Keywords: Sri Lanka; Ceylon; Colonial history; Dutch East India Company; Sinhalese kinship; Thombo
1. Introduction
In the Sri Lanka National Archives (SLNA) inColombo hundreds of eighteenth-century registerson family composition and landownership, known asthombos, are preserved. The head thombo providesdetails about members of a family group; whereas theland thombo describes the shares of land owned by
☆ Acknowledgement: The pilot project to digitize selected parts ofthe Dutch thombo collection in the Sri Lanka National Archives isfunded from the Spinoza premium awarded to Jan Luiten van Zanden(Utrecht University) by the Netherlands Organisation for ScientificResearch.⁎ Corresponding author.E-mail address: [email protected] (A. van den Belt).
these groups. In this research note, we sketch the histor-ical background of the source, describe a project to dig-itize it, and suggest possible research topics.
In the mid eighteenth century – the period of thethombo compilations – the northern and south-westernregions of the island of Ceylon/Sri Lanka had beenunder western domination for more than one hundredand fifty years. The Portuguese (1594–1657), succeededby the Dutch (1657–1796), were attracted by the sublimequality of the cinnamon that grew wild in the jungles andused the settlement also to protect their commercial net-work in Asia. The interior of the island – economicallyof less value – was under the rule of the king of Kandy.In 1638 this kingdom invited the Dutch East India Com-pany (VOC) to expel, in a concerted action, the Portu-guese from the island.
The Dutch trading company, however, easily replacedthe Portuguese and kept the Sinhalese sovereign at bay in
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the hills. In 1796, the English, applauded by the king,chased out the Dutch, but within a couple of years theyconquered the landlocked kingdom, thus permanentlyuniting the island for the first time in its history. Duringthe nineteenth century, fundamental changes in the social,economic and political conditions of the island tookplace. Recent research, using among others the aforemen-tioned thombos, convincingly demonstrates the roots ofmany of these changes lie in the Dutch Period (Dewasiri,2007; Schrikker, 2007). In 1948, when the island becameindependent, it could look back on three distinct periodsof western influence of almost one hundred and fiftyyears each. In 1971, the name Ceylon changed to SriLanka.
Up to 1800, Western trade in Asia mainly dependedon a network of factories or trading posts conceded by alocal power to a European merchant company. Thesecompanies had to compete on the same level withtheir Asian counterparts, thus actually stimulatingintra-Asian trade. Territorial involvement or coloniza-tion was in this area a rare phenomenon in the period.It was only in cases of economic or strategic necessity,that merchants became territorial powers. And eventhen the possessions remained modest, except for Cey-lon, where the VOC occupied a territory roughly thesize of the fatherland: the Republic of the Seven UnitedProvinces.
For almost two hundred years the Vereenigde [united]Oostindische Compagnie or VOC, founded in 1602 andnationalized in 1799 after bankruptcy, dominated thetrade between Europe and Asia. It was the largest privateenterprise ever until the middle of the nineteenth century,keeping almost twenty five thousand employees on itspay roll and being active in twenty to twenty five settle-ments. Yearly, some thirty East Indiamen carried a hugequantity and variety of tropical products and textiles tothe auctions in the Republic. The relationship of theCompany to the surrounding states, allies and enemiesalike, cannot be compared to that of a western powerduring the so called colonial period which started dur-ing the nineteenth century. Owing to its stability (notsubject to dynastic imbroglios), its political, financialand military strength, the VOC represented for manypowers a fellow state, an ‘elder brother’ sometimes,sued for protection, military assistance and other formsof political generosity.
When the Dutch VOC took over from the Portuguese,it entered a civilization much older than its own. Up to thethirteenth century, Sri Lanka is commonly characterizedas a ‘hydraulic civilization’ with Anuradhapura andPolonnaruwa alternatively being the capitals of the socalled Rajarata kingdoms. This stable and prosperous
society based on irrigation works and rice cultivationbroke down internally around 1250 and split into severalcompeting kingdoms. Its collapse also caused a popula-tion shift to the south-west. One of the new kingdomswas Kotte, which just after 1500 welcomed the Portu-guese, who, arriving as traders in Colombo, took over in1594 what, after much intrigue, internal strife and parti-tions of territory was left of the kingdom.
