A Sinhalese soldier and a squatting labourer

Outdoors on rolling ground, two men are depicted. On the left, a man sits crouching. With bent arms resting on his knees, he holds both hands against his chin. The man wears a half-length hip-cloth (veshti, lungi) and the flap of a shawl (chadar) hangs over his shoulder. The hair, parted in the middle, appears short. The man is probably from South India or Jaffna, and employed in Colombo in reconstruction work. The standing man on the right wears a short, buttoned jacket with long sleeves and a pleated lower hem (hettaya), beneath which a hip-cloth (veshti, lungi) wrapped in the Ceylonese manner, and a high folded waistband around the waist. On his left hip hangs a scabbard with a half-length sword (kastane); the ornate hilt shows a bird's head. The man wears a cap, a short beard, and a moustache. He is a Ceylonese mercenary (lascar), now in Dutch service. He belongs to the Goviya caste. Page 24 from a sketchbook with 117 pages.