Presenting an academic article published in Contributions to  Indian Sociology , n.s, Vol 21, 1-25 … also reproduced subsequently in Sri Lanka in 1989 as No, 10 within the SSC Pamphlet Series marshalled by the late Ana Chittambalam, Willa Wickremasinghe , Hari hulugalle and Michael Roberts

Elizabeth Nissan: “The work of Sri Lankan anthropologists: A bibliographic survey”

 Introduction: Although many of the studies included in this essay are concerned with Sri Lanka, this is not a bibliographic essay on the anthropology of that country. It is, instead, a survey of the work of Sri Lankan anthropologists, wherever they may have carried out their research.

An immediate problem in writing an essay of this kind involves deciding who is, and who is not, to be included as an ‘anthropologist’. An institutional division between anthropology and sociology is not generally maintained in Sri Lankan universities, and people trained at home or overseas in anthropo­ logical or sociological traditions often work in departments of sociology. If no clear division between sociology and anthropology can be drawn, so too is the line between history and anthropology hazy. There has for a long time been a strong tradition of historical sociology in Sri Lanka which is rep­ resented in this essay in the work of such writers as Malalgoda and Roberts. I do not claim to have solved any problem of demarcation here; nor do I think it is useful to do so. The lines I have drawn around my subject matter must be arbitrary to some extent. Nevertheless, I hope that I represent the dominant themes and interests in the work of those Sri Lankan scholars whom I have chosen to include as ‘anthropologists’. Much important work bearing on these themes, written by historians, political scientists, economists and others, is not included, for this essay is focused on the work of Sri Lankan anthropologists themselves. I have not included unpublished work or Ph.D. theses in this survey.

The great majority of Sri Lankan anthropologists have concentrated their research efforts on Sri Lanka itself. Only Daniel, Jayawardena, Tambiah and Wijeyewardene have done most of their research elsewhere. Because the greater part of the publications included concern Sri Lanka, I have  organised the essay around themes which are salient to the study of that country, where the greatest emphasis hfs been on studies of the Sinhala Buddhist rural population. Urban Sri Lanka provides the context for studies of religious change and of violence (see below), although Raby has recently produced an interesting study (1985) of the workings of kachcheri bureauc­ racy which contains a wealth of case material and acute observations. There have been very few studies of Tamils in the north or east of the island – those that I know of are included in the relevant sections below. I know of no study by a Sri Lankan anthropologist of the island’s estate Tamils, and nor has much anthropological work been published on other minority groups. There have been historical studies of the island’s Muslims, but few anthropological studies. Mauroof has written papers on the island’s Muslims (1972, 1981, 1984), and Roberts is currently working on a historical study of the Burgher community.

Within the Sinhala Buddhist community, the agrarian sector has received most attention, and within the agrarian sector most research has concen­ trated on paddy producers (although recent publications h:we documented changes associated with the growth in commercial production of such com­ modities as vegetables and tobacco). In sum, research on Sri Lanka has dis­ played an interesting tendency to follow dominant representations of the island as a nation of Sinhala Buddhist paddy farmers. These may, indeed, constitute the majority of the population, but minority groups, and even such an important sector of the economy as the plantations, remain under­ represented in the anthropological literature.

Although I have tried to include as much as possible in this essay, I am aware that it does not mention everything. The bibliography is extended to contain references to some publications not mentioned in the text, but it is not exhaustive. Because of the bias towards the study of Sri Lanka in the work considered, it has sometimes been difficult to incorporate into the sec­ tions below, the publications of those who have worked elsewhere except where they touch on common themes. Some mention of the works omitted becomes necessary here.

Tambiah’s work has ranged more widely over diverse subjects than has that of any other Sri Lankan anthropologist. His early and most recent pub­ lications on Sri Lanka are mentioned below, and his major studies of Buddh­ ism are discussed more fully elsewhere in this volume. But he is also the author of several important essays-which have been recently published as a collection (Tambiah 1985a) – in which he develops his cosmological and performative perspective on ritual (1968a, 1973d, 1977b, 1981), his work on classification and cosmology (1969, 1973a, 1983), and his concept of the galactic polity (1977a, 1985a). Other papers by Tambiah are included in the bibliography. Wijeyewardene, too, has written on classification and lan­ guage, with a paper on terms of address, abuse and animal categories in northern Thailand (1968a) and another on the language of courtship (1968b).

 

 

Jayawardcna·s work on Indians in Guyana and Fiji has hccn incorporated. where possible, into the sections which follow. Additional references to his work can be found in the bibliography.

Kinship, land tenure and elite formation

Towards the end of his 1965 article ‘Kinship fact and fiction in relation to the Kandyan Sinhalese’, Tambiah observed that

It is possible that excessive concern with kinship as the framework of analysis may actually mask the nature of events that are sometimes more meaningfully approached from a different angle. In Sinhalese society a great deal of behaviour has to do with the acquisition of property, power and prestige (1965:170).

Whilst appropriate as criticism of the concerns of much social anthropology of the t,ime, and in particular of Nur Yalman’s approach to Sinhalese kinship (1962), Tambiah’s concern with processes of social differentiation and elite formation, rather than with kinship in itself, has echoed throughout the work of Sri Lankan anthropologists, albeit, in recent years, expressed in a different theoretical framework.

