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Ceylon   Listen
noun
Ceylon  n.  The former name of an island republic in the Indian Ocean off the southeast coast of India, now called Sri Lanka. It is an independent nation with an area of 25,332 sq. mi. and a population of about 14 million people.
Synonyms: Sri Lanka.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Ceylon" Quotes from Famous Books



... Rama spent here a night on his way from Ayodhya (Oudh) to Lanka (Ceylon) to fetch his wife Sita who had been stolen by the wicked King Ravana. Rama's brother Lakshman, whose duty it was to send him daily a new lingam from Benares, was late in doing so one evening. Losing patience, Rama erected ...
— From the Caves and Jungles of Hindostan • Helena Pretrovna Blavatsky

... Returning to the shores of the Mediterranean, their existence on the northern coast of Africa has been mentioned. In Arabia and on the Egyptian shore of the Red Sea, they stand in considerable numbers, are found in Persia, Afghanistan, Beloochistan, India, Ceylon, and Sumatra, in some places being still used, it ...
— Irish Wonders • D. R. McAnally, Jr.

... along the coast of Cochin China, stopped for three months at a port of the island of Sumatra near ihe western entrance of the straits of Malacca, waiting for the change of the monsoon to pass the bay of Bengal. Traversing this vast expanse, they touched at the island of Ceylon and then crossed the strait to the southern part of the great peninsula of India. Thence sailing up the Pirate coast, as it is called, the fleet entered the Persian gulf and arrived at the famous port of Olmuz, where it is presumed the voyage terminated, after eighteen months spent ...
— The Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus (Vol. II) • Washington Irving

... geographical zoology as used by Wallace, that part of the earth's surface including Asia east of the Indus River, south of the Himalayas and the Yangtse-kiang watershed, Ceylon, Sumatra, Java and ...
— Explanation of Terms Used in Entomology • John. B. Smith

... other well-known spots, which he accurately described in the record of his journey published on his return and still in existence. His object was to obtain copies of the sacred books, relics and images, illustrative of the faith; and these he safely conveyed to China by sea from India, via Ceylon (where he spent three years), and Sumatra, arriving after ...
— The Civilization Of China • Herbert A. Giles

... some years ago that a similarly primitive jungle tribe of Ceylon, known as the Veddahs, could count no more than five, that they could not comprehend "day after to-morrow," and that their vocabulary was limited to about ...
— The Minds and Manners of Wild Animals • William T. Hornaday

... of their hosts. The stimulation caused by their presence may result in swellings or excresences or other abnormal growths. Interesting examples of this are to be found in the way in which pearls are formed in various mollusks. In the pearl oysters of Ceylon occur some of the best pearls. If these are carefully sectioned there may usually be found at the center the remains of certain cestode larvae whose presence in the oyster caused it to deposit the nacreous layers that make up the pearl. Other parasites cause similar growths in ...
— Insects and Diseases - A Popular Account of the Way in Which Insects may Spread - or Cause some of our Common Diseases • Rennie W. Doane

... conventional long form: Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka conventional short form: Sri Lanka former: Ceylon ...
— The 1995 CIA World Factbook • United States Central Intelligence Agency

... monument of the genius and courage of a gifted son of the great friendly nation across the Channel—we entered at Aden the gateway of the East. We stayed for a short time to enjoy the unrivaled scenery of Ceylon and the Malay Peninsula, the gorgeous displays of their native races, and to see in what happy contentment these various peoples live and prosper under British rule. Perhaps there was something still more striking in the fact that the Government, the commerce, and every form ...
— Model Speeches for Practise • Grenville Kleiser

... decrease of profitable commercial openings is the practical extinction of China's tea trade with England, Ceylon and India now supplying the home-market, and although as great a quantity of tea is still exported from China as formerly, it nearly all goes to Russia, and this trade being in the hands of Russian monopolists, there is but little ...
— Life and sport in China - Second Edition • Oliver G. Ready

... English naturalist, "was the fauna of the British islands in those early days. Tigers as large again as the biggest Asiatic species lurked in the ancient thickets; elephants of nearly twice the bulk of the largest individuals that now exist in Africa or Ceylon roamed in herds; at least two species of rhinoceros forced their way through the primeval forest; and the lakes and rivers were tenanted by hippopotami as bulky, and with as great tusks, as those of Africa." The massive cave-bear and large cave-hyaena belonged to the same ...
— The Testimony of the Rocks - or, Geology in Its Bearings on the Two Theologies, Natural and Revealed • Hugh Miller

... and for a little while they enjoyed, undisturbed, their yogeeish ideas of a good time. But by-and-by tidings came to Rawunna—the giant with ten heads and twice ten arms, that was King of Lunka (Ceylon)—of the plots of Mrs. Mithili, the disgust of old Doosurath, the distraction of the kingdom of Ayodhya, and the whimsical adventure ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 4, February, 1858 • Various

... In Ceylon, where cocoa-nuts and oil-producing seeds abound, the means employed by the natives in the last century for extracting the oils were of a most primitive character. A few poles were fixed upright in the ground, two horizontal bars attached to them, between which a bag containing the pulp of the seed ...
— Lectures on Popular and Scientific Subjects • John Sutherland Sinclair, Earl of Caithness

... the Ceylon diver held his breath, And went all naked to the hungry shark; For them his ears gush'd blood; for them in death The seal on the cold ice with piteous bark Lay full of darts; for them alone did seethe A thousand men ...
— Keats: Poems Published in 1820 • John Keats

