Govigama
EN සිං

This section is being reviewed We have received a report of inaccuracies in these community pages. They are currently being checked against published sources, and some statements may change. Please read them with that in mind — and if you find something wrong, we would rather hear it than keep it.

This section is being reviewed

We have received a report of inaccuracies in these community pages. They are currently being checked against published sources, and some statements may change. Please read them with that in mind — and if you find something wrong, we would rather hear it than keep it.
Communities of Sri Lanka

Govigama

The Govigama in summary — cultivation and landholding, office under Kandyan and colonial rule, and an honest account of the advantages that followed.

The largest of the Sinhalese communities, historically associated with cultivation and landholding. The rest of this site covers the Govigama in depth; this page places them alongside the others on the same terms.

Name and occupation

The name combines govi (cultivator) and gama (village). The community's association is with paddy cultivation and with the ownership and management of land, rather than with a specialised craft or trade. The word appears in inscriptions from around the twelfth century, in the reign of Nissanka Malla, and is not found in the Mahavamsa.1

Office

The clearest historical fact about the Govigama is not rank but access. Under the Kandyan kingdom the senior administrative offices — Adigar, Dissawa, Rate Mahatmaya — were drawn overwhelmingly from Govigama families, and the Radala formed a service nobility around the court.2 In the maritime provinces the Dutch and British built their native administration on the Mudaliyar class, again drawn largely though not exclusively from this community.3

Colonial administrations found it convenient to work through an existing elite, and in doing so entrenched it. Access to office produced access to education, and access to education produced a large share of the professional and political class of independent Sri Lanka.4

Religion

The community's association with Theravada Buddhism is long and substantial. It also includes an episode that reflects badly on it: from 1764 the Siyam Nikaya restricted higher ordination to Govigama candidates, excluding the Buddhists of the maritime provinces from a valid lineage and prompting the founding of the Amarapura and Ramanna fraternities.5 The restriction has never been formally lifted.

An honest summary

The Govigama were numerous, were concentrated in land, and were disproportionately appointed to office by successive states — Kandyan, Dutch, British and to a degree independent. Those are advantages of position and they compounded. They are not evidence of merit, and they do not establish rank. Traditional schemes recorded in the colonial period generally placed the community first; those schemes are contested, and this site does not assert them as settled.6

References

  1. ↑ Rogers, John D. Caste as a Social Category and Identity in Colonial Lanka. Indian Economic and Social History Review 41(1). 2004. Argues that much of the fixed caste ranking recorded in Sri Lanka was shaped and hardened by colonial administrative practice.
  2. ↑ Dewaraja, Lorna. The Kandyan Kingdom of Sri Lanka 1707–1782. Lake House. 1988. On Kandyan administration, the Radala service nobility and the offices of Adigar and Dissawa.
  3. ↑ Peebles, Patrick. Social Change in Nineteenth Century Ceylon. Navrang. 1995. On the Mudaliyar class and the colonial reshaping of native administration.
  4. ↑ Jiggins, Janice. Caste and Family in the Politics of the Sinhalese 1947–1976. Cambridge University Press. 1979. Analyses the role of caste and kinship networks in post-independence Sinhalese politics.
  5. ↑ Malalgoda, Kitsiri. Buddhism in Sinhalese Society 1750–1900: A Study of Religious Revival and Change. University of California Press. 1976. The standard account of the Siyam Nikaya, the 1764 restriction of higher ordination, and the founding of the Amarapura and Ramanna fraternities.
  6. ↑ Roberts, Michael. Caste Conflict and Elite Formation: The Rise of a Karāva Elite in Sri Lanka, 1500–1931. Cambridge University Press. 1982. Documents the rise of the Karava elite and treats caste ranking as historically contested rather than fixed.

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