The Secret History Of Jaffna And The Vanni
By Darshanie Ratnawalli -November 10, 2013 |
Darshanie Ratnawalli
The Vanni was the source of elephants to the Kingdom of Jaffna and elephants were Crown Property. By issuing a proclamation dated Lisbon, 3rd Jan., 1612, the King of Portugal had let the natives know that he had cottoned on to that and no one therefore should mess with Crown Property, which right now meant his property. ” Whereas I have learnt that the elephants in the Island of Ceilao are and always have been from ancient times the property of the Crown,…”-(The Kingdom Of Jafanapatam 1645 Being An Account Of Its Administrative Organisation As Derived From The Portuguese Archives, P. E. Pieris, 22-23)
While managing their newly acquired crown property, elephantine and otherwise, there accrued to the Portuguese, a wealth of information, which reveals to us, the modern observers, the threads of cohesion[i] between the centre and periphery of the pre-colonial Lankan state. We learn for example that one such thread had created synergy in the realms of Lanka with regards to elephants and bequeathed the office of Kuruwe Vidane to the Kingdom of Jaffna, a territory which by the 17th century was covered by a diaphanous Tamil garb, through which the Sinhalese inner garment showed much plainer than it does now.
In Jafanapatam, the officer who supervised the collection of the elephants due to the Crown was called Kuruwe Vidane. This information comes to us courtesy of the “Copy of the Foral of the Kingdom of Jafanapatam and the Vany” as well as of the “Island of Manar and of Mantota”, a manuscript in the archives of Portugal, which is the basis for P.E Pieris’s work op.cit. This Vidane do Curo or Kuruwe Vidane, as P.E. Pieris explains in page 64, endnote 50, “is a Sinhalese title, the Kuruwa being the Elephant Department. In later times the officer was called Kuruwe Mudaliyar. The office was in existence within living memory.” (The living memory of the 1920s is meant).
According to the Foral, the Kuruwe Vidane received areatane from the Bellales (Vellalas), who were not hunters, “both for his maintenance and for the expenses of the elephant catchers.”- (P.E, op.cit. 25-26). More importantly for our ‘threads of cohesion’ trip, the Kuruwe Vidane of Jaffna “was also allowed the areatane of the village Changatarvael.”- (ibid). The name Changatarvael “signifies “the rice field of the Buddhist priests.” Changatar represents the Sinhalese Sanghaya, Buddhist priest, and the word is used by Ribeiro.”- (P.E. op.cit. p64, endnote 54). Also according to the Foral, the Recebedor at Manar was authorized to incur the expenditure of two Kurunayakas (the traditional Sinhalese word for elephant caretaker, rendered in the Portuguese as “cornax”) for a tusker of certain size and one Kurunayaka for an alea. – (P.E. op.cit. p31-32 and endnote 63 in p65).
Another group of people who entered the Jafanapatam-Vanni-Mannar-Mantota Foral by having dealings with “aleas” (throughout the Foral, this Sinhalese word is used for elephants without tusks) was the “Patangatins” of Manar. This word (as P.E. explains in endnote 55, p65) is the “Sinhalese Patabenda, usually applied to headmen of the Fisher caste”. These people had been given the village Pembathy “as an emphyteuta” by the native kings of Jafanapatam and by the Portuguese too “this was confirmed on the Patangatin Mor Thome de Mello, the heir of the last holder, on condition of his supplying yearly an alea of not less than four covados.”- (P.E. op.cit. 26).