... rivers are the Euphrates, Tigris, Indus and Ganges. The principal mountains are, Azarat, Horeb, Sinai and Lebanon. The most remarkable Islands are, the Japan isles, the Maiana or Ladrone Islands, Formoso, Philippines, Moluccas, Banda islands, Celebes or Macassar, the Sunda islands, Ceylon, Maldives and ...
— A Week of Instruction and Amusement, • Mrs. Harley

... it to have achieved was a very thin veneer and a series of revolutions had plunged that hapless land into anarchy. Brazil was suffering from a heavy fall in the price of one of her chief staple products, rubber, owing to the competition of plantations in Ceylon, Straits Settlements and elsewhere, and was finding difficulty in meeting the interest on the big load of debt that the free facilities given by English and French investors had encouraged her to pile up. She had promised ...
— International Finance • Hartley Withers

... with which he forebore to cajole or coerce those of his subjects whom his arguments failed to convince. Satisfied with the progress of the new religion in his native place, he despatched his son, Mahindo, to introduce it into Ceylon; and so successful were the young prince's missionary efforts that that island became and remains the chief seat of Buddhism to this day. Acoka next turned his attention to foreign countries, in which traders, travellers, emigrants and others had already sparsely sown the seeds of the ...
— The Sceptics of the Old Testament: Job - Koheleth - Agur • Emile Joseph Dillon

... history of the old "incense-assemblies," whose elaborate ceremonial could be explained only by help of numerous diagrams. One chapter at least would be required for the subject of the ancient importation of incense-materials from India, China, Annam, Siam, Cambodia, Ceylon, Sumatra, Java, Borneo, and various islands of the Malay archipelago,—places all named in rare books about incense. And a final chapter should treat of the romantic literature of incense,—the poems, stories, and dramas ...
— In Ghostly Japan • Lafcadio Hearn

... Glasserton, nephew of the seventh Earl of Galloway, who assumed the name of Mackenzie, was returned M.P. for the County of Ross, held office under Earl Grey, and was successively Governor of Ceylon, and Lord High Commissioner to the Ionian Islands. He died on the 24th of September, 1843. Mrs Sewart-Mackenzie died at Brahan Castle on the 28th of November, 1862, and was buried in the family vault in the Cathedral of Fortrose. Her funeral was one of the largest ever witnessed ...
— History Of The Mackenzies • Alexander Mackenzie

... near the fuligos which it resembles, especially when sessile, in its intricate sporangia. The spores also are those of the common Fuligo septica. The habit is however entirely different. Mr. Fetch describes clusters in Ceylon, hanging free, four to ...
— The North American Slime-Moulds • Thomas H. (Thomas Huston) MacBride

... echeneis, adhere strongly to objects probably by a similar method. I once saw ten or twelve leeches adhere to each foot of an old horse a little above his hoofs, who was grazing in a morass, and which did not lose their hold when he moved about. The bare-legged travellers in Ceylon are said to be much infested by leeches; and the sea-leech, hirudo muricata, is said to adhere to fish, and the remora is said to adhere to ships in such numbers as to retard ...
— The Temple of Nature; or, the Origin of Society - A Poem, with Philosophical Notes • Erasmus Darwin

... chase, incipient Gordon Cummings might try their nerves by standing on railways till the engines were within a few yards of them. Hunting elephants on foot would be not less dangerous,* unless the Ceylon mode of killing them by one shot could be followed: it has never been tried ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone

... good quality. It is hardly likely that it will become an article of export from this country, as we cannot compete with the very low prices paid for labor in the great tea countries, India, Ceylon, and China. But it can be grown for home consumption, and there is no reason why every coffee planter should not have a patch of tea growing on his land. An eighth of an acre, planted out in tea plants, would yield more tea than could be consumed by a large family; the work of cultivation ...
— The Hawaiian Islands • The Department of Foreign Affairs

... No counterfeit pearls have yet been made that could pass all the tests of the genuine; but their lustre is quite equal sometimes to the best pearls of Ceylon, and they can be made to deceive anybody but ...
— Harper's Young People, July 20, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various

... adapted to its climate and other conditions. The inhabitants of islands are often distinct from any other known species of animal or plants (witness our recent examples from the work of Sir Emerson Tennent, on Ceylon), and yet they have almost always a sort of general family resemblance to the animals and plants of the nearest mainland. On the other hand, there is hardly a species of fish, shell, or crab common to the opposite sides of the narrow isthmus of Panama. ...
— Darwiniana • Thomas Henry Huxley

... when the King's speech was read there was no Council. Brougham brought Sir Alexander Johnston, formerly Chief Justice in Ceylon, to be sworn a Privy Councillor without giving any notice, consequently I was not there. The King, therefore, comes again to-morrow on purpose, and, what is unpleasant, desired a Clerk of the Council might always be in attendance when there was anything going on. This, I suppose, ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. III • Charles C. F. Greville

... capital of the province of Uva, Ceylon, 54 m. S.E. of Kandy. It is the seat of a government agent and district judge, besides minor courts. It was in Kandyan times the home of a prince who ruled Uva as a principality. Badulla stands 2222 ft. above sea-level; ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 2 - "Baconthorpe" to "Bankruptcy" • Various

... of Singapore as, for some reason, I felt very sad while I was driving about it, and was almost weeping. Next after it comes Ceylon—an earthly Paradise. There in that Paradise I went more than a hundred versts on the railway and gazed at palm forests and bronze women to my heart's content.... After Ceylon we sailed for thirteen days and nights without stopping ...
— Letters of Anton Chekhov • Anton Chekhov

