The Role of Sinhala group identity in the Sinhala Rebellion against

Bhuvanekabahu VI (1469-77)

Alan Strathern

Abstract

This essay reflects on the Sinhala rebellion that occurred during the reign of
Bhuvanekabahu VI (1469-77). Some recent scholarship has suggested that the name
merely indicates how widespread the revolts were. However, the most plausible
interpretation is that some sort of ethnic awareness was brought into play by an elite
faction angered at being displaced at court by officials brought down from Jaffna. It
suggests that Bhuvanekabahu VIs promotion of a more purified version of Theravada
Buddhism under Vidagama Maitreya may have represented an attempt to defuse any ill-
feeling on ethnic or cultural grounds.

Introduction

Most scholars today would accept that some Sinhalese-speakers could be conscious of
some sort of Sinhalese identity during the second millennium AD before the modern era.
What remains very controversial, of course, is what kind of political significance that
identity carried.1 Recent research by C. R. De Silva and Michael Roberts, together with
my own work on the issue, has begun to explore how interactions with the Portuguese
may have enhanced the salience of Sinhalaness as a living political emotion. But, here I
want to address an event that occurred a generation or so before the arrival of the
Portuguese: the widespread revolt against the rule of Bhuvanekabahu VI (1469-77) that
was referred to as the war or rebellion of the Sinhalas. 2 This seems to have been the key
moment in the dismembering of Kotte authority over the island. While most of the
lowlands were caught in the turmoil, Kandy was founded as an independent seat of rule,
and by the end of Bhuvanekabahu VIs reign, Jaffna had also seceded. It was into this
fractured realm that the Portuguese arrived: amidst such internecine rivalries, it would be
easy enough for them to find the local collaborators that incoming imperial powers
always depend upon.

One could see this fragmentation as simply a reversion to the norm of Lankan history in
which fissiparous or separatist pressures tended to prevail. It is always necessary to bear
in mind that there were long-term political structures behind the generation of regional
challenges to central power. However, it is intriguing that the only subsequent revolts
comparable to this one in terms of sheer scale occurred in the 1590s and early 1600s,
when resistance was mounted against the Portuguese conquest of the lowlands
I shall suggest that an older reading of the name of this revolt as reflecting the invocation
of Sinhala group identity has more merit than some recent arguments have maintained.
One implication of this might be that a sense of Sinhalaness was already able to translate
into political action before the advent of European colonialism. However, I must caution
that the evidence for the later fifteenth-century is simply too meagre for us to formulate a
clear picture of what lay behind the rebellion, and this case must always remain
debatable. What I am aiming at here is merely the most plausible reading of the available
evidence.

After the Polonnaruva period, no king was able to establish a genuine hegemony over the
entire island until the great centralizing reign of Parakramabahu VI (1411-67) at Kotte.
On his death, the throne of Kotte passed to his grandson and authorized successor
Jayavira Parakramabahu (1467-9).3 This was to the chagrin of his rival, Prince Sapumal,
whom the old emperor had placed as sub-ruler over the Tamil region in the north
(Yapapatuna). Sapumal declared himself to be the rightful successor, taking on the name
of Bhuvanekabahu VI, and waited for his moment. Two years into his reign, Jayavira was
required to visit the Udarata to quell an uprising there; Sapumal descended, killed his
rival and ascended to the Kotte throne himself. But this regicidal assumption of power
produced an immediate backlash by noblemen who had enjoyed high office under his
predecessor. There seems to have been a rebellion in Valigama, led by a Garavi, but the
main uprising occurred in the provinces from the Kalu Ganga up to the Valave Ganga
under the leadership of Sri Vardhana Patiraja of Kakulandola (in Pasyodun Korale), and
the chief of Kuragama.4 Sapumal sent his younger brother, Prince Ambulugala, to quell
the rebellion that had now engulfed the entire region south of Kotte. But he was sub-ruler
of the Four Korales, and once his back had turned they too rose up, possibly supported by
the would-be king of the Udarata, Senasammata Vikramabahu. While the lowlands were
eventually returned to obedience, Kandy was established as a separate seat of power.