The Dutch VOC had no intention to change the exist-ing patterns of society: it would have weakened danger-ously its position viz. a viz. its subjects. However, fromthe second quarter of the eighteenth century the Companybegan to penetrate more deeply into Ceylonese society. Itis in this context that we have to understand the renewedinterest in and the purpose of the thombos. In this period,the forests were slowly encroached upon without the per-mission of the VOC-government who considered theuncultivated areas to be Crown Land. Cinnamon, theraison d'etre of the VOC on Ceylon, grew wild outsidethe villages and had to be protected by describing in detailindividual property rights and concomitant obligations tothe VOC. However, after governor Falck's (1765–1785)successful introduction of cinnamon as a plantation crop,the strict land policy of the government relaxed.
2. Dutch thombo compilations
The VOC thombo compilation continued a long-standing tradition of land registration: starting with theso-called lekam-miti or land registers of the Sinhalesekings and continued by the Portuguese tombos (land regis-ters) and forals (tax listings) (Abeywardana, 2009; DeSilva, 2005). What remained of the Portuguese compila-tions, however, could not be used by the Dutch and all ef-forts in the seventeenth century to start a new thombocompilation for the three territorial divisions of VOC-Ceylon (Colombo, Galle/Matara and Jaffna) failed. Gover-nor Van Imhoff (1736–1739) laid the foundations for anew type of thombo registration, which eventually resultedin the more than four hundred volumes currently preservedin the SLNA in Colombo and covering the areas in Fig. 1(Van Imhoff, 1740).
The work on this new type of thombo started in 1742,but it was not until seventeen years later that the data col-lection for the Colombo province, or dissavany, was com-pleted. In 1760 the then governor Jan Schreuder (1756–1762) immediately ordered a revision which took onlyone year to be carried out (Schreuder, 1762/1946). Tenyears later, after a war with the Kandyan kingdom, the1760 thombo was updated. The Colombo thombos de-scribe roughly 250.000 persons and 85.000 plots ofland. After 1770, the VOC did not revise the thombo of
Fig. 1. Map of Ceylon end 18th century. The darker shaded area is the part of the Colombo dissavany covered by the thombos of 1760 and 1770.
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the dissavany any more. However, compilations of thetwo remaining divisions of VOC-Ceylon continued. Ofthe Galle commandement (province), the Galu Korlewas completed in the 1780s, but work on the Matara con-tinued until the end of the Dutch period (unfortunately,this register has been destroyed). The Galu Korle thombodescribes roughly 95,000 individuals and 30,000 sharesof land.1Although the Jaffna thombo was updated aslate as 1794, what has been preserved is highly fragmen-tary and we will not discuss it here.
The two types of thombos, the land and the headthombo, focus on different aspects of the same familygroup. The key figure is the head of the family. In theland thombo his landed property which consists ofpaddy fields and gardens, was noted down in detail.We find the name of the panguwa or plot of land, itslegal title and sometimes also its origin and history ofcultivation. Furthermore, where a watta or garden isconcerned the number of trees is recorded, and in thecase of a sowing field, or kumburu, the surface area inamunam and curuni is mentioned.2 On the one hand,the various obligations to the sovereign clearly stoodout, but on the other hand, the proprietor knew hisrights: vis-à-vis the Lord of the Land as well as towardshis neighbors. The thombo also functioned as a landregister, used in disputes about ownership before theVOC Landraad or Rural Council and even up to thistime in Colombo courts.3
The counterpart to the land thombo is the headthombo. The earlier mentioned head of the family nowappears at the apex of a group of persons, all relatedto him or to his wife. Of these individuals we come tolearn their names, places of residence, matrimonial sta-tus, ages and relationship to the family head. The familynames, but also the proper names of the thousands andthousands of persons described in the head thombos, re-veal a huge quantity of additional information to the re-searcher as these names almost all reflect origin, historyand social position of the bearers.
Two copies of each head and each land thombo areavailable (Jurriaanse, 1943; Paranavitana, 2001). Oncethe compilation was terminated the originals were putin a chest locked by three keys. A duplicate was handedover to the thombohouder, the official under whose su-pervision the work had been done, and who in somecases added remarks for further interpretation of the
1 In the SLNAa secondGaluKorle thombo compiled in the 17th centuryand numbering 148 volumes is available. See: (Mottau, 1975).2 An amunam (or 40 curuni) is a sowing extend; the surface of an
amunam varies with the fertility of the soil and even with the region.3 The land thombos are discussed in detail in Van den Belt (2011).
For an innovative study employing this source, see (Dewasiri, 2007).
figures. In the 1760 head thombo, used as a ‘draft’ forthe 1770 thombo, the names of those deceased duringthe decade have been crossed out and commented onwith the word ‘dood’ (dead). Those who entered thefamily group by marriage or by birth were added inthis ‘draft’ for the 1770 thombo and highlighted by aclear dot after the names. This dynamic aspect of the1770 head thombo allows us to reconstruct, at least inthe form of a rough approximation, fertility and mortal-ity rates.