... Nile-nourished Egypt, and of another constructed by Nebuchadnezzar at Sippara, of 140 miles in circumference, we must make allowances. But there is no question as to the existence in the East at the present day, and especially in India and Ceylon, of the remains of what may correctly be termed stupendous works; and the date of the construction of which, as regards India, is in many cases prehistoric. In Spain also the Moors, whose occupation ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 595, May 28, 1887 • Various

... at present very hard to bear. "My dear husband and child and brothers" are away fighting. One or two of them very likely killed by this time, or in Ceylon or St. Helena. "And as for the others who are still in the field, we are in constant terror of hearing the bad news, which we know, if the war continues, must some day come." So the family is quite broken up, and now the home is being destroyed ...
— With Rimington • L. March Phillipps

... naturally has this habit of growth. Although in these cases the changed manner of growth seems to have been directly caused by the great heat, we know that many fastigate trees have originated in their temperate homes. In the Botanic Gardens of Ceylon the apple-tree[677] "sends out numerous runners under ground, which continually rise into small stems, and form a growth around the parent-tree." The varieties of the cabbage which produce heads in Europe fail to do so in certain tropical countries.[678] The Rhododendron ciliatum produced ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication, Volume II (of 2) • Charles Darwin

... dwellings, churches, monuments &c., built in the British style, will reveal the existence or preserve the memory of the wide extent of British power by colonies sent from North America to Guyana, from Hindustan to Ceylon, ...
— The Ancient Monuments of North and South America, 2nd ed. • C. S. Rafinesque

... Australian aborigines something has been said already. Apart from the Negrito or Negro strain in their blood, they are usually held to belong to that pre-Dravidian stock represented by various jungle tribes in southern India and by the Veddas of Ceylon, connecting links between the two areas being the Sakai of the Malay Peninsula and East Sumatra, and the Toala of Celebes. It may be worth observing, also, that pre-historic skulls of the Neanderthal type find their nearest parallels in modern Australia. We are here in the presence ...
— Anthropology • Robert Marett

... abundant in the islands of Borneo, Java, and Sumatra, and in the Malay Peninsula. Though not so plentiful elsewhere, they are also found in Ceylon, Madagascar, the Moluccas, and one or two other places. The plant is a kind of creeping or climbing shrub which runs along the ground, or climbs up other shrubs and short trees. It seems to thrive best upon the mountaintops, and the summits of the mountains of Borneo ...
— Chatterbox, 1905. • Various

... which was the route recommended by the Chevalier de Grenier. The two captains were aware that the winds constantly blew from the east, at this season of the year, and therefore went to the Maldives, and coasted along Ceylon from Point de Galle, to Trincomalee. Upon their return the monsoon had changed. The prevailing winds were W. and S.W. as Grenier had predicted. The route suggested by him had undeniable advantages, and these have been so amply confirmed ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part 2. The Great Navigators of the Eighteenth Century • Jules Verne

... in Ceylon and India writes to a religious paper of his journey. He says, "Colombo has little to interest the tourist, yet it is a fine city." One who reads between the lines understands that the fact that it is a fine city ...
— Humanly Speaking • Samuel McChord Crothers

... travel. Five years later he went to India and the Burmese empire. During his travels he visited Christian missionary stations in France, Spain, Italy, Austria, Turkey, Greece, Sweden, Denmark, Burmah, India, and Ceylon. ...
— Eclectic School Readings: Stories from Life • Orison Swett Marden

... on August 12, 1887, he sailed for South Australia, Tasmania, New Zealand, Ceylon, and India. This twelfth long tour closed in March, 1890, having covered thousands of miles. The intense heat at one time compelled Mr. Muller to leave Calcutta, and on the railway journey to Darjeeling his wife feared he would die. But he was ...
— George Muller of Bristol - His Witness to a Prayer-Hearing God • Arthur T. Pierson

... will only trust my homeward pathway to Simpson, and my health is a good excuse for clearing out for good. I can easily locate on the Continent—in Belgium, or Switzerland—and out of reach of any little trouble to come. They've no proof. This fellow has no list, thank Heaven. I'll slip down to Ceylon and catch the first boat there to ...
— A Fascinating Traitor • Richard Henry Savage

... Whale's malice is only his awkwardness. For he never means to swallow a single limb; he only thinks to terrify by feints. But sometimes he is like the old juggling fellow, formerly a patient of mine in Ceylon, that making believe swallow jack-knives, once upon a time let one drop into him in good earnest, and there it stayed for a twelvemonth or more; when I gave him an emetic, and he heaved it up in small tacks, d'ye see. No possible way for him to digest that jack-knife, and fully incorporate ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville

... Ireland.—Oh, fie, my lord! has your lordship no more feeling for a fellow-tourist?—but "two of a trade," they say, etc. [George Annesley, Viscount Valentia (1769-1844), published, in 1809, 'Voyages and Travels to India, Ceylon, the Red Sea, Abyssinia, and Egypt in the Years 1802-6'. Byron calls him "vain" Valentia, because his "accounts of ceremonies attending his lordship's interviews with several of the petty princes" suggest the thought "that his principal errand to India was to measure certain ...
— Byron's Poetical Works, Vol. 1 • Byron

... together: but the enunciation of the conclusion supposes all the conditions, whatever their number. The same in a practical manner, as in the stability of a bridge. The bridge that would stand in England, would stand in Ceylon. If it would not, there must have occurred some change in the conditions, as the heat of the tropical sun upon the girders. A point of casuistry also, however knotty, once determined, is determined for ever and aye, for the circumstances under which it was ...
— Moral Philosophy • Joseph Rickaby, S. J.