This conflict was referred to as the simhalasamge (Sinhala war) in the Dadigama
inscription of the ninth year of Bhuvanekabahus reign (probably 1469 A.D.), and the
simhala peraliya (Sinhala insurrection) in the Alakesvarayuddhaya.5 The latter seems to
have received additions or up-dates over time, functioning as something like a chronicle
of the Kotte court until the 1550s. The last substantial update occurred probably in the
1560s, with a small addition made in the 1590s.6 It is not a truly contemporary source, but
an important one nonetheless.

For the editor of the Dadigama inscription, Senerat Paranavitana, the name given to the
rebellion suggests that it was a national uprising against Bhuvanekabahu and his family
who were of South Indian origin.7 But in his famous essay The People of the Lion, R.
A. L. H. Gunawardana, argued that this was too sweeping a conclusion to draw simply
from the name given to the uprising. He turned for support to G. P. V. Somaratnas
political history of the kingdom of Kotte, which had concluded that the name simply
reflected the widespread nature of the unrest.8 So, whats in a name?

Somaratnas work is admirable and meticulous, and gives a more detailed discussion of
the events than can be presented here. He begins by emphasizing just how widespread the
conflict was: the entire island was affected by the troubled political atmosphere at the
time of the worst turmoil. He also ponders the pertinent question, why, of all the kings of
Kotte, it was Bhuvanekabahu VI alone who had to face this scale of opposition. 9
Somaratnas answer appears to be that it proceeded from his violation of legitimate
succession, the ruthless dispatch of Parakramabahus grandson Jayavira Parakramabahu.10

The first point Somaratna makes in rebuttal of the ethnic answer to these questions is to
cast doubt on whether Sapumal was of foreign extraction. The only source to explicitly
make this claim is the Portuguese chronicler Diogo do Couto, writing in the 1590s.
Somaratna considers the silence of the surviving Sinhalese sources on this point more
compelling. Presumably, the principal silence is felt to be emanating from the
Alakesvarayuddhaya (which was subsequently incorporated into the better-known
Rajavaliya). However, the Alakesvarayuddhaya and the Rajavaliya are in fact, somewhat
ambiguous: they use a phrase that could equally mean that Sapumal was brought up by
Parakramabahu VI.11 If Bhuvanekabahu VI insisted that he was a son of Parakramabahu
in his inscriptions, no doubt as one means of shoring up his authority, we must beware the
old adage that history is written by the victors.12

Diogo do Couto, on the other hand, is clear that Sapumal was the son of an Indian
pannikar (panical), who was welcomed into Parakamabahus court and married to a
woman of rank.13 Here, Couto is following almost word for word his source, Augusto de
Azevedo, whom he had commissioned to write down the histories relayed by refugee
Sinhalese princes in Goa in the 1580s.14 Azevedo tells us that there went to the city of
Cota a panikkar of the caste of those kings who came from the opposite coast (huma
panical da casta daquellas reys, o qual vinha da outra costa).15

But we must not get bogged down on this point. Gunawardana and Somaratnas analyses
remind us that a foreign origin did not intrinsically invite suspicion or antipathy in our
period. Kotte of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries was a cosmopolitan polity, generally
intent on welcoming exotic elites into its service rather than subjecting them to an
instinctive xenophobia.16 Thus Somaratna argues that even if we were to give credence to
Coutos account it would hardly amount to a sufficient reason for revolt. After all, his
rival and predecessor, Jayavira Parakramabahu, had been himself the son of a Cola prince
known as Nannuru-Tunayan.17