In the late 1950s and 1960s, the major contributions to village studies in Sri Lanka were Tambiah’s articles (1958a, 1965, 1966) and Obeyesekere’s monograph (1966a). Like Leach in Put Eliya (1961), both Obeyesekere and Tambiah stressed that kinship had to be understood in relation to property, and both were particularly concerned with the processes by which property was transmitted and acquired, and with the dynamics of social differentia­ tion. This concern is also evident in Tambiah’s essay on dowry and bride­ wealth (1973a) which uses material on traditional Indian law, contemporary rural India, Ceylon Tamils, Kandyan Sinhalese and Burma. The importance of kinship as ‘expressive charter’ for families ‘on the make’ is clear in Tambiah’s work (1965), as also in Obeyesekere’s Land tenure in village Ceylon, although Obeyesekere’s analysis of structural change provi9es greater historical depth and detail than do Tambiah’s articles.

Stimulated by the publication of Pul Eliya, Obeyesekere was concerned to demonstrate that the. study of change, rather than the study of system, is essential to an understanding of village land tenure. And contrary to Leach, Obeyesekere argued that ‘the constraints of economics’ are not ‘prior to the constraints of morality and law’ in the formation of social systems (1966a:295), an argument well substantiated in his discussion of pelantiya (status group) formation. In Obeyesekere’s analysis, historical change only begins in the colonial era; indeed, the major criticism of this work is that he has reified an ideal model of the land tenure and kinship system, and located it as an actual system in the pre-colonial past. With the imposition of the Crown Lands

 

Encroachment Ordinances, grain taxes and the implementation of bilateral inheritance rules by the courts under Roman-Dutch law, the traditional sys­ tem of land tenure (based on the rotation between co-heirs of shares in an estate inherited patrilineally) was transformed. With no land available for village expansion; and with a legal system which promoted individual own­ ership, there was a fra_ctioning of land shares. This fractioning, together with the imposition of grain taxes, led to the development of a share market, which enabled those favourably placed (often through holding administra­ tive office) to speculate in land. By buying up dispersed plots of land which were uneconomic in themselves, absentee share owners were able to enhance their status honour. They took new names, displayed their status through conspicuous patterns of consumption and built up followings of clients in the villages in keeping with a ‘feudal’ ideology of leadership. By intermarrying they created flexible, kin-based status groups known as pelantiya. Selvadurai (1976a) sees such land-owning local elites ‘as agents of structural change within the village community itself’, and argues that there has been an.ideo­ logical shift from egalitarian to hierarchical evaluations in assessing citizen­ ship and non-citizenship in the village, and in the emergence of a system of differential allocation of rights in village lands.

Obeyesekere’s analysis of the formation and rise of pelantiyas takes us from village to regional and, potentially, to national levels of leadership and administration. These linkages are brought out more explicitly, however, in Michael Roberts’ study of the rise of a Karava (fisher caste) elite (1974, 1981, 1982). Being uninvolved in paddy cultivation, the process of Karava elite formation differs from that described by Obeyesekere, for purchase of land shares did not play an important part in its rise. Instead, members of the Karava caste took advantage of new opportunities which arose under colo­ nial rule, particularly in various trades (gem, arrack and toddy, artisan, building materials, etc.) and graphite mining, to amass their wealth. Roberts sees the ‘wedge marginality’, as he calls it (following Kapferer’s definition), of the Karava (as well as of the Salagama and Durava castes) in the wider Sinhalese social order as providing the structural pot ntial which enabled members of these castes to embark on upwardly mobile paths. As they became more wealthy, Karava notables diversified into plantations (some becoming major landowners) and other major entrepreneurial enterprises, and adopted styles of life and consumption patterns commensurate with their rising status. A professional elite, educated in English, emerged among the Karava, and some became deeply involved in national issues: competing for seats in the Legislative Council; campaigning in the Buddhist revivalist and temperance movements, etc. Roberts argues that a Karava elite was ‘produced out of, and involved in, the dialectics of caste competition, both with each other and with the Goyigama’ (1982:2). For the manner in which individuals attempted to enhance their caste status, comparable to processes of Sanskritisation in India, involved the incorporation of these immigrant groups into the wider Sinhalese social oi;der as they began to manipulate the symbols of Goyigama supremacy in their bid for high caste status.

Caste

For the most part, it has not been Sri Lankans who have theorised about caste in anthropological wrHings on Sri Lanka, but foreign anthropologists (e.g., Ryan 1953; Yalnian 1967). Studies of caste by SriLankans have gener­ ally been historical: Ralph Pieris’ Sinhalese social organization has proved invaluable on the organisation of the Kandyan kingdom, where caste (in Dumont’s summary of this work) was ‘an extremely fully worked out “liturgy” centered on the king’ (1970:216); and Roberts’ study (1982) is the first full-length stuQy of the dynamics of caste mobility in Sri Lanka.

In addition to Pietis’ study of the Kandyan kingdom, U.A. Gunasekere has provided a detailed examination of the ideology of rajakariya, or duty to the king, an ideology which implies·a particular model of caste relations (1978). Elsewhere (1965), he has written on intercaste relations, drawing a distinction betweenintercaste rights and feudal rights. Gunasinghe (1975a, 1979) and Silva (1979, n.d.) both consider the integration of caste relations into Kandyan feudalism, and both, too, consider the transformation of caste relations under capitalism (Gunasinghe 1979; Silva n.d.). Roberts (1984), however, has drawn attention to ambiguities inherent in the feudal concept and, by comparison with European feudalism has questioned its applicability to the former kingdoms of Sri Lanka.