... trousered, and shod, they were: Jerry McMurtrey, the manager; Eddy Little and Jack Andrews, clerks; Captain Stapler, of the recruiting ketch Merry; Darby Shryleton, planter from Tito-Ito; Peter Gee, a half-caste Chinese pearl-buyer who ranged from Ceylon to the Paumotus, and Alfred Deacon, a visitor who had stopped off from the last steamer. At first wine was served by the black servants to those that drank it, though all quickly shifted back to Scotch and soda, ...
— A Son Of The Sun • Jack London

... the party is made by railroad in India, from Bombay, taking in Lahore, Delhi, Agra, Cawnpoor, Lucknow, Benares, Calcutta, and by the Guardian-Mother to Madras and Ceylon. On the way and in the cities the titled conductors continue their "talks" and lectures about the places visited, with as much of history as time would permit, including an epitome of those great events in India, the Mutiny of the ...
— Across India - Or, Live Boys in the Far East • Oliver Optic

... supervision, and left her untrammelled the use of her income. As a dangerous innovation upon time-honored customs, which under the ante bellum regime, had kept Southern women as ignorant of practical business routine, as of the origin of the Weddas of Ceylon, Miss Patty bitterly opposed and lamented her brother's decision; dismally predicting that the result must inevitably be the transformation of their refined, delicate, clinging "Southern lady", into that abhorred monster—"a ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson

... textures. The addition of blocks of graphite, some curiously carved into the shape of elephants, and the more prosaic agricultural productions, such as cotton, cinnamon, matting and baskets, tone down the color and exhibit the fact that the English possession has the mercantile side. Antlers of the Ceylon deer, tusks of elephants and boars, contrast with the richness and the sobriety of the other contents of the ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. October, 1878. • Various

... described as a native of Sicily, the Painted Lady Variety as an inhabitant of Ceylon; they have both been introduced since the time of ...
— The Botanical Magazine v 2 - or Flower-Garden Displayed • William Curtis

... England both now regarded her as part of their great enemy, Spain, and so harried her ports and captured her treasure ships. Brazil was nearly lost to the Dutch, who also succeeded in expelling the Portuguese from Ceylon and from the islands of the East Indies, so that when the sixty years' captivity was over and the Spaniards expelled, Portugal found it impossible to recover the place she ...
— Portuguese Architecture • Walter Crum Watson

... there are real milk-glands, usually vestigial, underneath the teats in the breast of the boy or the man is proved by the many known cases in which men have suckled the young. Several friends of the present writer have seen this done in India and Ceylon by male "wet-nurses." As there is no tribe of men or species of ape in which the male suckles the young normally, we seem to be thrown back once more upon an earlier ancestor. The difficulty is that we ...
— The Story of Evolution • Joseph McCabe

... expelled from Paradise, Adam fell upon the mountain in Ceylon which still retains his name ("Adam's Peak"), while Eve descended at Juddah, which is the port of Mecca, in Arabia. Seated on the pinnacle of the highest mountain in Ceylon, with the orisons of the angelic choirs still vibrating in his ears, the fallen progenitor of the human race ...
— Flowers from a Persian Garden and Other Papers • W. A. Clouston

... free institutions that, in Egypt, in Hongkong, in Ceylon, in the Malay states, in India, have given the people of those dark places some of the fruits of liberty to eat for the first time in all the strange history of the oppressed and wasted Orient. And it is our free institutions, as well as our Constitution, that ...
— The Young Man and the World • Albert J. Beveridge

... his plunder, he was surprised by the arrival off the port of H.M.S. Victorious, seventy-four guns, which had been sent to take him. Slipping out of harbour unobserved in the night in his fastest sailing praam, he escaped to Trincomalee in Ceylon, where the East India Company decided to ...
— The Pirates' Who's Who - Giving Particulars Of The Lives and Deaths Of The Pirates And Buccaneers • Philip Gosse

... off Sita to his city. The Kishkindha-kanda tells of Rama's pursuit of Ravana and his coming to Kishkindha, the city of Sugriva, the king of the apes, who joined him as an ally in his expedition; and the Sundara-kanda describes the march of their armies to Lanka, which is identified with Ceylon, and their crossing over the straits. Then comes the Yuddha-kanda, which narrates the war with Ravana, his death in battle, the restoration of Sita, the return of Rama and Sita to Ayodhya, and the crowning of Rama in place of Dasa-ratha, who had died of grief during ...
— Hindu Gods And Heroes - Studies in the History of the Religion of India • Lionel D. Barnett

... Already can I hear that great bear of an Oestreicher shout, 'Du hast mein herz gebrochen!' Mire! Of my friend, Herr Grunitz, of Vienna, you have heard me relate. That man has travelled to Ceylon for an orchid—to Patagonia for a headdress—to Benares for a slipper—to Mozambique for a spearhead to add to his famous collections. Thou knowest, also, amigo Rafael, that I have been a gatherer ...
— Cabbages and Kings • O. Henry