Indeed, dynastic states do not require that their monarchs be of pure indigenous blood.
The emphasis tends to be more towards establishing their distinctive status, preserving
the integrity of royal blood by intermarriage with foreign elites of similarly rarefied
breeding. In Sri Lankas case these marriage partners were often sought in South India.
What dynastic states normally do require, however, is some sort of symbolic
indigenization: a signal that while the king may be set apart from his people, he also acts
for them and in their name. Sapumal was certainly concerned to send out such signals. It
is important to note that before his accession to the throne, he had been eulogized for his
military exploits in the north, his subjugation of the Jaffna region on behalf of
Parakramabahu VI.18 On the one hand, this appears to weaken a focus on identity, for how
could someone who had won his fame fighting non-Sinhalese subsequently be
reprehended for being non-Sinhalese? But, on the other hand, it also redoubles the puzzle
over his rule: how could such popularity turn so quickly into island-wide unpopularity?
How could one of the main agents of the centralization of state power at Kotte become a
main agent of its disintegration?

There is less of a paradox here than first appearances suggest, if we imagine that over the
course of his long rule in Jaffna, Sapumal became attached to a coterie of Tamil officials
and advisors on whom his governance of the north relied. 19 Just as in order to rule
effectively in Kotte kings of foreign or local birth needed to abide by indigenous modus
operandi, so Sapumal would have needed to accommodate Tamil institutions and elites in
Jaffna.20 This was his power-base, and it seems that it was on these men that he relied
when he swooped south. Somaratna himself refers us to the narrative in the Rajavaliya, in
which Sapumal sets out to take Kotte accompanied by chiefs from Jaffna. He also points
out these troops and those on whom Ambulugala relied in the Four Korales are
referred to by the Tamil word paddattalavaru.21 Somaratna concludes, This leaves us in
no doubt that under Bhuvanekabahu VI a large number of dignitaries who came from
Jaffna held important positions in the kingdom. It is quite possible that some of the
Sinhalese dignitaries did not look upon these developments with a favourable eye.... It is
therefore natural that the Sinhalese dignitaries, who had enjoyed privileges during the
previous reign, looked upon these rivals with envy.

Somartana strives to row back on the natural implication of this insight by calling upon
the evidence that Sapumal was also supported at Kotte by a number of Sinhalese
monastic elders and eminent courtiers, which he suggests renders the assumption for the
involvement of national sentiment unfair.22 This weakens slightly his emphasis on the
perceived illegitimacy of Sapumals succession as the cause of popular outrage, for it
reminds us that towards the end of Parakramabahus reign there was a faction who
considered Sapumal a more suitable successor than the son of the princess of Ulakudaya-
devi. This faction was led by the monastic elder Vidagama Maitreya. There is also a
suggestion in one recension of the Rajavaliya that Parakramabahu VIs prime minister
Ekanayaka Mudaliya favoured Sapumal.23

Incidentally, the involvement of bhikkhus in these affairs highlights the fact that at no
point did Sapumal ever violate the most important means of sending out a signal of
responsibility towards Sinhalese society: the patronage of Buddhism. Indeed, by aligning
himself with Vidagama Maitreya he was throwing in his lot with a monk who wanted to
establish a purified or more orthodox version of Theravada Buddhism than had
sometimes flourished under Sri Rahulas tenure as rajaguru. Undoubtedly, monastic
politics and theological debate played a part in the factionalism of the late 1460s but
this was an intra-Buddhist dispute, not a species of the religious antagonism that we see
in some of the turmoil of the Portuguese era.

We shall return to the religious dimension of politics below, but for the time being let us
reflect on what the fact of partial support for Sapumal says about the role of identity in
the rebellions. The argument here is simply that we do not need to imagine a nation
rising up with one voice in order to suggest that feelings of cultural or group antagonism
may have been invoked. For this is not how national, ethnic or cultural sentiments
actually work.

