Clash of civilisations
In the Buddhist society everybody was equal before the state; and all property, in particular the land belonging to the state. Caste based on ethnic and racial differences was done away with. However in place of that, there developed the caste separation based on crafts and professions, associated with the agricultural society rooted in a centralized irrigation system. Cultured elites were paid officers of the state while the peasantry gave a share to the state coffers and also gave free labour for constructions and services of the state, during off season Elara Dutu Gemunu war; was it a tribal war or a war between two different civilizations Many different views are expressed. Some are scientific. Many are biased to fit chauvinist positions held by political leaders. We have to get the facts and figures correct and analyse the socio-economic development of the Lankan society.
At the time of the supposed arrival of Aryan people from North India to this island between 6th and 3rd Century BC, those who lived here belong to the South Indian megalithic culture. It was a commune society based on small tank-villages.
This was an intrusive culture thought to have originated, on the basis of recent discoveries, in the Nubian region which came into South India sometime after 1000 BC. It was metal used with implements chiefly of iron. A settlement had four distinct areas: a habitation area, a cemetery, a tank and fields. Dravidians who built the fabulous cities of Mohenjo-daro Harappa and taught the Nomadic Aryan invaders how to irrigate with dams and canals, had shifted to the South. The South Indian megalithic culture may have had descended from them.
Indigenous civilization
With the advent of Aryan people, there were in the island two or three distinct racial elements. Before 250 BC, before Mauryan Dynasty, Aryans could not have come in great numbers. Nor did they add much to the indigenous civilization. They also knew agriculture and may have started their traditional subsistence village societies based more on animal husbandry. They did not have proper kingship and their village communes were led by ‘Gaminis’. Aryans unlike the indigenous islanders at the time of intrusions were war-like people and were better equipped with military technology.
Theirs was a patriarchic society as opposed to the mother god culture of Dravidian people.
However, the real dawn of civilization came with the introduction of Buddhism. Recorded history started with the elite acquiring a literate culture. Spread of Buddhism among the Sinhala Kshasthriya and other elite castes had a social significance. It means the development of the society from both small-tank village and dam-river valley culture to an organised large-tank culture. Large tank irrigation systems necessitated a centralised society with a finer organising of labour. This could be achieved only by abandoning the strict semi-racial caste divisions of the old Brahaministic society, in place of a social division based more on the services of an irrigation system. Asoka’s version of Theravada Buddhism provided the ideology for this change. Thus Buddhism became the religion of the elite of the centralised agricultural society, where water management and maintenance of dams and canals was done by the state.
Dravidian language
By studying early cave inscriptions, it is claimed that the language of the people at the time of Devanampiyathissa was a variation of Magadha Prakrutha, spoken language understood by both the elite and the lower masses. It is most probable that the Sinhala language developed from the spoken language of the common folk, along the Pali Sanskrit line and departed from the rest of Dravidian languages due to the continuous influence of Buddhism.
Clearly before Buddhism got rooted here, there was no difference between Lankan and Pandean kingdoms. Both were ruled by Aryan Kshasthriya elites though people belonged to Dravidian race. There was close kinship between the two royal houses.
In the Buddhist society everybody was equal before the state; and all property, in particular the land belonging to the state. Caste based on ethnic and racial differences was done away with. However in place of that, there developed the caste separation based on crafts and professions, associated with the agricultural society rooted in a centralized irrigation system.
Cultured elites were paid officers of the state while the peasantry gave a share to the state coffers and also gave free labour for constructions and services of the state, during off season. The first and second Dravidian invasions came in 3rd Century B. C. Sinhala elite were displaced and majority of them were forced to take refuge in the South. In the meantime, the Dravidian elite at Anuradhapura attempted to re-organise the society in the form that existed in South India at that time. With their irrigation know how, small tanks and dams were improved at the expense of the centralized irrigation system.
This would have made them popular among the lower classes while the surplus depreciated. Buddhism was left out as it went against the structure of the society.
Prince Gamini was a prominent village leader of the Sinhalese people that eked out an existence in Ruhunu. He mobilized, this defeated and driven out people to win back the control of the irrigated land that their fore-fathers helped to develop around Anuradhapura. His victory created a fully developed centralized irrigation based agricultural society, with Buddhism as its ideology. The Buddhist monk Mahanama who wrote Mahavamsa, devotes most of it to this epic story of how Sinhala elite brought all people inhabited this island under its domination and established itself at the apex of an Asiatic state structure. So historically it is a clash of two socio-e-conomic formations: Asiatic centralized state structure and village commune based state structure.
