The Anuradhapura Kingdom - XI

The Anuradhapura Kingdom - XI

Contiued with part ten   here to go previous one

A Feudal Polity

Two attributes of a feudal polity are of special significance in the Anuradhapura kingdom: the relative weakness of central authority and the resultant political decentralization; and the importance of land as a determinant of social and economic relations. The Sri Lanka version of feudalism differed significantly from the European especially the English and French varieties in that it lacked large-scale demesne farming, a manorial system and the military aspects of feudalism, with the knight's service as its central theme. Again, while relations between some agricultural workers and landholders in Sri Lanka during these centuries could be judged 'feudal', there is as yet no substantial evidence of a contractual relationship between lord and 'vassal', or of peasants working as serfs on the lord's estate. However, there was in common with European feudalism an obligation to serve as a condition of holding land, whether from secular or religious 'landlords', but with one vital difference in that here the nature of that obligation was, during much of this period, determined by caste as well.

Some questions relating to feudalism in Sri Lanka are easier posed than answered, and one such is the determination of the phases in the development of feudalism in the island when and how it emerged. We can only say that the evidence suggests that during much of the period covered in this chapter the Anuradhapura kingdom from Saddhatissa to the Cola conquest the attributes of Sri Lanka feudalism discussed above were very evident and that these feudal tendencies were strengthened with the maturation of the island's hydraulic society.

Land tenure

Of the two attributes of Sri Lanka's feudal polity discussed above, we shall review in this chapter only one the obligation to serve as a condition of holding land. The other has been treated in some detail in the two previous part.

It is very rare, during the whole of the feudal era, for anyone to speak of ownership, either of an estate or an office... For nearly all land and a great many human beings were burdened at this time with a multiplicity of obligations differing in their nature but all apparently of equal importance. None implied that fixed proprietary exclusiveness which belonged to the concept of ownership in Roman Law.

This quotation from Marc Bloch's Feudal Society brings out a point which is of crucial importance for the understanding of Sri Lanka's feudal polity, namely that the medieval European concept of ownership in the land was strikingly similar to that of Sri Lanka in these centuries. Recent research has demolished one of the hardiest theories regarding land tenure in ancient and medieval Sri Lanka of the king as sole 'owner' of land in the kingdom. No doubt he had certain claims over most of the land in his kingdom, but this did not amount to anything approaching 'fixed proprietary exclusiveness'. Implicit in the land grants of these centuries is the recognition of the 'rights' of individuals with regard to land. In none of these grants is their mention of the king's prior consent being a condition to alienation of land by individuals, while on the contrary some inscriptions provide evidence of kings actually buying 'property' for the purpose of subsequent donation.

The direct relationship between taxation and the protection afforded by the king to his people could not have been unknown in Sri Lanka in ancient times. This service would have entitled him to a portion of the produce of land in the kingdom in return and also quite naturally put him in a position to exercise some control over land. The limits of this control would depend on his own sense of what was right, and above all on the customs and traditions of the kingdom. Income producing irrigation units, such as tanks and canals, and the fields fed by them paid a tax bojakapathi probably paid in kind. This the king sometimes granted to individuals as remuneration for services rendered to the state. Such grants were also made to the sangha. In a society in which irrigation was of such crucial significance, water was treated as a precious commodity which could be bought and sold as it passed through the tanks, the canals, and fields, with the 'owners' of tanks (Vapi-Shamika) imposing a charge for the water that passed through and in turn paying for the water that came in. Because he had the largest of the tanks as his special preserve, and a controlling interest in the whole irrigation system, the king was the prime beneficiary of this levy on water. Until the beginning of the seventh century AD, this payment was called datapath. It was paid to the king as well as collected by private 'owners' of small reservoirs and canals. In the ninth and tenth centuries, the payment for the share of water made to the king was called diyadedum, and it was termed diyadada in the time of the Polonnaruva kings.

In addition to the right to dakapathi, the king claimed a share of the produce from all occupied and cultivated land. Unoccupied waste, both fallow and cultivable, was regarded as being in the king's 'possession', and over these forests and wastelands, cleared and cultivated he could grant virtually complete 'proprietary' rights to any individual or institution if he so wished. Wasteland and land newly developed by the state became royal property, as there was no antecedent right of a private individual. The king's prerogative of laying claim to waste or jungle land must have served a number of purposes including the vitally important one of developing new areas, or extending those already settled; another was the rehabilitation of settlements deserted or devastated by war invasions and civil wars and natural disasters such as droughts and floods. Abandoned and ownerless land, it would appear, belonged to the king; that is to say, where land was not cultivated or occupied, the king had prior rights to forests and timber, animal life for the chase, natural resources such as mines and gem pits, and treasure troves in such lands. This did not necessarily mean, however, that the people had to 'buy' land from the king to open up new cultivation.

With the maturing of Sri Lanka's hydraulic civilisation, 'private' property rights seem to have become more conspicuous. Inscriptions, mainly after the ninth century AD, contain references to a type of tenure known as pamunu or paraveni, which in the context of the land tenure system of that time conveyed the meaning of heritable right in perpetuity. Religious and charitable institutions received pamunu property through royal and other benefactors. Individuals could acquire pamunu property in at least three ways, namely royal grant, purchase and inheritance (inheritance of land was normally within a framework of kinship). The king also granted pamunu rights to individuals, usually as rewards. Pamunu were subject to no service except in cases where the king stipulated at the time of the grant that a comparatively small payment shall be made to a religious or charitable institution.

Here we come up against the crucially important question of how The inscriptions refer to the owners of tanks (vdpi-hamika) as well as to the practice of donating water charges from tanks to the sangha. officials in the king's service were paid. No firm answer is possible, but it would seem that during much of the period covered by this chapter they were permitted, in return for their services, to retain part of the revenue they collected. This is not to suggest that revenue was farmed or that these officials became hereditary revenue collectors with overt political power, but only that the system of land tenure was used to eliminate to a large extent the payment of emoluments in cash, an important consideration since space was in short supply. Because there was no binding linkage between the revenue allotted to them and their official duties as administrators of a unit of territory, the king's officials had few opportunities for an independent political role. The result was that while the corps of officials in the bureaucracy and in the court kept increasing in number, they did not, for much of the period of the Anuradhapura kings, develop into a baronial class, a feudal aristocracy with very large areas of the country's agricultural land parcelled out among them.