The relatively low profile of caste as a theoretical issue in the anthropolog ical study of Sri Lanka is noteworthy when compared to its prominence in anthropological debate on India. Tam.biah’s essay (1?73a) on the shastric theory of the generation and ranking of castes is a notable contribution to the debate on the nature of caste in India. As far as Sri Lanka is concerned, however, caste is generally treated as a ‘given’ in anthropological writing, and used alongside other indices of social differentiation to describe the groupings of the populations concerned. Nevertheless, some writers have used caste as their primary conceptualisation of social categories in the vil­ lage. For example, Tudor Silva’s (1979) discussion of the demise of Kandyan feudalism is presented primarily in terms of changing caste relations, although the kind of material that he presents on change has been analysed by others in terms of changing class relations. Indeed Silva has recently reanalysed this material in such terms himself (n.d., see below). Other writ­ ers, such as Tamara Gunasekere (n.d.) and U Jayantha Perera (1985a), both of whom analyse the changing power structure of the villages they studied, incorporate discussion of both changing caste and changing class relationships into their analyses,                        •

Moving outside the South Asian context, Chandra Jayawardena has writ­ ten on the disintegration of·caste among Indians in Guyana (Smith and Jayawardena 1967) and in Fiji (Jayawardena 1971). FOl” both cases the his­ torical experiences of emigration and settlement are analysed to explain the particular processes of disintegration in each case. A more wide-ranging analysis of changes in family structure, caste system and religious organisa tion among Indians overseas is given in Jayawardena (1968a).

Rural change

Much of the work of Sri Lankan anthropologists has been concerned with the documentation and analysis of rural change, particularly in Sinhala Buddhist areas of Sri Lanka. Wijeyewardene, however, has provided a general overview of rural life in Thailand (1967). Taken as a whole, certain common themes run through much of the work on Sri Lanka, but at the same time the variability of local situations and initiatives is striking. The most useful and wide-ranging introduction to rural Sri Lanka is that written by Tamhiah over twenty years ago ( I 963). But perhaps the earliest sociologi­ cal analysis was provided hy Sarkar and Tamhiah in The disintegrating vil­ lage, published in 1957. This work invoked a rather idealised image of the pre-colonial past which was common in the historiography of the time,1 but Sarkar and Tambiah’s picture of rural crisis in the Ka_ndyan area, where landlessness had become a major and growing problem ‘under the dual pres­ sure of population rise and a stagnant and exploitative economy’ (1957:xiii), has been modified, but not essentially changed, in more recent work. In addition to the studies of kinship mentioned earlier, studies of colonisation schemes, rural credit and cooperatives were also published in the late 1950s and 1960s (Amunugama 1964, 1965; Tambiah 1958b, 1958c, 1962, 1965). Whilst questioning the image of an egalitarian, integrated village ever exist­ ing in the historical past, the editors of The disintegrating village? agree ‘that the notion of the social disintegration of the traditional village is on the whole a valid description of what is happening in rural Sri Lanka’ (Morrison et al. 1979:41). Following Sarkar and Tambiah, they assume that the tradi­ tional village was ‘paddy-centred’. They draw particular attention to popula­ tion growth, the decline of paddy cultivation in favour of minor crops or of non-agricultural occupations, the development of capitalist agriculture and the incorporation and politicisation of the rural areas as factors contributing to ‘the fragmentation of village social life’ ( 1979:38). Nevertheless, the var­ ious papers in the volume point to striking regional variations. Differing his­ tories of settlement and colonisation are linked to s·pecific patterns of social differentiation and dependency, for example; local organisations (but not those formed by government agencies) are found to flourish in a Jaffna Tamil village but to he less su·ccessful in Sinhalese areas; in a dry zone coloni­ sation scheme where paddy is the major crop, Wanigaratnc (1) finds that a pattern of social relations has developed analogous to that which Tudor Silva finds disintegrating in a Kandyan highland village, where commercial vegetable production has risen to prominence.

Changing rural conditions must in part be understood in the context of government agrarian policy and initiatives: New irrigation works have been constructed; there have been village e pansion schemes; large numbers of peoples have been resettled in colonisation schemes; legislation has been passed affecting the rights of landowners and tenants; import and exchange rate controls have affected the profitability of different crops. In addition, new seed types, fertilisers and agrochemical weedicides have been intro­ duced and the production of paddy has been mechanised to some extent. ‘Rural to rural’ migration has also occurred without much government inter­ vention, as Weeramunda discusses for a large settlement in Moneragala dis­ trict ( I985). The hi’..torical vicissitudes of village agriculture in Sri Lanka cannot be described in any detail here. At the broadest level, however, and despite regionaLvariation, studies of rural Sri Lanka undertaken in the I970s and 1980s show that production has become increasingly commercial, with more widespread use of wage labour (in place of exchange labour and the various forms of tenancy which legislation passed in the 1950s was designed to protect), and that class differentiation has become more pronounced (Brow 1986). Morrison, Moore and Lebbe (1979) provide a useful overview of these developments based on studies conducted in the 1970s. Their vol­ ume includes papers by K. Tudor Silva on the demise of Kandyan feudalism; commercial farming in a dry zone colonisation scheme by Wanigaratne, and in rural Jaffna by Lebbe; village expansion in the low country by Moore et al., and in the ·coconut triangle’ by U. L. Jayantha Perera. Brow (19 6) pro­ vides a more recent general assessment of agrarian change :in Sri Lanka, which includes consideration of research undertaken since the last change of government in 1977. Brow and Wecramunda are currently editing a volume of:papers (n.d.) on agrarian change in Sri Lanka which will include the fol­ lowing contributions by Sri Lankans: Hettige on itinerant workers and agra­ rian relations in a dry zone settlement; Perera on agrarian change in a dry zone village which is now incorporated into the Mahaveli irrigation scheme; Silva on the capitalist transformation of a highland village; T. Gunasekerc on the politicisation of the power structure of a Kandyan village; and Gunasinghe’s comparison of the transformation of agrarian systems in Jaffna and Nuwara Eliya districts.2