We can pause here for a comparison with another dynastic state, the kingdom of England
just after union of crowns with Scotland in 1603. Following the failure of the Tudor line
to produce an heir, James VI (1587-1625) of Scotland had been invited by the English
court to become James I (1603-1625) of England. But, much like Bhuvanekabahu VI,
James I had already been a ruler in the northern part of the island for a long time by the
time he arrived in England, and he did so with a sizeable Scottish entourage in tow.
Naturally enough, some of the English courtiers who found themselves displaced focused
their ire upon the Scots and the Scottish ways of the Jacobean court. As Sir John Holles
complained in a parliamentary session of 1610, the Kings equal affection to us as them
would help all but the Scottish monopolize his princely person, standing like
mountains betwixt the beams of his grace and us.24 By contrast to that other sun-king
Bhuvanekabahu, James had acquired the throne peacefully, and England was by now a
much less fissiparous state than its Lankan equivalents: there was no rebellion as such in
his case. But this example illustrates that while monarchs are rarely required to
demonstrate domestic ancestry in the dynastic state, they may well be required to
demonstrate sensitivity towards the status of domestic elites.

Returning to Sri Lanka, we should consider all the perennial reasons for rebellion as
playing a part: the expected fall-out from the ever-contested business of succession, the
jostling for position among courtiers and monks. And then we should reflect on what
rhetorical means would have been available for the disfavoured faction to gather wider
support for their cause. It seems entirely plausible that one primary means used here was
to invoke an indigenist sensibility by referring to the foreign displacement of Sinhalese.
(Sapumals parentage may or may not have facilitated his association with alienity). This
would have been one strategy among many, deployed alongside reminders of the brutal
assassination of the rightful heir.

Nevertheless, it seems that it was a strategy that resounded strongly enough with a wider
audience for it to have lent an enduring name to the conflicts in the Sinhala insurrection.
Indeed, the name itself is the main reason why one would entertain the possibility of an
ethnic element to these events in the first place, because the alternative explanation of it
remains puzzling. It is difficult to think of another example from comparative history
where the name of an ethnic or linguistic group has been invoked simply to reflect the
widespread extent of a revolt that is to say, without the central authority being
distinguishable on ethnic or linguistic grounds.25

If cultural or ethnic politics did play a part, it may help to explain why one of the most
effective and experienced military commanders of the period presided over such a rapid
disintegration of Parakramabahu VIs hegemony. Clearly, this loss of authority extended
to Bhuvanekabahu VIs younger brother and yuvaraja, Ambulugala Raja. The people of
the Four Korales appear to have preferred to do business with the new pretender in
Kandy, Senasammata Vikramabahu (1469-1511). This, indeed is the foundation of the
political paradigm for the next one hundred years or more and into which the Portuguese
arrived: a curtailed Kotte retaining control of the southwestern lowlands with an
alternative monarchy brooding in the highlands. Senasammata was presumably intent on
winning over nobles who wanted to cut their ties with the new regime in Kotte, and one
of the baldest statements of the moral contingency of kingship from this period can be
found in the Alutnuvara slab-inscription from his reign: the allegiance of vassals in the
Four Korales could only be depended upon until a mistaken [course of action] might be
adopted by any lordship of the royal family, small or great, including His Majesty. 26 The
weakness of Bhuvanekabahu VIs position seems to be indicated by the unusually
conciliatory attitude to rebels that we find in the Dadigama inscription and some of his
policies as relayed in the Alakesvarayuddhaya.27

What do we make of the role played by religious politics in all of this? It is striking that
the contender for power who had most to fear from some manner of indigenist resentment
was also the one who aligned himself with a purifying wing of the Sangha. 28 This is
indicated by his alliance with Vidagama Maitreya, whose Budugunalamkaraya attacked
the worship of Brahmanical gods.29 Roughly speaking, the Sangha at this time was
divided between a vanavasi (forest-dwelling) fraternity, who appear to have generally
espoused a more ascetic form of monastic life, and a gamavasi (village-dwelling)
fraternity.30 The leading elder of previous decades had been a gamavasi monk with a
rather liberal attitude to popular religious practice, Totagamuve Sri Rahula.