... enriched the church, built for it great temples, and in turn were upheld by their thankful co-religionists. Among the six[61] rival heresies that of Buddha was predominant, and chiefly because of royal influence. The Buddhist head of the Ceylon church was Acoka's own son. Still more important for Buddhism was its adoption by the migratory Turanians in the centuries following. Tibet and China were opened up to it through the influence of these foreign kings, who at least pretended to adopt the faith of Buddha.[62] But as it was adopted ...
— The Religions of India - Handbooks On The History Of Religions, Volume 1, Edited By Morris Jastrow • Edward Washburn Hopkins

... and this proves that many 'traveller's wonders' cease to be wonderful when we examine into the circumstances and particulars, or compare their relations with the commonplace occurrences of everyday life. Now for the Bay of Bengal, which contains the fine islands of Andaman, Nicobar, and Ceylon; for the particulars of these islands I beg to refer ...
— The World of Waters - A Peaceful Progress o'er the Unpathed Sea • Mrs. David Osborne

... Zaara—and the leigh, or gigantic stag, from Britain. Thither came the buffalo and the bison, the white bull of Northumberland and Galloway, the unicorn from the regions of Nepaul or Thibet, the rhinoceros and the river-horse from Senegal, with the elephant of Ceylon or Siam. The ostrich and the cameleopard, the wild ass and the zebra, the chamois and the ibex of Angora,—all brought their tributes of beauty or deformity to these vast aceldamas of Rome: their savage voices ascended in tumultuous uproar to the chambers ...
— The Caesars • Thomas de Quincey

... sort of blight, but in all that we have seen insects appear to be the depredators, although on the decaying leaves Hendersonia theicola, Cooke, establishes itself.[h] The coffee plantations of Ceylon suffer from the depredations of Hemiliea vastatrix, as well as from insects.[i] Other useful plants have also their enemies ...
— Fungi: Their Nature and Uses • Mordecai Cubitt Cooke

... on board, ere he found that they were not likely to have a very comfortable passage; for the Batavia was chartered to convey a large detachment of troops to Ceylon and Java, for the purpose of recruiting and strengthening the Company's forces at those places. She was to quit the fleet off Madagascar, and run direct for the Island of Java; the number of soldiers on board being presumed sufficient to insure the ship against any attack or accidents ...
— The Phantom Ship • Frederick Marryat

... the spicy breezes Blow soft o'er Ceylon's isle; Though every prospect pleases, And only man is vile; In vain with lavish kindness The gifts of God are strown; The heathen in his blindness Bows down to wood ...
— Hymns for Christian Devotion - Especially Adapted to the Universalist Denomination • J.G. Adams

... they anchored off that town. Little was to be seen except the fort, a number of warehouses, and the native town, while the scenery contrasted strongly with that of Ceylon, with its masses of green foliage, with hills ...
— The Tiger of Mysore - A Story of the War with Tippoo Saib • G. A. Henty

... the jungle well will refuse to credit the strangest story of what wild animals will do. Of all the swarming herds of wild elephants in the Terai, the Mysore, or the Ceylon jungles no man, white or black, has ever seen one that had died a natural death. Yet many have watched them climbing up the great mountain rampart of the Himalayas towards regions where human foot never followed. The Death Place ...
— The Elephant God • Gordon Casserly

... recovery of four complete Buddhist literatures. In addition to the discoveries of Hodgson in Nepal, of Csoma de Koeroes in Tibet, and of Schmidt in Mongolia, the Honourable George Turnour suddenly presented to the world the Buddhist literature of Ceylon, composed in the sacred language of that island, the ancient Pali. The existence of that literature had been known before. Since 1826 Sir Alexander Johnston had been engaged in collecting authentic copies of the Mahavansa, ...
— Chips From A German Workshop - Volume I - Essays on the Science of Religion • Friedrich Max Mueller

... time when each grove of breadfruit had its owners, who guarded it for their own use, and even each tree had its allotted proprietor, or perhaps several. Density of population everywhere causes each mouthful of food to be counted. I have known in Ceylon an English judge who was called upon to decide the legal ownership of one 2520th part of ten cocoanut-trees. But my friends who were filling the popoi pits now might gather from any tree they pleased. There ...
— White Shadows in the South Seas • Frederick O'Brien

... taking on himself to furnish her with clothes, another to give her rice and food, and so on. It is, in fact, the wife who possesses, and it is through her that wealth is transmitted. In fraternal polyandry, on the other hand (as, for instance, it is practised in Thibet and Ceylon), the husbands of a woman are always brothers; she belongs to them, and for her children there is a kind of collective fatherhood. But among the Nairs the man as husband and father cannot be said to exist; he is reduced to the most ...
— The Position of Woman in Primitive Society - A Study of the Matriarchy • C. Gasquoine Hartley

... are told by Mr. Thwaites, in his Enumeration of Ceylon Plants, that a plant introduced into the island less than fifty years ago is helping to alter the character of the vegetation up to an elevation of 3000 feet. This is the Lantana mixta, a verbenaceous plant introduced from the West Indies, which ...
— Darwinism (1889) • Alfred Russel Wallace

... Molokai, where the poor lepers end their days away from home and kindred. At Honolulu they are entertained by the Prince, and then sail for Japan, China, Ceylon, through Suez, stopping in Egypt, and then home. On their arrival, Lady Brassey says, "How can I describe the warm greetings that met us everywhere, or the crowd that surrounded us; how, along the whole ...
— Lives of Girls Who Became Famous • Sarah Knowles Bolton

... by my mother's side took a liking to me, often said I was a fine forward youth, and was much inclined to gratify my curiosity. His eloquence had more effect than mine, for my father consented to my accompanying him in a voyage to the island of Ceylon, where his uncle had resided ...
— The Junior Classics, V5 • Edited by William Patten

