Michael Roberts
Darshani Ratnawalli* has recently deployed one motif within my book Sinhala Consciousness in the Kandyan Period, 1590s to 1815 in a perceptive and telling manner. The motif is the concept of “tributary overlordship.” Details from Robert Knox and Philippus Baldaeus[2] are presented in useful ways by Ratnawalli to underline the weight of this concept in the political relations between “centre” and “periphery” in the 17th and 18th centuries. The notion of centre-versus-periphery, I stress, is an adjunct concept that serves to strengthen my argument about “tributary overlordship.
Ratnawalli tells her readers that tributary overlordship refers to a “political mechanism” that linked “satellite states” to the “superior Chakravarti figure” – thereby serving as a “form of allegiance and rule that accommodated localized dominion[s].” This is a succinct summary. However, one cannot be certain that the generality of readers will comprehend the import of this distillation because they do not have the benefit of the elaborations within Sinhala Consciousness that Ratnawalli has absorbed. These amplifications, I stress, include considerable detail and also use charts and illustrative photographs (examples of the latter will embellish this article). Central to the argument was the set of meanings attached to the rite of däkuma in its various forms, a practice that overlapped with the personalized exchange relations that were termed panduru pakkudam. Continue reading