Brow (1981, 1986) has pointed to inherent problems in documenting the processes of class differentiation at the village level, for any single person, and different members of the same hc,msehoM, may well stand in several dif­ ferent relationships to the means of production, and so neither person nor

 

 

 

household are easily classifiable. In practice, only a few Sri Lankan anthropologists have attempted a rigorous class analysis of agrarian rela­ tions in Sri Lanka; most have tended instead to classify people in terms of differential income, land-ownership, occupation and caste. Of those who have offered a class analysis, Guna.singhe’s is the most highly theorised ver­ sion. He attempts to identify the ‘objectively existing class structure’ of a Kandyan village (1975a:117), and to apply Gramsci’s analysis of ‘extreme social disintegration’ to the history of the Kandyan countryside (1979). More recently (n.d.) he has challenged the validity of Chayanov’s concept of a uniform ‘peasant economy’. Using material on ‘two distinct peasant sys­ tems in Sri Lanka’ – one in Jaffna with strong potential for growth, the other in Nuwara Eliya which has been ‘frozen’ – Gunasinghe argues that analysis guided by concepts of the ‘peasant economy’ or ‘mode of produc­ tion’ would have been unable to expose the structural differences between these two systems, and would not have enabled him to stress the ‘different trajectories’ along which each system has travelled. Silva (n.d.) remained within the mode of production debate in his investigation of structural change in a Kandyan village where commercial vegetable production has become prominent, viewing the history of the village in terms of the transi­ tion from a feudal mode of production to capitalism. Hettige (1984), too, has offered a class analysis of Niltanne, Polonnaruva district, where paddy is the major commercial crop. Although Hettige also discusses other dimensions of social differentiation’— primarily power and social status – he neverthe­ less concludes that ‘other concepts such as caste, status, honour, prestige and economic or political power are meaningful only when they are subordi­ nated to the concept of class relations’ (1984:281). Such a conclusion is not supported by other anthropologists. Perera (1985a, 1985b, n.d.), for exam­ ple, argues for the primacy of the political domain over the economic as the initiator of change, and appears to eschew an exclusive class analysis which cannot take account of ’emic’ categories and meanings.

The politicisation of rural Sri Lanka in the last few decades, and the nature of the political process at the local level, has become an important concern in more recent research. Perera (1985a) discusses the changing nature of local politics as successive governments have instituted rural organisations in different ways, and the importance of party politics at the village level – ‘corruption, thuggery and “political victimization” were the major topics of villagers’ conversation’ (1985a:6). Similar themes dominate T. Gunasekere’s analysis of the politicisation of the power structure in a Kandyan village (n.d.), although in her terms ‘leadership’ has died altogether, giving way to a new power elite of MP’s henchmen in the village, able to manipulate the flow of resources, but whose position is necessarily unstable and dependent solely upon maintaining links with the MP. Jayatilake (1982, 1984) has also written on this theme. In these analyses, political power at the local level is no longer the preserve of landed, pelantiya-type status groups. Indeed,

 

 

Weeramunda ‘s analysis (1985) of the switch from shifting cultivation to gem­ ming in Moneragala district shows that those who have made fast fortunes through illicit gemming do not necessarily attempt to forge the kinds of relationships that will enhance their political leverage. They may consume conspicuously enough, but do not use their wenlth to establish relationships of political influence.

Although there are no anthropological studies of the estate sector in Sn Lanka to be included here, Jayawardena’s extremely interesting study of Indian labour on Guyanese sugar estates (1963) demonstrates the wealth of possibilities for such a study. Constrained by a rather functionalist theoretical approach to the analysis of conflict – particularly of conflict between labourers – Jayawifrdena nevertheless shows how class analysis can illumi­ nate our understanding of change in a particular form of rural society. Of particular interest, given common assumptions concerning the hierarchical nature of Indian society, is his discussion of the emergeqce of an egalitarian ideology among estate workers. Elsewhere (1968b), Jayawardena under­ takes a comparative examination of the emergence of egalitarian ideologies in lower class communities.

Religion

There have been several outstanding contributions by Sri Lankan anthro­ pologists to the study of Sinhalese and Thai Buddhism. The works of Obeye­ sekere and Tambiah are best known in this field, but as their major books (Obeyesekere 1981, 1984a; Tambiah 1970, 1976, 1984) are discussed at length in the remainder of this volume, I prefer to concentrate on other works here.

