Social System In Pul Eliya

CHAPTER 1-INTRODUCTION

Pul Eliya, a village in Ceylon A study of land tenure and kinship constituted a phenomenal towards a social Anthropology in particular studies of kinship and land tenure. Edmund Leach quickly observe the adoption of new land tenure in Pul Eliya Society. The benefits of the study is that it will produce a systematic analysis of the change of agrarian and how they themselves adapt into change and how they change themselves. This study will encourage all the scholars worldwide. The study are general and specific. This study will ensure all the agricultural practices, kinship, caste, etc. The present study consists of the detailed study of a particular instance. Both in the economic and in the legal spheres. This is a study

Pul Eliya is a village in the Kende Korala of the Nuvarakalaviya district of the North central province of Ceylon. It is a Sinhalese speaking village inhabited by members of the Goyigama caste. Villagers linked with main urban centers of the country begin with the town . The area belongs to one of the great soil groups Sri Lanka, namely, reddish brown earths that are suitable for both paddy and highland cultivation. Geographically considered the region is a very special one. It forms part of the dry zone of Ceylon. Rainfall is around 50-75 inches a year. The terrain is nearly flat. The soil cover is thin and markedly lacking in humus. The classical Sinhalese kingdom, with its capital at Anuradhapura was a striking and characteristics example of what Wittfogel has called hydraulic civilization. The Chinese traveler Fa Hsien described the Anuradhapura of the late fourth century AD as a large and prosperous city. In this economy the basic valuable is scarce water rather than scarce land it is because of agriculture. The village of Pul Eliya today has a main tank of about 140 acres. The present villagers have a romantic tradition that their village was founded in the time of Dutthagamani, which would imply a date round the second century BC. The population of the area, taken as a whole, is very diverse. As between one village and the next there may be very great difference of language, religion and

The land in Pul Eliya is owned by individuals of either sex. Every child at birth becomes a potential heir to each of its parents considered as an individual. The way they distribute the property within the community is thus greatly affected by the pattern of marriage and residence adopted by its individual members over a series of past generation. The inhabitants of Pul Eliya all consider themselves to be members of a single endogamous variga of the Goyigama caste. All the villagers are, therefore, kinsmen of one another. The majority of modern Sinhalese castes are historically derived from groups which filled particular economic roles in the feudally organized Kandyan kingdom. This function was not an historical survival from the days of Kandyan feudalism, but an element in the British colonial system of indirect rule. The Variga court dealt with nearly all disputes that might arise between members of the same village community, while the village Tribunal concerned itself with major crimes, disputes between villagers and the crown and property disputes between members of different Variga. Pul Eliya kinship system it is important to understand that the Nuvaraklaviya variga is a relatively corporate type of social group. Although property is transmitted through women as well as through men, it is men who are the farmers and the managers of the family