The European Factor in the Caste System 5 only one caste, the Paduas (porters) as having three sub-divisions.10 A later writer, John Armour, in 1842, found twenty castes in Ceylon, of whom he noticed that Goyigama had nine sub-castes; the Karava, had three; and the Navandinno, had six.11 The Census of Ceylon 1824, for the Maritime Provinces, perhaps because it is an official document, eschews all these subtleties and lasts, lists twenty castes, briefly.12 These kaledescopic shifts of caste articulation is, perhaps, indicative of the fact that these writers were depending heavily on their informants. The knowledge of English, general matters and other relevant factors might vary from informant to informant and thus skew the conclusions of the writer. Modern researchers have been aware of the constraints which the foreign observer have to be in cognizance. The French legal anthropologist, Norbert Rouland, has posited inbuilt parameters and their inbuilt disadvantages. These three parameters are language, time frame, and choice of informants.13 There must be a stock of terminology, as appreciated by the group studied. However, Rouland accepted that this particular skill cannot be possessed by every researcher, so that interpreters had to be brought into play, 'with the attendant risk of the deformation of ethno-linguistic data'.14 As regards the time frame, a year in the field was the absolute minimum. According to Rouland, the choice of informants was more troublesome. The researcher was apt to come into contact with the leaders and decision-makers of the group studied. Rouland also discussed the complexities of the spoken language, the only accessible medium among simplist communities.15 Viewed in this background, it is clear that the European ivriters on the Sri Lankan caste system were subject to these constraints. They did not understand fully the indigenous languages as used by the mass of the people or by the elite. As army officers or as members of the civil establishment, they were surrounded by their indigenous subordinates who were only too eager to please the Europeans. The only exception was Robert Knox, but virtual imprisonment had habituated him to a facile fatalism. In the circumstances, the European writers gave a rigidity and hierarchical absolutism which might not have totally corresponded to the ground situation. Some of the perils that the foreign observer meets with in his quest for information, is brought out in the methodology adopted by modern anthropologists. Bryce Ryan's methodology is an intricately articulated version of the European methodology. First, he and his associates collected all possible caste names and other relevant material from available sources. Then .. .armed with this partially outmoded, conflicting, inaccurate descriptive glossary, informed Sinhalese were consulted in an attempt to consolidate single castes which in this naive process had been listed separately under euphemistic titles, to sort out caste from noncaste, and to determine the probability of contemporary survival of those noted.16 After this, Bryan and his associates inducted knowledgeable Sinhalese of all castes to give their versions of total caste lists and these were collated with the literary lists they already had. There was thus^a mass of discrete information, parts of which were perhaps imaginative or abstract 'facts' from past sources,