Daily News Online
  KRRISH SQUARE - Luxury Real Estate  

Wednesday, 3 October 2012

Home

 | SHARE MARKET  | EXCHANGE RATE  | TRADING  | OTHER PUBLICATIONS   | ARCHIVES | 

dailynews
 ONLINE


OTHER PUBLICATIONS


OTHER LINKS

Marriage Proposals
Classified
Government Gazette

Small tanks and food security in ancient SL

Small village tanks laid the foundation for an agrarian society based on a ‘one-tank one village’ ecological pattern in the initial stages of state formation in Sri Lanka.

Topographical surveyors of the latter part of the nineteenth century have observed that there was one small village reservoir in each square mile in the South-Eastern part of the island. Even at present there are about 15,000 small village tanks all over the Dry Zone out of which around 8,500 have been put into use.

‘One-tank one village’

Although the main chronicles are silent on small tanks, the inscriptions in the first three centuries of the Christian era alone refer to more than 150 such small tanks. Along with medium scale reservoirs such as Abhayaweva, Nuvaraweva and Tisaweva in Anuradhapura; and large reservoirs such as Kalaweva, Minneri and Parakramasamudra, thousands of small village tanks functioned effectively until the middle of the thirteenth century. The most important aspect of these large, medium and small village reservoirs was interconnection of many of the reservoirs through an intricate network of canals.

Food security

This chain of interconnected irrigation complexes provided food security to a large population in the Dry Zone. It also provided most of the protein requirements as inland fisheries was an important economic activity. Reservoir and canal fishing was so important that there were carefully drafted rules and regulations related to fishing. For instance, the fifth century Pali commentary Samanthapasadika while discussing ‘ownership’ states that when someone was fishing in a canal, if a fish jumped into the air and if another caught it in the air with hands, the ownership of such fish rested not on the fisherman but on the person who caught it in the air. It was not considered a theft.

A question that poses itself as relevant is whether agriculture, fishing and such other economic activity related to large, medium and small tanks resulted in full food security in all eras of history? Although there was food security during most periods of the Dry Zone civilization, there also have been sporadic famines, not less than a dozen in number recorded in the chronicles such as the Mahavamsa. Some of these have been local ones and difficulty in transporting grain to affected areas was the cause of hardships. In this context 1998 Nobel Prize winner for Economics-Amatya Sen’s ‘Theory of Entitlement’ profounded in relation to famines in Bengal in the nineteenth century may be applicable with modifications to some famines in the ancient Sri Lankan Dry Zone as well

Uncertainty of food production

But there were also a few serious famines affecting the whole country. For example, the famine called the Baminitiya Saya which occurred for several years after 109 B.C was serious that a considerable number of Buddhist monks died while 24,000 monks left the island to seek refuge in India. The famine continued for several years and monasteries in Anuradhapura were abandoned. This major famine and other not so serious famines took place approximately over a period of fifteen centuries and considering this length of time they may not give a true picture of food production and food security in ancient Sri Lanka.

Yet, irrespective of the development of an intricate irrigation system in the Dry Zone, there had always been uncertainty of food production due to many factors of which the fluctuation of weather conditions was an important one. The fifth century Pali commentary, Sammoha Vinodini refers to the storage of grain in the monasteries at Tissamaharama and Situlpavuva sufficient to sustain 24,000 monks for three months. This indicates that either there was a substantial surplus of food during certain seasons or that there was an uncertainty of food supply in certain years.

Inscriptions of the fourth century A.D. indicate that grain deposited in mercantile guilds earned an annual interest as high as 50 percent for rice and 25 percent for other cereals. This implies that there was a market demand for grain at various times depending on the vagaries of weather.

Whatever it is, the average peasant lived at low subsistence level. His plight is lucidly described in the thirteenth century classic Pujavali which states that after each harvest by labouring hard, what was left to the cultivator of the soil and his family was barely sufficient for him to subsist on until the next harvest.

On the other hand, with the extensive network of reservoirs and canals in the Dry Zone, agricultural production was sufficient to sustain the population during most of the eras of the Dry Zone civilization. The large scale construction of dagobas and monastic complexes, as well as other magnificent monuments with exquisite sculptures, and the building of an intricate and imposing irrigation system would not have been possible if there had not been an appreciable quantity of surplus food to be appropriated by the ruling elite.

Export of rice

The popular belief that rice was exported from Sri Lanka also needs to be examined in this context. There is only one solitary reference in the South Indian Sangam text, Pattinapalai, one of the ten idylls of the Pattupattu, written in the second century A.D. which indicates that foodstuffs were exported to South India from Sri Lanka (Illattunavu). Perhaps foodstuffs referred to here included rice and during times of scarcity, South India may have imported rice from Sri Lanka. But, such references do not indicate the general prosperity of one country as compared with the other.

The ninth century Muslim traveller, Ibn Khurdadbeh refers to the import of rice to Sri Lanka from South India. Another Muslim writer Al-Idrisi stated in the eleventh century, that Jirbatam was a port in South India which exported rice to Sri Lanka. In these instances too, it is unwise to conclude that rice was frequently imported to Sri Lanka from South India. It may be reasonable to conclude from such sporadic and divergent references that during times of crop failures and demand in either country, trade in rice was carried in between India and Sri Lanka.

Self-sufficiency

An important point regarding the self-sufficiency of the ancient village also needs to be raised here. The ideas of some of the early British administrator scholars on Asia inspired Karl Marx’s view on the ‘Asiatic Mode of Production’ characterized by self-sufficient village economy. The patriotic or nationalist bias of Asian writers too have resulted in an exaggerated and out of proportion account of the self-sufficiency of the Asian village.

But it is important to note that although grain supplies were available some of the essential commodities such as salt, metal and metal implements were not produced in all Asian villages.

In Sri Lanka frequently metals and metal products had to be brought into many of the villages from few producing and manufacturing areas. Salt had to be transported to the interior from the coastal centres. Some of the other needs of the village community which could not be met locally too had to be supplied by outsiders which necessitated money exchange or barter. The pedlar or hawker who constantly moved about between the regions played an important role in supplying light weight commodities such as clothes, rings, necklaces and bracelets to the villagers.

By the middle of the thirteenth century, the great cities of Anuradhapura and Polonnaruva had been almost abandoned, the Rajarata civilization had collapsed and the efficiency of the major reservoirs and thousands of small tanks had declined. The patches of water retained in tanks provided some form of food security to settlers remaining in the Dry Zone. But the neglect of irrigation system and concomitant spread of diseases resulted in rapid thinning of population. By the end of the fifteenth century only the ruins of the old cities and the silted reservoirs remained as stark reminders of the once flourishing Dry Zone civilization.

The Dry Zone began to be exploited and populated once again only after the restoration of reservoirs from the end of the nineteenth century and the establishment of colonization schemes from the beginning of the twentieth century particularly after 1931.

 

EMAIL |   PRINTABLE VIEW | FEEDBACK

Millennium City
www.news.lk
www.defence.lk
Donate Now | defence.lk
www.apiwenuwenapi.co.uk
LANKAPUVATH - National News Agency of Sri Lanka
www.army.lk
Telecommunications Regulatory Commission of Sri Lanka (TRCSL)

| News | Editorial | Business | Features | Political | Security | Sport | World | Letters | Obituaries |

Produced by Lake House Copyright © 2012 The Associated Newspapers of Ceylon Ltd.

Comments and suggestions to : Web Editor