Sri Rahula had also been a supporter of Jayavira Parakramabahu. The fact that he did not
take part in the higher ordination ceremony held by Bhuvanekabahu VI in 1476 indicates
that he had been sidelined by or had estranged himself from the new king. It is even
possible that his religious and personal authority may have been lent to the rebel cause. 31
Now it was Vidagama Maitreya who summoned the monks to higher ordination. 32 That
ceremony was prompted by the arrival of an important mission from Pegu (in Southern
Burma), whose Kalyani inscription proclaimed that these monks were sent to Sri Lanka
for higher ordination because, from the establishment of the religion in Sri Lanka up to
the present day, there has been existing in that island an exceedingly pure sect of monks,
who were the spiritual successors to the Mahavihara. although one assumes this
reflects a long-standing esteem for Lankan Buddhism rather any new intelligence about
its progress under Bhuvanekabahu VI.33

The suggestion here is that advertising a particularly zealous attitude to the promotion
and protection of Buddhism was the best means Bhuvanekabahu VI had at his disposal to
defuse any associations with alien rule. Buddhism was central to the Sinhalese view of
themselves what better way of establishing that one would work in their name and for
their interests? Here, I am following the logic laid out by John Clifford Holt in his work
on a much later ruler, Kirti Sri Rajasimha (1747-82). Holt argues that one reason why
Kirti Sri was concerned to revitalize and reform the Buddhist Sangha was in order to
establish his suitability to rule at a time when his Nayakkar origins and associations may
have brought him under suspicion.34

A further comparison suggests itself. The existence of a mass of correspondence in

Portuguese dating from the reign of Bhuvanekabahu VII (1521-51) means that we receive
 for the first time perhaps in Lankan history a sense of the week-by-week dynamics of
power played out in a Lankan court. 35 And here too, we have a king who was coming to
rely more and more on the specialist skills of a foreign elite, in this case the Portuguese.
As they predominated over royal affairs, some disgruntled Sinhalese noblemen defected
to Sitavaka. Again, the sovereign claims of Kotte suffered. But Bhuvanekabahu VII
refused to convert and retained a significant degree of authority. When his grandson
Dharmapala (1551-97) converted, his vassals deserted in droves.

The most productive of recent work on pre-modern identity in Lanka has picked up on its
complexity, its pluralist or apparently paradoxical qualities.36 We ought to resist appeals
to see Lankan society at any given point in time before the modern era as simply either
tolerant or xenophobic. For example, a consideration of the interactions with Cola powers
during the Polonnaruva period reveals a two-faced response: (a) there was a sense in
which the Sinhalese wanted to capture Cola power and therefore adopt Cola cultural and
religious practices for themselves. (b) Yet there was also an attempt to define themselves
against Cola influence.37 And the Portuguese period had its own (a) and (b). There was
something attractive about the Portuguese presence, its new forms of military power first
and foremost, but also the new culture it brought. Hence we have the striking movements
among local elites, particularly in the 1540s and 1590s to request baptism and their
vassalage to the Portuguese king. At the same time, there was a movement to insist upon
the illegitimacy of the Portuguese presence and its destructiveness of local traditions. We
know from Queirs that the indigenous term for the rebellions that rose up against the
Portuguese from the 1590s onwards was perali (perliz).38

It is with such a flexible, nuanced understanding of identity politics in mind that we