Obeyesekere’s early papers on village Buddhism, and his later papers on ‘Protestant’ Buddhism and Buddhist nationalism in Sri Lanka have rightly been of significant influence. In his article (1963a), Obeyesekere argues that Sinhalese Buddhism should be seen as ‘a single religious tradition’, and not as composed of separate ‘layers’ to be analysed in isolation from each other. This approach was further demonstrated in his article on the Buddhist pantheon (1966b), seen as an integrated totality. For Thailand, Tambiah prop­ osed a similar view, but in rather different terms: He saw the religious prac­ tice:; of a north eastern Thai village as constituting ‘a total field’ in which Buddhism and the spirit cults were related through ‘structural relations of hierarchy, opposition, complementarity and linkage’ (1970:377). Wijeye­ wardene’s analysis of, northern Thai shrines (1970) concentrates on the relationship of opposition. However, where in Tambiah ‘s later work (1976) the theme of totalisation remains dominant, in Obeyesekere’s, religious change is seen,to involve the fracturing of the total religious field. His writ­ ings on religious change -on the rise on the one hand of what he called Pro­ testant Buddhism, involving a new ‘this-worldly asceticism’ (1970d, 1975a,

 

1976a) in confrontation with colonial Christianity, and on the other the rise of bhakti religiosity among Buddhists as witnessed throush the cult of Kataragama (1977a, 1978) – might be read as showing a relatively recent separation between two kinds of religious practice along the lines which he rightly challenged for the analysis of traditional religious practice. Tambiah, indeed, has suggested that the Buddhist revival of the late 19th and early 20th centuries in Sri Lanka produced a Buddhism approximating Weber’s typification of ancient Buddhism (1973c: 6). Malalgoda, however, in his use­ ful survey article on Buddhism in Sri Lanka (1977) urges cautiol} on this point, seeing it as relevant only to the position of modern forest monks. He draws attention to the innovative organisational forms introduced during the revival, the militant character of Protestant Buddhism, and a millennial strand in Buddhism, none of which could be incorporated into such a view. (He gives a more detailed account of millennial uprisings against the British in the 19th century elsewhere [Malalgoda 1970].) Seneviratne and Wicker­ meratne’s paper (1980) on the modern cult of Bo tree worship in Sri Lanka demonstrates further a worldly empha:sis in modern Buddhist practice, as does Tambiah’s paperon a Thai cult of healing through meditation (1977b).

Malalgoda’s masterly study of religious revival and change in 19th century

Sri Lanka (1976) provides essential historical depth for understanding the configuration of forces which has led to the proliferation of monastic lines of ordination in Sri Lanka, and to the lay Buddhist revival mentioned above. The revival, and the harnessing of Buddhism to modern conceptions of Sinhala national identity which Obeyesekere discussed primarily through the figure of the Buddhist reformer Anagarika Dharmapala (Obeyesekere 1975a, 1976a), is seen in Malalgoda’s work to have been preceded by a lengthy process of schisth and debate within the sangha, a process which Malalgoda interprets as a sign of renewed vitality in Buddhism. Voluntary effort became of great significance after state patronage was withdrawn from Buddhism under British rule. Although the study ends at 1900, it pro­ vides manifold insights into the dynamics of 19th century Buddhist history which is of continuing relevance.

Comparisons between Buddhist reformist movements and Hindu refor­ mism clearly suggest themselves, particularly with regard to the role played by voluntary associations, and the rise of a worldly ascetic ideology. In a paper on religious change and the development of Hinduism in British Guyana, Jayawardena describes the adoption of sanatan dharm as the ‘one religion common to all Indians’ (1966 : 228), and the conflict which arose between sanatan and the Arya Samaj. Perinbanayagam (1982a) also pro­ vides material on the Hindu revival iri Jaffna.

Malalgoda’s studies of Buddhist revivalism and of millennialism and Obeyesekere’s studies of the pantheon and religious change, form part of the literature on the relationship between Buddhism and polity to which Tambiah has contributed so much, particularly with regard to Buddhist kingdoms of South East Asia (1973c, 1973e, 1976, 1977a, 1978a, 1978b, 1982, 1984). For Sri Lanka, Michael Roberts (1984) has brought together a wealth of material bearing on the ideology of kingship to construct a ‘cul­ tural paradigm’, which he labels the’ Asokan persona’, which he sees as hav­ ing been historically reiterated over the centuries. And T. Fernando (1973) has examined the political use to which Buddhism was put by the Western­ educated elite under British rule.

Seneviratne’s meticulous monograph on the Temple of the Tooth in Kandy (1978a) also addresses the theme of the Buddhist polity, for the organisation and rituals qf this central royal temple are seen to express a unity of religion and polity. Seneviratne analyses the temple rituals in terms of two themes – rituals of maintenance and rituals of prosperity- and also gives consideratfon to the place of the temple in modern Sri Lankan society. The reassertion of the temple by the Kandyan elite under the influence of low country Buddhist nationalism during the period of British rule, and the subsequent ‘universalization’ of its ritual, are the subjects of two articles (Seneviratnc 1976c, 1977), while his analysis of the meaning of space in the Temple, and its relationship to the kingdom is further developed more recently (1985). More recently, too, Seneviratne (1984) has examined the temple and its rituals in terms of Bellah’s notion of ‘civil religion’, arguing for a continuity of symbolic associations which allows the temple to serve as ‘a symbol of liational unity’ in the modern Sri Lankan state. This argument has provoked some controversy (Kemper 1984; Ling 1984) on the grounds that Seneviratne has not taken account of the changing meaning of symbols as circumstances change, nor of the divisive impact of such state sponsored Sinhala Buddhist ritual in a modern, multi-ethnic nation state in which com­ munal tensions have increased since Independence.