... Colonel Olcott should give up his Rajahs and elephants, and fix his headquarters in Ceylon, there would be, I believe, fair prospect of a fruitful alliance of Theosophy with Buddhism. In this island, now the centre of the Buddhist world, I found Madame Blavatsky comparatively unimportant, the great ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 23, October, 1891 • Various

... here been set forth, and coupling that with Gordon's own declaration that he was for peace not war, permission was granted to Gordon to do that which at all cost he had determined to do. When he reached Ceylon he found this telegram: "Leave granted on your engaging to take no military service in China," and he somewhat too comprehensively, and it may even be feared rashly if events had turned out otherwise, replied: "I ...
— The Life of Gordon, Volume II • Demetrius Charles Boulger

... in Japan or elsewhere. It is a subject on which many writers have descanted and in regard to which much might still be written. There is no doubt whatever that Buddhism as it exists to-day, whether in Ceylon, India, China, or Japan, is widely different from the religion of its founder. Many of its original doctrines were purely symbolical and poetical. These have been evolved into something they were certainly never intended to mean. That the principles of the Buddhist religion ...
— The Empire of the East • H. B. Montgomery

... even he of Kachch (Cutch), famous in Moslem story as the Balhara (Ballaba Rais, who founded the Ballabhi era; or the Zamorin of Camoens, the Samdry Rajah of Malabar). For Mahrage, or Mihrage, see Renaudot's "Two Mohammedan Travellers of the Ninth Century." In the account of Ceylon by Wolf (English Transl. p. 168) it adjoins the "Ilhas de Cavalos" (of wild horses) to which the Dutch merchants sent their brood- mares. Sir W. Jones (Description of Asia, chapt. ii.) makes the ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton

... great bulk of Australian butter—about 88 per cent.—but considerable quantities also go to Canada, Ceylon, China, the Dutch East Indies, Egypt, Hongkong, the Islands of the Pacific, Japan, Philippine Islands, the ...
— Australia The Dairy Country • Australia Department of External Affairs

... Asa McFarland, Caleb Jewett Tenney, a leading founder of the East Windsor (now Hartford) Theological Seminary; Thomas A. Merrill, Abraham Burnham, George T. Chapman, John Brown, Daniel Poor, the pioneer in Christian learning in Ceylon and Madura; Austin Dickinson, to whom the world is under large obligations for a higher type of periodical literature; Levi Spaulding, the worthy coadjutor of Poor; Nathan W. Fiske, Daniel Temple, who carried the first ...
— The History of Dartmouth College • Baxter Perry Smith

... Denmark began with the despatch of an expedition in 1618 to open trade with Ceylon. Being unfavorably received there, the Danes went to the Coromandel coast of India, and founded a trading-post at Tranquebar, one hundred and forty miles southwest of Madras, defended by the fortress of Dansbourg. For some time ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, Volume XXIV, 1630-34 • Various

... well as by professional hunters. In 1861, it was computed that the supply of the English market with ivory cost the lives of 8,000 elephants. Others make the number much larger and it is said that half as much ivory is consumed in the United States as in Great Britain. In Ceylon, where the elephants are numerous and destructive to the crops, as well as dangerous to travellers, while their tusks are small and of comparatively little value, the government pays a small reward ...
— The Earth as Modified by Human Action • George P. Marsh

... impossible that, occasionally, the Egyptians allowed them to build ships in some one or more of their Red Sea ports, and to make such port or ports the head-quarters of a trade which may have proceeded beyond the Straits of Babelmandeb and possibly have reached Zanzibar and Ceylon. At any rate, we know that, in the time of Solomon, two harbours upon the Red Sea were open to them—viz. Eloth and Ezion-Geber—both places situated in the inner recess of the Elanitic Gulf, or Gulf of Akaba, the ...
— History of Phoenicia • George Rawlinson

... two species of elephants—the Asiatic (Elephas Indicus) and the African (Elephas Africanus.) The former of these species is indigenous to the whole of Southern India and the Eastern Archipelago; but the largest and most valuable Indian elephant is that of Ceylon. The second species is found throughout the whole of Africa; and on the banks of the great rivers and lakes of the unexplored regions of the interior, hordes of the finest African elephants are supposed to ...
— Chambers' Edinburgh Journal, No. 421, New Series, Jan. 24, 1852 • Various

... pigeons, respectively, 272 drops of black drop, 21 grains of powdered opium, and 3 grains of morphia without any effect.[72] On the other hand, horses show a like susceptibility to man to the action of drugs. In the island of Ceylon, a sloth can take 10 grains of strychnia with safety,—chickens presenting a like immunity to the poisonous effects of this alkaloid. While the dog offers such a contrast to the action of drugs as compared to man, he is as subject to goitre, ...
— History of Circumcision from the Earliest Times to the Present - Moral and Physical Reasons for its Performance • Peter Charles Remondino

... Burmese war, ["the Golden Chersonese,"] the commander-in-chief of the Mediterranean fleet; Mr. B. Z., on his appointment to the chief justiceship at Madras; Sir R. G., the late attorney general at the Cape of Good Hope; General Y. X., on taking leave for the governorship of Ceylon, ["the utmost Indian isle, Taprobane;"] Lord F. M., the bearer of the last despatches from head quarters in Spain; Col. P., on going out as captain general of the forces in New Holland; Commodore ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey

