Note 106 — Chapter XI · FROM KANDY TO ANURADHAPURA

In Mr. Mitford’s report for Sir Hercules Robinson, on the existing state of serfdom on temple lands in 1868, he says:—

‘The Order in Council by which in 1832 compulsory labour was abolished in Crown villages, by excepting royal temple and private villages from its advantages, is now the strongest ground on which the existing state of servitude is built. Here is a great wrong legalised. We found the despotic principles in existence, and superadded British forms, and THUS RIVETED THE CHAINS OF THIS GALLING TYRANNY ON ONE-THIRD OF THE POPULATION.

‘Under this system men are bought and sold with the land, agriculture and industry are checked, oppression is legalised, and Christianity prohibited. The exaction of services is arbitrary. I have known instances of men working for three months in the year, and others even for six months, during which time their own lands were lying waste. Besides agricultural and menial tasks, each landholder’s family was allotted a portion of the temple service, such as repairing the temples and idols, carrying the images at festivals, furnishing musicians, devil-dancers, &c. If a temple serf should become a Christian, he could not, of course, perform any of these services in a heathen temple, consequently he would lose his land.

‘I maintain that we have no right to hold any British subject in a position compelling him to perform idolatrous ceremonies, with the alternative of ruin.... I have often felt a blush of shame when obliged to decide cases against temple serfs, in violation of the rights of humanity and the first principles of justice.’