A small scale pilot project to digitize the head andland thombos started in 2009. By the end of March2011, approximately 13,000 personal names and 2000shares of land of the Colombo dissavany were entered.The thombos of the Galle commandement have noteven been touched by researchers up to this date. Forboth districts the so-called Mottau Thombo Index (ahandwritten inventory of all the family heads plus refer-ences and a couple of particulars) has been digitized butnot yet published. In our discussion of the material, wemake use of the ‘digital thombos’ of the small area ofMegodde.
The area concerned is the Megodde pattuwa, a sub-division of the Wallallawitti korale within the jurisdic-tion of the Colombo province or dissavany, situatedbetween the Pasdum korale and the district of Kalutara.The Wallallawitti korale partly belongs to the Colombodissavany, partly to the Galle commandment. The pat-tuwa under research is one of the smaller sub districtsof the Colombo province, measuring twenty kilometersfrom north to south and fifteen from east to west. Its dis-tance to the shore is about fifteen kilometers. It is apleasant, slightly undulating region where small streamsirrigate paddy fields. Kitchen gardens, buildings madeout of mud and timber and small plantations of coconut,jak and areca spread from a somewhat higher level thanthe valley towards the surrounding waste land. Foot-paths connected the village to neighboring settlements.
3. Variables in the head thombos
The head thombo of the Megodde pattuwa mentions27 villages (one of them deserted) and describes 2779 in-dividuals distributed over 159 family groups. These 2779persons are assumed to be the entire population of the dis-trict. The thombos are geographically structured accord-ing to the sequence: (1) name of the province, in thiscase the Colombo dissavany; (2) name of the korale(eight in total) or the district (three); (3) name of thepattuwa, the sub division (never more than four) of thekorale; (4) name of the village or gama and finally (5)the serial number of the family group residing on the
Fig. 2. A page of the head thombo (1770).4
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estate or gama. There are villages with more than twohundred family groups, but also gam (plural of gama)numbering only one unit; some are even deserted.
One line of a head thombo page (for an example, seeFig. 2) is allotted to each member of the family group: afull name is provided for the head of the family, for hiskin only their personal names. The relationship of theperson to the family head is clearly defined, but not al-ways intelligible. At the end of the line we find the ageof the person; in case the man or woman does not liveon the estate the age is not filled in. In general thehead of a family group is a man, in this pattuwa, how-ever, out of a total of 159 heads 23.3% are widows.5
Whether a person is married we deduce from thewords: ‘zijn vrouw’ (his wife) or from the past participle‘getrouwd’ (married). Out of the 2779 entries 756(27.2%) refer to married persons, 109 (3.9%) to awidow (‘widowed’ is not mentioned for men), whereas
4 The text can be transcribed as follows: The village of Gallegedere//number 1 [serial number of the family in the village] 1 Gammege kiriappu, bellale [caste], mayoraal [service to the sovereign] 74 [years]/1daughter Baba ettena, married and lives in the Salpitti Korl [the dis-trict] none [as living outside the estate, no age is given]/1 do- [repeatsGammege kiri appu] brother named Punche appu, lives in the RaygamKorl [the district] none/1 do- sister [repeats the same Gammege](named) Kuda ettena, lives at this place [in the same village as wherethe estate is situated] none/1 do- do- [repeats Gammege and sister](named) Kalu hamy, married and lives in the village of Deddigama[this village is situated in the same Korle or district as the estate]none/1 do- [repeats Gammege] brothers widow Punchi ettena 50/1son named Appu, procreated with his first wife 40.5 Single women also appear as heads of the family, but this seems to
be concentrated in the littoral, the more westernized coastal zone.
for 1914 (68.9%) persons no explicit statement on civilstatus is given. The sex of a person can be deduced fromwords like: son, daughter, wife, husband etc. In a fewcases the given name had to provide the answer.
The most numerous family group in the Megoddepattuwa consists of eighty-three persons. In threecases a head lives without any relative. On average thefamily group in this district counts 17.5 members, ifwe deduct those who live outside the estate the averagedrops to 11.5. The head of the group is given with fam-ily and additional names and titles; his caste and serviceobligations to the VOC, if any, follow this series ofnames. Caste distinction was (and in some respectsstill is) an important social phenomenon in Ceylon/SriLanka. However, intermarriage occurred then, and stilldoes, and the head thombo can be used to study thisphenomenon.
