The Sinhalese under Portuguese rule

Kamalika Pieris

The Portuguese ruled over the Kotte kingdom from 1551 to 1640. They ruled with great tyranny and lack of sympathy and this alienated the Sinhalese. Pieris notes that Queyroz has given a’ frank and detailed account’ of this misgovernment. To start with, the inhabitants could not be sure of their lives. The military officials would arrest inhabitants by the village and put them all to death.

They had the power to do so. Those who were spared had to suffer many economic hardships. There were oppressive taxes. Officials fined people unfairly and pocketed the money. When officials came to collect items from villagers, such as mats for wrapping cinnamon, the cost of feeding them exceeded the money paid for the mats.

There was abuse of power. The Portuguese ‘disawas’ took the villages of lascarins who died, leaving their wives and children to starve. They gave these lands to others, frequently their own kinsmen. They took all the produce in the lands assigned to the lascarins, including areca nut and pepper leaving the lascarins with nothing to sell.

The blacksmiths who held service tenure were compelled to work in the disawa’s own forges. When the disawa came to visit a village, he was accompanied by his whole family and the villagers had to feed them all. They finished in a few days provisions sufficient for several months.

The Sinhalese were exploited at every turn. They were forced to buy Portuguese goods at high prices. But the Portuguese bought local items, including areca at such low prices that the money was insufficient to live on. They used false weights and three different measures, one for buying, one for selling, and one for collecting the state share of produce. They seized the toddy which generated income for the villagers, paying a low price and making the villager transport it to market.

Abeyasinghe says the lesser officials, who were Sinhalese, enjoyed more power under the Portuguese than they ever had under the Sinhala king. Earlier, only the king and, as a special privilege, the Wickramasinghes, travelled in palanquins. Now, the Vidanes, who were often of low rank, also insisted on travelling by palanquin. The lesser officials abused their powers. During the harvest, the Vidane, Kanakapulle and Liyanna would arrive at a village, eat off the cultivator and take over the official share of the rice crop, using a specially large measure. They would then help themselves to get the coconuts, areca, rice, pepper, sapan wood, betel, plantains, butter milk and fowls found in the village, leaving the villagers with nothing to sell. The vidane would sometimes be permanently quartered in the village and his food had to be provided daily, free Villagers alleged that vidanes took liberties with their wives.

The Sinhalese complained. “These officials enter our houses and torture our wives and children, if we fail to supply them with whatever they demand, which we do not possess and which we do not owe. They compel us to go unreasonable distances to obtain articles required for their households and their trades. These have to be conveyed on our backs through long distances, without any food. We are also forced to carry burdens of little value from distances as remote as Galle, and that too without supplying us with food. We are continually carrying pingos on our backs. They charged that ‘the Portuguese disawas are responsible for this.”

The Portuguese also caused havoc by ignoring sensitive traditions. In the Sinhala tradition, carrying a palanquin was an obligatory duty for certain low castes. The Portuguese imposed this on others and the Sinhalese announced ‘the Portuguese have converted us to the low caste which carries palanquins.’ Pieris says violence had to be resorted to compel a highborn man to submit to this humiliation and some had committed suicide in preference to this disgrace. In the Sinhala tradition carrying goods was also considered a menial task, specifically assigned to members of the lower classes.

Constructing buildings, especially the walls, was a function assigned to specific communities, but under the Portuguese all were compelled to do this work. Traditionally, workers were employed only for a set period of time, during which they were entitled to food. The Portuguese made people work endlessly, without food. The Sinhalese complained that they had to either steal food or get some from the forests, if they did not have any to bring from home.

The Sinhalese protested strongly over Portuguese misrule. They said, “The Sinhala kings took only what they were entitled to, nothing else. Under the Sinhala kings, we paid a pingo a year to the king or whoever enjoyed the village in which we live. We use to deposit this in the muttettu and the proprietor would either sell it or remove it using cattle or elephants. In paddy cultivation, we were permitted to reap the portion adjoining the hut where we used to watch at night, in return for the great labour of watching. The crop was divided in two after deducting our share. There were two customary deductions, of which one was paid on the threshing floor at the time of measuring. The areca and pepper in our gardens used to be ours. But today things are different. The Portuguese take from us our pepper and areca.”

‘On public works we served the king alone. Each person did not have to render more than a month’s service .The king gave us food, pay and rewards. The rest of the time we were engaged in cultivating our own lands. The lands were in a flourishing condition and everything was under cultivation. Today we serve ten or twelve masters. They range from the disawes, to vidane, atukorale and kanakapulles.

The information in this essay is taken primarily from” Ceylon, the Portuguese era’ by P.E.Pieris with additional comments from C.R. de Silva and T.B.H. Abeyasinghe