Mediaeval Sinhalese Art c7.77

c7.77

The position of women, as usual in Buddhist countries, was good in many respects. The property of husband and wife remained distinct, the husband having no power over his wife’s estate,—an advantage very newly won in England, but of long standing in the East, despite the supposed slavery of women there. Women could inherit service lands and could exercise much influence. Seclusion was not customary, unless amongst the aristocracy; it is probably more fashionable now than in the middle ages. According to Knox, there was rather too great freedom than the reverse, regarding their daughters’ lovers with favour, on account of the services they were willing to render when need was. What spirit and character Kandyan women could show is illustrated by more than one anecdote. In the early days of British rule, Miyanadeniya Lēkam of Degaldoruva was robbed in his own house by Malay desperadoes, and such wounds inflicted that his bowels gushed out; but such was his firmness, that he bound up his bowels with his waistcloth and found time before his death to leave his property to his only daughter, whose subsequent evidence led to the conviction and execution of the robbers; so courageous had been her behaviour throughout, that a grant of land was specially made to her by the Government (Lawrie’s Gazetteer, p. 137). One heroic tale sounds more like a story of the Rājputs than one of the Sinhalese. It relates the history of a woman trained in arms, whose prowess so delighted the king (sixteenth or seventeenth century) that he rewarded her with gifts of elephants and lands, and made her Disāva of the Four Kōrales (Bell, Kēgalla Report, p. 50).