... inscriptions. One of the latter is to be found on a pillar originally set up and inscribed by Asoka, now in the fort at Allahabad. It shows him a mighty conqueror, reigning over all Hindustan; victorious in the Deccan; and, by influence and alliances, dominant from Ceylon to the Oxus. His coins picture him playing on the lyre; the inscriptions speak of him as a poet and musician; in his reign began a great renaissance in art, architecture, literature, and perhaps especially in music,—a ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris

... Melbourne and Adelaide. While of course the Australians are crazy about cricket, like all Englishmen, they're keen for every kind of athletic sport, and we're sure of big crowds there. After that we sail for Ceylon and from ...
— Baseball Joe Around the World - Pitching on a Grand Tour • Lester Chadwick

... somewhere. The Master told the disciples to begin at Jerusalem and work out. So I followed that rule, and Sunday is marked Turkey and the lands grouped with it, Arabia and Persia. The memorandum moves east, following the compass-line of greatest need. Monday is India day, including Ceylon and the lands and islands lying adjacent. Tuesday is China day; Wednesday, Japan, the island kingdom; and the ...
— Quiet Talks with World Winners • S. D. Gordon

... young female, having caught, in some degree, the spirit of doing good, has sighed for opportunities. "What can I do?" she has seemed to say, "here at home. If I could be a missionary at Ceylon, or South Africa, or the Sandwich Islands, or even if I could be a teacher, I could, perhaps, do something. But as it is, I must remain a mere cypher in the world. I would do good, but ...
— The Young Woman's Guide • William A. Alcott

... played with a bow may be traced to a remote period among various Oriental peoples. An example of their simplest form exists in the ravanastron, or banjo-fiddle, supposed to have been invented by King Ravana, who reigned in Ceylon some 5,000 years ago. It is formed of a small cylindrical sounding-body, with a stick running through it for a neck, a bridge, and a single string of silk, or at most two strings. Its primitive bow was a long hairless cane rod which produced sound when drawn across ...
— For Every Music Lover - A Series of Practical Essays on Music • Aubertine Woodward Moore

... a good many more people, fervently admired those who thought the same as he. "But what puzzles me more and more every day is how such a chap as him should come to be a common soldier. He's a gentleman, every inch of him. Why, didn't they get him to talk to the French officers when we landed at Ceylon, and the French frigate was there? and my word, how he did jabber away! He might have been a real mounseer. Well, 'taint no business of mine; so long as he gets his accoutrements clean, and a good coating of pipeclay on his belts, that's ...
— Middy and Ensign • G. Manville Fenn

... I inlay the paths with mountain moss, and I border them with pearls from Ceylon and diamonds from Golconda. Here and there are fountains tossing in the sunlight, and ponds that ripple under the paddling of the swans. I gather me lilies from the Amazon, and orange groves from the tropics, and tamarinds from Goyaz. There ...
— The Wedding Ring - A Series of Discourses for Husbands and Wives and Those - Contemplating Matrimony • T. De Witt Talmage

... her places of refreshment scattered all along it with almost as much regularity as depots on a railroad. From England to Gibraltar is six days' sail; thence to Sierra Leone twelve days; to Ascension six days; to St. Helena three days; to Cape Colony eight days; to Mauritius not more; to Ceylon about the same; and thence to Calcutta three or four days. Going farther east, a few days' sail will bring you to Singapore, and a few more to Hong Kong, and then you are at the gates of Canton. Mark now that in this immense girdle of some twelve or fifteen thousand miles there is no distance ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. July, 1863, No. LXIX. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various

... sorts of living snakes and lizards in cages, some great Ceylon toads not much smaller than Flossy, some large foreign rats nearly as large and fierce as little bull-dogs. The most ferocious and deadly-looking things in the place were these rats, a laughing hyena (which every now and then uttered a hideous peal of laughter such as a score ...
— Charlotte Bronte and Her Circle • Clement K. Shorter

... MENG BENG seated on a raised cushion sewn with rubies, under a canopy supported by four attendants, motionless as bronze figures. By his side is a betel-nut box, glittering with gems. On either side of him, but much lower down, are the TWO AMBASSADORS OF THE KING OF CEYLON, bearers of the King of Ceylon's consent to the marriage of his only daughter to Meng Beng in two years' time, men of grave, majestic mien, clad in flowing robes almost monastic in their white simplicity. They smoke gravely at the ...
— For Love of the King - a Burmese Masque • Oscar Wilde

... pseudo-hexagonal form. Alexandrite was found originally in the emerald- mine of Takovaya, east of Ekaterinburg in the Urals, and afterwards in the gold-bearing sands of the Sanarka in the southern Urals. Subsequently it was discovered in greater abundance in the gem-gravels of Ceylon. It has been found also in Tasmania. Some of the Ceylon alexandrite exhibits, when suitably cut, the Cat's-eye chatoyance, whence it has been called alexandrite cat's-eye. (F. ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia

... Dutch traders began to examine into the possibilities of coffee cultivation and coffee trading. In 1616 a coffee plant was successfully transported from Mocha to Holland. In 1658 the Dutch started the cultivation of coffee in Ceylon, although the Arabs are said to have brought the plant to the island prior to 1505. In 1670 an attempt was made to cultivate coffee on European soil at Dijon, France, but the result was ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers

... as the embodiment of the eternal verity that as a man sows he will reap, associated with the duties of mastery over self and kindness to all men, and quickened into a popular religion by the example of a noble and beautiful life."—Dharmapala of Ceylon. ...
— The Religions of Japan - From the Dawn of History to the Era of Meiji • William Elliot Griffis