should revisit the affair of the Sinhala rebellion. The paucity of evidence for this period
means that we can hardly pronounce with certainty on the motivations and sensibilities of
the rebels. Nevertheless, it seems entirely plausible that some sort of indigenist sentiment
was dragged into the political arena during the reign of Bhuvanekabahu VI but that it
was invoked as one mobilizing strategy amongst others by an elite faction resenting the
influx of courtiers from Jaffna. If that is so, both the initial fracturing of Kotte hegemony
after Parakramabahu VIs centralizing feats and its final eclipse under Dharmapala, may
have owed something to the logic of identity politics.
1
I have not used the term ethnicity in the title, in order to avoid complex questions of definition in what is intended as a
short note. In my view, the interesting question is not whether Sinhala-ness was imagined in terms of common ancestry, but
whether it was a significant template for organizing political action. Therefore, I have used the more neutral term group-
identity in the title, but have tended to deploy terms such as ethnic and cultural in a rather loose way in the main text.
2
Roberts 2004, de Silva 1984, 2000, Strathern 2006a, 2007.
3
This king seems also to be known as Viraparakramabahu, which is the name Gunawardana 1990: 67 uses.
4
We know about the Valigama unrest due to the fact that the Burmese was mission forced to land there, as recorded in an
inscription cited in Epigraphia Zelanica (henceforth EZ): iii. 284.
5
The Dadigama inscription is in EZ: iii. 278-6; see also the Gadaladeniya inscription in EZ: iv. 8-15; and the Alutnuvara
inscription in EZ: iv. 261-72. Where the Alakesvarayuddhaya, is referred to henceforth, the in Suraweera 1965 edition is
meant: see p. 24. Equally, the Rajavaliya used here is Suraweera 200: see p. 66. The editor of the Dadigama inscription, S.
Paranavitana, suggests that, although the meaning of samge in Sanskrit is war or battle, simhala samge would be
synonymous with simhala peraliya in Sinhala.
6
See Strathern 2006b. I would like to thank Nilmini Dissanayake for her help with the Alakesvarayuddhaya.
7
In EZ: iv. 284; and Paranavitana 1960: 679. De Silva 1987: 96, seems to follow suit.
8
Somaratna 1975: 142-8. The editor of the Alakesvarayuddhaya, A. V. Suraweera, also seems to hold to this minimal
interpretation: it must be that this rebellion against Bhuvanekabahu was referred to as "Sinhala peraliya" because it
extended over a large area.
9
Somaratna 1975: 142. In fact, one could argue that the last king of Kotte, Dharmapala, faced an equivalent challenge to his
authority.
10
However, in a later publication, Somaratna 1991: 17-32, established that the succession of only one of the nine kings of
Kotte went undisputed.
11
Alakesvarayuddhaya: 22, the phrase used is ati kota. At any rate, It is not surprising that compilers of a Kotte court
chronicle would not wish to draw attention to any diminution of Bhuvanekabahu VIs parentage. Furthermore, Paranavitana
in EZ: iii. 282-3, draws our attention to the Kokila Sandesa, which dates from the latter part of Parakramabahu VIs reign
and was virtually a panegyric on Prince Sapumal. But the poet refers to Prince Sapumal who has now attained the rank of
son to thee a peculiar phraseology for an actual son perhaps, but appropriate for a successful adopted son.
12
EZ: iii. 282; Somaratna 1975: 141.
13
Couto in Ferguson 1993: 68-9. Couto says that both Sapumal Kumara and Ambulugala Kumara were the offspring of this
union and were sent to Jaffna together. However, Couto does not mention the rebellion; indeed his account of the origins of
Bhuvanekabahu VIs reign is quite different, suspect and confused.
14
The history relayed seem to be a version of the Alakesvarayuddhaya/Rajavaliya. Given this mode of transmission and
translation, Azevedo/Coutos version of the Rajavaliya compares remarkably well with the extant Sinhalese versions.
15
Azevedo 1960: 239. Azevedo reminds us that Sapumal became Bhuvanekabahu which means king by force of arm,
which might possibly indicate an emphasis on legitimacy deriving from martial strength.
