts.” He said he would not fish or kill a fowl, yet he would eat of both when they were cooked for him; that the sin lay not in the eating but in the slaying. In answer to my remark, that if there were no eaters of fish or fowl none would be killed, he said those things were settled by an overruling power.
The logic behind this is, if you robbed a bank and I knew it and you gave me some of the money. I am clean since I committed no sin. Fortunately, American jurisprudence would look differently upon this as an accessory after the fact.
In his travels he came across the translation of a poem by Cingalese poet, he states, “The following lines, translated from a Cingalese poet, show that females do not occupy a high position in their estimation:
“I’ve seen the udumber tree in flower;
White plumage on the crow:
And fishes’ footsteps o’er the deep
I’ve seen through ebb and flow;
If man it is who this asserts.
His word you may believe
But all that woman says, distrust,
She speaks but to deceive”
He continues, “The udumber, almost alone of the Cingalese trees, never blooms. In my wandering in almost every part of the world I have applied one test, which I find to be unvarying, and that is, the the social position of women in any nation will indicate the amount of its civilization. Therefore, given her social status and you can at once find the mental state of the men.
Eclecticwriter 