... in China, dine contentedly upon horse-steak in Paris, swallow their beef uncooked in Germany, maintain an unwinking gravity over the hottest curry in India, smoke their hookah gratefully in Turkey, mount an elephant in Ceylon, and, in short, conform gracefully to any native custom, however strange ...
— Frost's Laws and By-Laws of American Society • Sarah Annie Frost

... Cacao Pods into a Heap Men Breaking Pods, etc. Sweating Boxes, Trinidad Fermenting Boxes, Java Charging Cacao on to Trucks in the Plantation, San Thome Cacao in the Fermenting Trucks, San Thome Tray-barrow for Drying Small Quantities Spreading the Cacao Beans on mats to dry, Ceylon Drying Trays, Grenada "Hamel Smith" Rotary Dryer Drying Platforms with Sliding Roofs, Trinidad Cacao Drying Platforms, San Thome Washing the Beans, Ceylon Claying Cacao Beans, Trinidad Sorting Cacao Beans, Java Diagram: World's Cacao Production MAP of ...
— Cocoa and Chocolate - Their History from Plantation to Consumer • Arthur W. Knapp

... remark that Singapore will shortly become the central point of all the Indian steamers. Those from Hong-Kong, Ceylon, Madras, Calcutta, and Europe arrive regularly once a month; there is likewise a Dutch war-steamer from Batavia, and in a little time there will also be steamers running to and fro between this place, and ...
— A Woman's Journey Round the World • Ida Pfeiffer

... warfare between Spaniard and Hollander and Englishman, before twenty years were over the most valuable colonies of the Indies and the Cape of Good Hope and Ceylon and those along the coast of China and even Japan were in Protestant hands. In 1621 a West Indian Company was founded which conquered Brazil and in North America built a fortress called Nieuw Amsterdam at the mouth of the river which Henry Hudson had discovered ...
— The Story of Mankind • Hendrik van Loon

... more real geography than has yet been discovered in any record of the Bramins or the Zendevesta, and is truth itself, both geographical and historical, when compared with the portentous expedition of Ram to Ceylon." ...
— Robert Kerr's General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 18 • William Stevenson

... Bull's orchid shows. As a matter of fact, people who know the hot world well can tell you that the average tropical woodland is much more like the dark shade of Box Hill or the deepest glades of the Black Forest. For really fine floral display in the mass, all at once, you must go, not to Ceylon, Sumatra, Jamaica, but to the far north of Canada, the Bernese Oberland, the moors of Inverness-shire, the North Cape of Norway. Flowers are loveliest where the climate is coldest; forests are greenest, most luxuriant, least blossoming, where the conditions of life are richest, warmest, ...
— Science in Arcady • Grant Allen

... as they called the three-pronged fork, to harpoon dolphins. I had my first sight of flying fish, and made friends with the officers. Then there was music and dancing on the hot moonlit nights; deck quoits under the awning by day; a good deal more sleep than we took at home; and at last we reached Ceylon and touched at Colombo, where everything struck me as being wonderfully unlike what I had pictured in ...
— Gil the Gunner - The Youngest Officer in the East • George Manville Fenn

... but uneventful voyage succeeded, during which the passengers were well roasted in the Suez Canal, and saturated with the steamy moisture of Ceylon, where Mark stared with wonder at the grandees, whose costume strongly resembled that of some gorgeously-decked little girl of fifty years ago dressed ...
— Mother Carey's Chicken - Her Voyage to the Unknown Isle • George Manville Fenn

... about,' said Miss Wainwright, 'there's nothing like the profession. I've been in Australia, Ceylon, South Africa, America, but never Canada.... I'm just back from America with Freeland, and we took the first thing that came along—Ivanhoe. It's a lovely show but the play's no good.... Why ...
— Mummery - A Tale of Three Idealists • Gilbert Cannan

... that "Ceylon doctors give jackall's flesh for consumptions." Now, consumption is evidently John Bull's malady; hence, we would try the Ceylon prescription. The jackalls are the landowners; take a little of their flesh, Sir ROBERT, and for once, spare the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various

... this book was the result of seven years' experience of riding hundreds of horses in India, Ceylon, Egypt, China and South Africa; the most trying animals being those of which I was the rough-rider at my husband's horse-breaking classes. Since that edition came out, I have hunted a good deal, chiefly, in Leicestershire and Cheshire, and ...
— The Horsewoman - A Practical Guide to Side-Saddle Riding, 2nd. Ed. • Alice M. Hayes

... capital of L1500 reduced to L1000. With this, I resolved to try my fortune in shipping; I procured a share in a brig, and sailed in her myself. After a time, I was sufficiently expert to take the command of her, and might have succeeded, had not my habit of drinking been so confirmed. When at Ceylon, I fell sick, and was left behind. The brig was lost, and as I had forgotten to insure my portion of her, I was ruined. I struggled long, but in vain—intemperance was my curse, my bane, the millstone at my neck, which dragged me down: I had education, talents, and energy, and at one ...
— The Little Savage • Captain Marryat



Words linked to "Ceylon" :   Ceylon cinnamon, Sri Lankan, land, World Tamil Movement, Tamil Tigers, Colombo, Tamil Eelam, Adam's Peak, state, Sinhalese, Sri Lanka, World Tamil Association, Indian Ocean, country, Ceylon bowstring hemp, capital of Sri Lanka, Eelam



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