16
I emphasize this point in Strathern 2007. For example, Bhuvanekabahu VII (1521-51) signed off his letters to the
Portuguese with a phrase in Tamil.
17
Somaratna 1975: 143. Gunawardana 1990: 67, gives the fathers name as Prince Minisannas.
18
According to the Selalihini Sandesaya, Sapumal subjugated Jaffna in the 33rd year of Parakramabahu VIs reign (1411-
67): Ilangasinha 1992: 42.
19
I introduce Sapumals reliance on Tamil elites here as likely because, as we shall see, Somaratna himself for whom the
implications of it are awkward seems so sure this is what occurred. However, the evidence hardly seems unquestionable
to my eyes (see footnote 21). This must remain a hypothesis then.
20
But according to the poetic representations of the Kokila Sandesa, his court aesthetics at least were modeled on Kotte:
Paranavitana 1960: 675
21
Somaratna 1975: 146, tells us that paddattalavaru comes from the Tamil, patai-t-talaivan, leader of troops. However, I
can find no mention of this term in the relevant section of the Alakesvarayuddhaya, p. 24 (it is used on p. 37, in the context
of an army dispatched by Mayadunne in the 1550s). The narrative of the Rajavaliya, which does use the word, is a little
different to its source here, sometimes being more detailed than the Alakesvarayuddhaya. This suggests that it used other
sources or other recensions of the Alakesvarayuddhaya than the one we have. If so, the term paddattalavaru could derived
from an equally contemporary source. However, one feels that the absence of paddattalavaru in the Alakesvarayuddhaya as
we know it means that we cannot place too much store by this word. Somaratna also backs up his general account of the
increased influence of Tamil dignitaries in Kotte by citing the Yavarajasinhavalliya (The Hugh Nevill collection in the
British Library, Or. 6606(86), fol. 2), and the Kudumirisa inscription of Vira Parakramabahu (1478-89), in Gunasekera
1887: 95-102. This inscription refers to grants of land to about 35 Brahmins made by Bhuvanekabahu VI. I do not have the
expertise to tell from the names of their families and tribes whether these were from Jaffna or simply accompanied a wave
of immigrants from India.
22
Somaratna 1975: 146. Also see p. 139 on the factional disagreement over succession.
23
Somaratna 1975: 139, referring to the Yavarajasinhavalliya, Or. 6606(86), fol. 2; apparently supported by Couto in
Ferguson 1993: 69-70.
24
Peck 1986: 46.
25
I would be very interested to hear of any example to the contrary. A comparison with periods of civil war/popular revolt in
Medieval Europe might be instructive here.
26
We can only date this to some time in the reign of Senasammata Vikramabahu (1469-1511): EZ: iv. 269.
27
Alakesvarayuddhaya: 24-5; Rajavaliya: 66-7.
28
Ilangasinha 1992: 18, 23
29
This was composed in 1470 or 1472, early on in Bhuvanekabahu VIs reign; see also Holt 2004: 57-9.
30
Although this is a crude generalization requiring the nuances in Ilangasinha 1992: chapter three.
31
Somaratna 1975: 144.
32
Ilangasinha 1992: 110-111.
33
Ilangasinha 1992: 170; Godakumbura 1966. However, it is clear that Dhammazedi of Pegu (1472-92) knew that
Bhuvanekabahu VI was reigning at this time because he addressed his letter to him by name, see Sirisena 1978: 80.
34
Holt 1996. Holt also comments briefly on Bhuvanekabahu VIs reign and suggests (p. 117) that his problems were also
the result of his own ethnic non-Sinhala origins on the one hand and his alienation of the gramavasi fraternity on the other.
35
Strathern 2007.
36
Exemplified, for example, in Holt 2004 and Tambiah 1992.
37
Such efforts of resistance are lent strength by transcendentalist religious traditions such as Buddhism, which will always
de-valorize brute power in favour of ethical righteousness.
38
Queyroz 1992: 44.

[Azevedo, Agostinho de] (1960) Estado da India e aonde tem o seu principio,
printed as anonymous document in Documentao Ultramarina Portuguesa 1:
197-263.

de Silva, C. R. (1984) Ethnicity, prejudice and the writing of history, G. C. Mendis

 Memorial lecture in G. C. Mendis Memorial Edition. Colombo.
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