The person

As bearing on this theme, I include here studies of astrology and karma, sub­ stance and healing, possession and exorcism, and sorcery.

The best known papers by Sri Lankan anthropologists on karma are prob­ably those by Obeyesekere (1968) which .build upon a critique of Weber’s definition of theodicy, and by Tambiah (1968c), where stresS

 

, is laid on the social correlates of merit-making, both of which are published in Leach (ed.) The dialectic in practical religion. Obeyesekere has recently looked at karma doctrine from another viewpoint (1980), developing a comparative approach to rebirth theories, and seeing the karmic eschatology as a trans­ formation through ethicisation of simple rebirth eschatologies.

Perinbanayagam’s study of the·uses of astrology in Jaffna (1982a) is the only monograph on this therne by a Sri Lankan anthropologist. Drawing on structuralist and hermeneutic methods; Perinbanayagam sees astrolqgy ‘as a language that seeks to create an order and a pattern for human lives’ (1982a: 88). It is a language which is underpinned by, and reinforces, the notion of karma, and which he analyses in relation to the wider ordering of society and the universe, and the philosophy of Saiva Siddhanta. He demonstrates an interesting correspondence between the ‘logically arranged narrative’ of the horoscope at the structural level, and the narra­ tive of the religious myths. This correspondence, he argues, allows ‘a sys­ tematic coherence’ to be achieved between self and myth.

There is much material in this work on the kinds of questions clients bring to their consultation with the astrologer, and on the methods used by astrologers in arriving at their conclusions. Yet there is little information on the clients or astrologers themselves, and little, too, on clients’ own interpre­ tations of their situations. This is a scheme, because it means that Perin­ banayagam’s provocative suggestion that astrology can be seen to operate as a hegemonic ideology cannot be assessed (cf. Southwold 1983).

With Daniel’s subtle study Fluid signs (1984) we move from Tamil culture in Jaffna to south India. In Part One, Daniel is concerned with ‘knowledge of diversity’ (ibid. : 11), which he examines through a range of ideas-of vil­ lage, house, sexuality, karma (on karma see also Daniel 1983a)- belonging to the realm of daily life, a limited realm of differentiated substances. He demonstrates the permeability of boundaries between person and place, person and house, person and person; the ability of substances ‘to mix and separate, to transform and be transformed’ (1984: 3); the quest for inter­ substantial compatibility in daily life. Part Two is concerned with the pro­ cess of transcendence, with the quest through arduous pilgrimage for an undifferentiated, unified knowledge of the primordial substance from which differentiated substance derives. Daniel skilfully interprets his material in a Peircean semiotic framework, arguing that iconicity-the sharing of qualities

– is the dominant mode of representation in Tamil culture. His paper on Siddha medicine (1983b) reinforces this theoretical point: Siddha depends on the sharing of substances (of pulses between patient and doctor, of quali­ ties between drugs and the patient’s body substance, and so on).

Daniel’s material on Siddha medicine complements Obeyesekere’s work on Ayurveda, where the same cone.em is shown for establishing a balance between the bodily humours. Obeyesekere’s papers on Ayurveda (1970a, 197,•b, 1977b) always present the principal ideas and logic of the system with clarity. He finds Ayurvedic ideas reflected in manifold aspects of Sinhalese culture (as in rituals to the gods and of sorcery, and in eating habits), and sees the Ayurvedic system as having generated several important ‘cultural diseases’ such as semen loss and phlegm disease (1976b). He finds ideas deriving from Ayurveda even among some practitioners of Western medi.cine who see no value in Ayurveda, but who advise patients to eat hot or cooling foods depending on their condition (ibid. : 225). In another paper (1977b), Obeyesekere provides detailed accounts of the classical Ayurvedic concept of mind and of psychopathology,aeriving from Samkya philosophy, and of the modern practice of psychological medicine in Ayurveda.

In his papers on demonic possession and exorcism (1969, 1970b, 1975c) Obeyesekere is concerned with another form of disease and healing. In the exorcism ritual of the Sanni Demons, the demons are seen as a dramatic ‘demonographic representation of disease symptoms’ (1969: 200), repre­ senting in particular, psychotic and neurotic symptoms (ibid. : 202). If this paper is concerned primarily with ritual as collective representation, Obeye­ sekere’s case studies of women who have become possessed view the process from the perspective of the patient. He uses the case of Alice Nona (1970b) to argue that demonic possession provides an idiom through which serious psychological conflict can be expressed. In his sensitive psychological analysis of the life history of Somavati, and of the rites of exorcism she underwent (1975c), he shows the flexibilities within the exorcism ritual which accommodate the particular psychological requirements of the indi­ vidual patient. His concern with the psychological implications of the par­ ticular choices made by the subject from a range of cultural possibilities is developed further in Medusa’s hair. An earlier paper on dola duka (1963b), the deep cravings during pregnancy which must be satisfied, displayed a similar concern with the psychological conflicts generated by women’s social position, and with the meaning of the particular choices made –  in this case of foods rejected and craved.