The majority of the members of the group reside onthe estate or gama which is, confusingly but not withoutreason, also the word for ‘village’. For those who leftthe estate the thombo mentions the new places of resi-dence: either within the Colombo province or outside.In the first case we know whether the person lives inthe same village, in a village in the same pattuwa orin one of the other korales of the province of Colombo.Outside the dissavany implies either a residence else-where on VOC-territory or a residence ‘abroad’, viz.in the Kandyan territories.6 These different places ofresidence appear in Table 1.
6 Rarely Batavia, The Cape or India: the persons living in theseplaces had been banished from the VOC territories in Ceylon.
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The total population described in the head thomboamounts to 2779 persons; of these 2745 have a knownplace of residence. The male/female ratio for this lastmentioned group is 0.948 (1336/1409). A third of thefamily group left the estate; these people remained, how-ever, in some way or other, attached to the property, evenwhen married into another family group. Table 1 clearlyshows a ‘drain’ of females from the estate to elsewhere.For those living on the estate the male/female ratio ofthe described family is 1.41 and for those living else-where it is 0.42.
The variables as they appear in the head thombo (andsubsequently in the database) should not be taken forgranted. The terminology and concepts used in thesource may seem familiar to us, but they often have anunexpected content. Contrary to what is known aboutthe land thombo we do not have at our disposal any con-temporary instruction or treatise guiding the thombokeeper in his compilation work on the head thombo.7
Thus, we are not sure whether the totals of the peoplelisted in each village thombo add up to a ‘true’ popula-tion census, not even if we add to their figure thosenamed as living elsewhere in other villages. Becausethe head thombo is closely connected to the inventoryof property rights, it is plausible that the (minority) ofpropertyless people are left out altogether. We do findwomen, because among the Sinhalese women were en-titled to equal shares of the inheritance as men. There-fore, it was important to keep track of female holdersor rights and obligations, even when living elsewhere.
Civil status is a rather problematic, yet fascinating,category. The database shows that among the agegroup 18 to 30 (500 persons) no more than 86 persons(17.2%) were married and of these 75.6% are women.The remaining part or 413 persons appear to live asbachelor or spinster. However, the range of marriagecustoms in Ceylon was large. Informal marriages werecommon and we find the practice reflected in the thom-bos, although the partners were not indicated as such.According to several authors, informal marriages weremore prevalent among the poor than among the rich(Tambiah 1973). Divorce or separation was also veryeasy among the Sinhalese (and Jaffna Tamils as well),and it is likely that we find divorced persons listed asunmarried persons, with or without children. A reasonfor finding more married women than men on the fam-ily estates is the practice of fraternal polyandry, whichwas widespread in Ceylon (Leach, 1955), and seems
7 Head thombos suddenly appear with the 1742 compilation and al-though governor Jan Schreuder, twenty years later, clearly writesabout Portuguese specimen, these are (still) untraceable.
to have disappeared only recently (De Zoysa, 1955).The practice has been described as a way to ensure thecontinued presence of male labor in the face of laborservices due to lords living elsewhere. Also, it was away to avoid further land fragmentation of peasantswith already limited holdings: all children had claimsonly to the collective property of the brothers, not onshares of individuals—as their fathers could not beidentified (De Zoysa, 1955; Tambiah, 1965). In caseof polyandry, only the marriage of the oldest brotherwould be formalized and recorded (if at all). It will beinteresting to compare the incidences of formal versusinformal (or even polyandrous) marriages of wealthyversus poor families by using the information on landedwealth from the land thombos.
Cousin marriages were also common in the eigh-teenth century, up to the present day. However, theywere only accepted among children of siblings of differ-ent sex. The marriages of children of brothers or chil-dren of sisters were considered incestuous. Again, thispractice has been described as a way to counteractland fragmentation caused by bilateral inheritance. Ason who married his father's sister's daughter could ‘re-trieve’ property to the male corporate fund. Although itwill be difficult to identify family members acrossthombos, it will be a fascinating field of research to re-construct the marriage alliances forged through cross-cousin marriage (e.g. see Houseman & White, 2008for a 20th century example).
Finally, the thombos clearly show the diga andbinna varieties of formal marriage. The diga or patrilo-cal marriage (the wife lives in her husband's familygroup) is the normal and most respected type of part-nership; the binna or uxorilocal variety was generallycaused by economic necessity. Propertied familieswith too few men to work the land would bring in apoor man to marry one of the daughters (Tambiah,1965). Such a husband was somewhat belittled; hewas advised to keep his bundle of clothes and a walkingstick ready for any occasion. However, among the poorthe distinction holds less meaning (Tambiah, 1973) andthe thombos reveal incidences of both diga and binnamarriages in the same family group. Again, it will bevery interesting to link these marital residence patternsto the economic situation of the families as they appearin the land thombos.
