Mediaeval Sinhalese Art c7.17

c7.17

Knox gives a shorter list in much the same order; so also the Nitinighaṇḍuva, where the goviyō are also further divided into different ranks. Nowadays the fishers and other castes, especially in the low-country, contest the precedence of the conservative veḷḷala; we find in a list given by Casie Chitty in his Gazetteer (1834), that the fishers ranked second and the toddy drawers third, the others very much as above. Bitter controversies still take place regarding the relative rank of different castes; neither Buddhism nor Christianity have greatly weakened the power of caste.