Two papers consider aspects of Buddhism and illness. Obeyesekere (1985) argues that depression – ‘a painful series of affects pertaining to sor­ row’ – can be labelled as an illness in the West only because it is not anchored to an ideology. This need not be the case elsewhere: in Buddhist culture reflection on sorrow is encouraged. Obeyesekere thus questions the idea that there is an ‘operational core’ in depression which can be found uni­ versally. Tambiah (1977b) is concerned with the use of Buddhist meditation for healing in an urban Thai cult. Patients understood their various disorders as being moral consequences of their previous lives, and believed they could be allayed by the acquisition of merit. Tambiah sets the rite in the wider con­ text of Buddhist cosmology and sees it as assimilating the individual aspects of illness to ‘an enduring cosmic paradigm of theodicy and tranquillity’.

From healing I turn now to sorcery- to attempts to harm others by super­ natural means. Selvadurai (1976b) considers sorcery in the context of village land disputes, arguing that disputes over land represent claims to full person­ hood. Suspicions of sorcery arose in disputes between ‘outsiders’ living in the village and insiders, demonstrating ‘a separateness or a boundary between the victim and the persecutor … that they are not the same category of per­ sons’ (ihid. : 95), for the ideas associated with sorcery arc antithetical to those governing kinship. Obeyesekere (1975b) takes a wider look at sorcery in Sri Lanka to cast doubt on comparative studies of personality or social structure which make use of official statistics on crimes of violence. He argues that aggression is often canalised through sorcery in Sri Lanka, so that sorcery becomes the equivalent of premeditated murder. Material collected at three shrines — one Buddhist, one Muslim and one Hindu — is summarised in the paper. In many of the cases sorcery was perpetrated in the name of justice, the client at the shrine seeking to redress an injustice that he felt would not be resolved by going to the police or the courts. As in Selvadurai’s cases, the majority involved sorcery against non-kin.

Nationalism, violence and communalism

The nature of violence in Sri Lankan society has become a matter of increas­ ing urgency in recent years as outbreaks of communal violence between Tamils and Sinhalese have escalated. The events of 1983, when rioting against Tamil residents in southern areas of the island occurred on an unpre­ cedented scale, provoked several anthropologists, among other scholars, to an analysis of underlying political, economic and ideological factors. Earlier work on the formation of national elites, Sinhala nationalism and ethnic identity has a direct bearing on this issue, and so I include it here. Yet it should not be forgotten that communal violence has not been the only mani­ festation of unrest in Sri Lanka since Independence. The 1971 insurrection was not communal in character and I also include work by Sri Lankan anthropologists on this event.

Michael Roberts has written a series of historical articles on various aspects of Sinhalese nationalism in the British period. His papers on the for­ mation of a heterogenous national elite in the 19th and early 20th centuries (1973, 197%) have a direct bearing on the theme, and are supplemented by a comprehensive introduction to his Documents of the Ceylon national con­ gress (1977). Several more of his papers are published in Collective identities, nationalism and protest in Sri Lanka (1979), which he edited. The first is a general paper considering various themes relating to nationalism: aspects of nation and state, collective identity, religion, politics and economics (1979a). The next considers the multiple factors and interests, of both indi­ genous and foreign origin, which stimulated ‘latter-day nationalists’ (1979c). Two more present material first published in his 1977 introduction: One con­ siders the tension between sectional nationalism and Ceylonese nationalism in the first half of the 19th century (1979d); the other considers nationalism in social and economi thought in roughly the same period (1979e).

The important place of revivalist Buddhism in forging a new sense of the collective identity of the Sinhalese from the latter part of the 19th century into the 20th has already been mentioned. After Independence, the ques­ tion of language assumed explosive importance in Sri Lankan politics, as the movement for displacing English with swabasha gave way in the 1950s to demands for Sinhala nly as the state language. Tambiah’s essay on the poli• tics of language (1967a) usefully compares the language issue in India and in Sri Lanka, stressing that it is ‘not so much that traditional wars are being fought in the twentieth century’ through such an issue, ‘but that modem battles are being waged for modern trophies but with traditional slogans and revivalist dogmas’ (ibid. : 216). But ifTambiah could still ‘only hope’, in the mid 1960s, that ‘present events are an intervening stage in the growth of new polities which will come to have a unified sense of history’ (ibid. : 239) by the mid 1970s Roberts’ forecast for the future course of ethnic relations in Sri Lanka was deeply, but correctly, pessimistic. He end’ed his analysis of bar­ riers to mutual accommodation in the political history of Sinhalese/Tamil relations as follows:

Indeed, there is room in Sri Lanka for conflict to evolve in the direction of such awesome ‘models’ as Northern Ireland, Cyprus and the Lebanon. This is a pessimistic view that will appear far-fetched. Tbis is because the potential similarity is veiled by an important difference between Sri Lanka and these three ‘exemplars’: the island has escaped the full ‘benefits’ of industrial progress as well as the experience of immersion in a twentieth­ century war. In short, if one excludes the· largely Sinhalese ar1;11ed forces, neither the Tamil nor the Sinhalese extremists have the military technol­ ogy of the Irish, the Cypriots, or the Lebanese. As yet (1978c: 376).

Roberts’ analysis shows intransigence on both sides of the political debate. Perinbanayagam and Chadda, however, writing at about the same time, concentrate more on the Tamil leadership which, they argue, maintained a ‘strategy of isolation and aloofness’ (1976: 135) at times when political accommodation may have heen possible.

