Contextualising the Tabbova-Maradanmaduva ‘Culture’: Excavations at Nikawewa, Tirappane District, Anuradhapura District, Sri Lanka

Coningham, Robin; Gunawardhana, P.; Davis, Christopher; Adikari, G.; Simpson, Ian A.; Strickland, Keir; Gilliland, Krista; Manuel, Mark

doi:10.1080/02666030.2012.659877

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“…It subsequently evolved in exchanges with Southeast Asia to become part of a regional Buddhist tradition grounded in shared Pāli (rather than Sanskrit or Gāndhārī) texts and an important facilitator of interregional trade networks (Ray 1994: 189–91; Salomon 1999: 3–8; Stargardt 2008: 675; Weisshaar 2015: 221–22). Second was probably the still mysterious “Tabbova-Maradanmaduva culture,” evidence for which consists of hundreds of deliberately damaged (“sacrificed”) terracotta figures excavated at twenty northern and mid-island sites (Coningham et al 2012). This culture may represent the persistence of pre-Buddhist traditions, traces of which linger in Sinhala Buddhist village rituals today (Gombrich 1971a; Paranavitana 1929).…”

Section: Early Historymentioning

confidence: 99%

Cartwheel or Ladder? Reconsidering Sinhala Caste

Winslow

2023

Comp Stud Soc Hist

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Is Sinhala caste simply a weak regional variant of Hindu caste or is it something else entirely? This essay argues that Sinhala caste as found in the territory of the former Kandyan Kingdom has had a distinctive ontology and retains its unique character. The essay begins with an overview of textual, genetic, and archaeological evidence for the origins of caste on the subcontinent. It then turns to the island and the fourth century CE bifurcation of Sinhala society into “high” and “low”; this duality’s persistence into the second millennium CE; its elaboration in the Kandyan Kingdom’s bureaucratic political economy; and the dissonance between this Sinhala “cartwheel” model of collective inequality and the Brahmanical “ladder” of colonial powers and the Sinhala elite. The essay concludes by examining how the ongoing discordance between these two models of Sinhala caste plays out in people’s lives through a case study of a non-elite caste community.

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Section: Early Historymentioning

confidence: 99%

Cartwheel or Ladder? Reconsidering Sinhala Caste

Winslow

2023

Comp Stud Soc Hist

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

Contextualising the Tabbova-Maradanmaduva ‘Culture’: Excavations at Nikawewa, Tirappane District, Anuradhapura District, Sri Lanka

Cited by 1 publication

References 0 publications

Cartwheel or Ladder? Reconsidering Sinhala Caste

Cartwheel or Ladder? Reconsidering Sinhala Caste

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