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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 July 2024
If the present writer could have been suspected of megalomania for his earlier article on The Role of the Church in Asia (New Blackfriars, January 1970), he should at least not be guilty of inconsistency. And so, in this sequel, on the one hand, the minimum view is advanced that the little island of Ceylon is an interesting case-study of the contemporary Church in Asia and, on the other, the maximum view that Ceylon’s place is crucial in the role-context of the Church in Asia and the World.
The basic figures of Ceylon’s demographic and geographic littleness are quickly enumerated. In the early 1960s, in a total Asian population of nearly 1,800 million, Ceylon had a population of nearly 11 million. In Asia’s total Christian population of 73 million, the Catholics numbered a little more than three-quarters of a million, while the other Christians numbered a little more than 100,000. Geographically, Ceylon is a small island, 25,332 square miles in area, situated at the southern tip of the Indian sub-continent and separated from it by a narrow strip of shallow water.
Yet, Ceylon has an importance far greater than its size would warrant. Her people have a higher degree of literacy than in most other countries of Asia. The standard of living, though very low in comparison with Western attainments, is high for Asia. Her educational, political and religious institutions and her tri-lingual press are highly developed. Her systems of easy island communication and her position as a sea and air port of call between Europe and the East have made her important for world trade and have turned her capital city, Colombo, into a large and crowded cosmopolitan and commercial centre.
page 288 note 1 Tambiah, H. W., Sinhala Lows and Customs, Colombo, Lake House, 1968, p. 1Google Scholar.
page 289 note 1 Paranavitana, S., ‘Pre‐Buddhist Religious Beliefs in Ceylon’, Journal of the Ceylon Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, Vol. 31, No. 82, 1929, p. 327.Google Scholar
page 290 note 1 The Historical Background, unpublished MS., 1968, p. 3.
page 290 note 2 Ibid., p. 4.
page 291 note 1 From Department of Census and Statistics, yet unpublished figures.
page 291 note 2 Outlook, 3:1, February 1970, quotes Fr Jan Hemrood, O.M.I., as saying: ‘I consider Ceylon to the the Netherlands of Asia’. Fr Hemrood, a Dutchman, was Professor of Scripture at Ceylon's National Seminary and is now in mysterious exile in the West.
page 291 note 3 Figures from the typescript of the Survey of the Society of Jesus in Ceylon, Phase 1, The Situation in Ceylon Today (Ceylon: April 1967), p. 120Google Scholar.
page 293 note 1 ‘The Church, the Kingdom and other Religions’, unpublished M.S., 1969.
page 294 note 1 Ibid., p. 19. Also cf., for instance, Psalm 81, where the celebration of a harvest festival is made the occasion of reflection on God's purposes for His people.
page 294 note 2 See Pieris, Aloysius S.J., ‘Liturgy and the Dialogue with Buddhism: An Experiment’, in Dialogue, No. 15, July 1968 (Colombo: Study Centre for Religion and Society)Google Scholar.
page 295 note 1 Keble, W. T., Ceylon, Beaten Track, Colombo: Observer Press, p. 137Google Scholar.
page 295 note 2 Social Change in Ceylon, Colombo: Christian Workers’ Fellowship, 1967, p. 85Google Scholar.
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