The escalation of Tamil militancy in the last decade, and the escalation of violence against Tamils in the same period, have provoked several scholars to a consideration of the island’s most recent political history. Obeyese­ kere’s account (1984b) considers the origins of communal conflict in Sri Lanka over a long historical term, but lays strong emphasis on the institu­ tionalisation of political violence since the 1960s by both the parties that have been in power, but which he sees as having intensified since 1977 (when the present government came into power). He provides illuminating insights into the role of a particular trade union, controlled by a government minister known for extreme Sinhala chauvinism, in the violence of 1983, but sees the violence as having been organised, ‘for the government’ rather than by it, as several commentators suggested at the time. Newton Gunasinghe (1984) considers communal rioting from a different viewpoint. He notes that although there has been a long history of ethno-religious rioting in Sri Lanka, it is only since 1977, when an open economic policy was introduced, that such riots have broken out almost every year. He thus attempts to examine the relationship between the open economy and communal unrest. His paper provides a valuable analysis of the unintended consequences of structural change in the economy, examining the effects of the shift from a controlled to an open economy on different categories of entrepreneurs and on the urban poor. He argues that middle level Sinhala entrepreneurs suf­ fered increased competition from their Tamil and Muslim counterparts, and that the urban poor have become a ‘volatile social base’ which could be mobilised by Sinhala ideologues and frustrated Sinhala entrepreneurs for their own ends. This paper, and Obeyesekere’s, have been republished by the Committee for Rational Development, Colombo, in a volume (1984) containing many illuminating discussions by Sri Lankan scholars from vari­ ous disciplines on. the problem of ethnic conflict in Sri Lanka.

The riots of 1983 also provoked Tambiah to write once again about Sri Lanka: his most recent book (1986) is an impassioned analysis of the island’s ethnic problem, which opens with a description of the 1983 rioting. The book is offered ‘as an “engaged political tract” rather than a “distanced academic treatise”‘, and in its concentration on political processes, under British rule and since Independence, it shares much in approach with the work of Obeyesekere and Roberts. Like Gunasinghe, too, Tambiah sees the open economy as having accentuated internal inequalities, providing ‘a fer­ tile ground for uprisings of the urban nd semiurban poor, who are ready to be mobilized by militant nationalist movements of the right or left’ (1986:85-6).

Tambiah is insistent that the kind of conflict now witnessed in Sri Lanka between Sinhalese and Tamils is of ‘recent manufacture’, and much of his book is concerned with uncovering the various processes which have brought it into being. Like Obeyesekere, he sees the growth of communal conflict as linked ‘in a single web’ of mutual reinforcement with the increase of political repression and violence in recent decades, particularly from the early 1970s, when repressive measures were introduced in the wake of the insurgency. Tambiah also attempts to debunk nationalist readings of the island’s history which reinforce, and seemingly justify, ethnic conflict. A proper understanding of the island’s prehistory, h hopes, would make ‘irrelevant the question of which ethnic group or religion or race or people first came to the island as colonizers’ (1986: 92). Further, a proper under­ standing of the island’s history since that time would demonstrate long term connections between Sri Lanka and south India, and would make clear that there has been no enduring boundary between Sinhalese and Tamil peoples. Tambiah’s study also .contains suggestions for a solution to the island’s ethnic problems. He stresses the need to restore a ‘rule of law’ in the coun­ try, and for a secularised and liberalised politics of pluralism. The Tamil militants, he argues, must give up demands for a separate state and recog­ nise that Sinhalese majority government is inevitable; but in the place of central rule there must be a ‘genuine devolution of powers’ to provinces or regions. (He does not discuss whether provincial or regional level councils would be preferable – this is an important issue on which there has so far been no compromise in peace negotiations between Tamil leaders· and the government). Following Madan on pluralism in India, Tambiah urges that a policy of ‘national accommodation’ be adopted.

No detailed information is available on the background of those involved in attacks against Tamils in 1983 comparable to that used by Obeyesekere io his analysis (1974a) of the social backgrounds of suspected insurgents held in custody after the 1971 uprising. Using a mass of data on 10,192 such people, which despite its origin he believed to be a fair representation of involve­ ment, Obeyesekere argued that-contrary to general opinion at the time – the insurgents (at least, those being held as such) were mainly Sinhala Buddhist youth from all the major castes; that in general they belonged to low socio­ economic groups; and that about 80 per cent of them had at least ‘a reasonable education’. In his analysis, the insurgency represented an attack against the rul­ ing elite in the face of deep frustrations engendered by lack of opportunities for occupational mobility. Obeyesekere’s data and analysis usefully supple­ ment, and reinforce,Tissa Fernando’s examination (1973) of the workings of elite politics in Sri Lanka, written in the light of the 1971 uprising.

Concluding comments

Obeyesekere and Tambiah are without doubt the most prolific of Sri Lan­ kan anthropologists. They are also the most widely read; and rightly so. But I hope that this survey, even if not completely comprehensive, has indicated the breadth of interest and the extent of writing by a wide range of Sri Lan­ kan anthropologists that also deserves attention.

END NOTES

1 = Such a view is found also in such works as T. Hcttiarachchy (1982).

2 = This volume will also contain a paper by A.J. Wei:ramunda which was not available at the time of writing.

Newton Goonesinghe

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Dr. Elizabeth Nissan is at the Department of Anthropology, University of Durham, 43 Old Elvet, Durham, DHl 3HN, England.