The head thombo describes a group of people, partlyliving on the estate, partly living elsewhere. The only rea-son we can imagine for this distributed composition ofthis group is inheritance. Both sub groups would havehad a right on either a share of the land or a share of the pro-duce, irrespective of the sex of the person. A proportional
Table 1Location of persons of the Megoddepattuwa, in percentages.
By living on family property By geographic location
Source: Extracted from the database of the Megoddepattuwa.
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division of rights running into shares of 1/1600 or evensmaller seems to have been the pattern; physical fragmen-tation of the possession cannot be demonstrated in thethombos. How the proportional division of rights workedin practice we do not know for the eighteenth century.Modern ethnographic and sociological research, however,could be helpful to guide the discussion about the condi-tions in that century. Leach (1961) has written a famousethnography on the village of Pul Eliya in the North ofSri Lanka, whereas Obeyesekere (1967) has studied landuse on the ancient border with the kingdom of Kandy,forty kilometers from the Megodde pattuwa. Obeyesekeredescribed the tattumaru-system where the use of the wholeestate rotated among the subgroups (Obeyesekere, 1967,pp. 18, 35–36). The question remains: who was entitledto a share? It can easily be argued that the main beneficia-ries were the offspring of the family head, his brothers, sis-ters and their children. However, the recording of thenumerous relatives who are much more distant, is difficultto interpret. Leach, especially, mentions an informal insti-tution in the village regulating who belonged to (or was ex-pulsed from) the family group, but this refers to castematters (Leach, 1961, 67–145). It is a challenge for the re-searcher to find his/her way between the past as reflected inthe thombo and the present as found in modern analysesdating from the 1950s and 60s. Also, we do not knowfrom the thombos how the members of the family groupwere actually co-residing on the estate, but here as wellthe modern studies mentioned before may provide the re-searcher with hypotheses to analyze the thombo data.8
Roof and dinner table could have been shared by a nottoo numerous group, but also small units or households,comparable to the nuclear family, may have coexisted onthe estate.
The thombos also mention the caste of the head ofthe family. Caste, in the Hindu–Indian sense, is strangeto Buddhism which understands society as in principle‘democratic’, especially in the hinayana variety whichis indigenous to Sri Lanka. On Sri Lanka, the informal
8 See: Pieris (1956) for a social history of the Kandian kingdom.
but powerful head of the caste system was the king,not the sangha or order of priests; even the VOC some-times took over the role of deciding authority. Theseatypical features point to a special type of caste systemand it could even be argued that the Hindu practice offour castes (brahmins on top, sudras the basis) neverexisted in Sri Lanka. Here society was divided into anumerically dominant group of landowners (90%, togive a rough idea) attended to by several specializedgroups of artisans and performers of ritual services.The former were called ‘the good people’ (caste:goyigama or bellale), the latter were the service castes(smiths, potters, cinnamon peelers, dancers etc.). Mostof the vocational and service castes had their origin insouthern India, from where they had emigrated to thesouthwest littoral of Ceylon/Sri Lanka some centuriesearlier than the arrival of the Dutch. Each caste groupwas subdivided into lower and higher echelons; thesources, however, never agree about the details. SeveralSinhalese, Portuguese, Dutch and English cast lists sur-vive and a lot has been published about the subject, butno clear, unambiguous picture appears. Could it be thatthe ‘quest for caste’ (in the Hindu–Indian sense) is aremnant from the times that huge numbers of southernIndian, Tamil speaking emigrants invaded the northand east and settled on the island? The thombo presentsits own reality where caste, community and services areconcerned and do not always clearly and systematicallydistinguish the varieties. All authors agree that the goyi-gama represents the highest caste, but nobody has beenable to decide the hierarchy among the service castes asyet.
A person belonging to a specific caste or to one ofthe ethnic communities had to provide the Heer vanden Lande (the Lord of the Land) with labor. The cinna-mon peelers, the fishers, the elephant hunters followedtheir traditional caste obligations; the communities ofmoors and chetties (traders) had to perform their ser-vices (uliyam). The highest ranks of the dominant goyi-gama caste and the chiefs of the service castes suppliedthe Company with their administrative skills. Transport,
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defense, administration, public works, export crops(cinnamon and elephants) and more were thus secured.The division of labor into ‘departments’ or bada fol-lowed Sinhalese tradition. For permanent labor theVOC paid in grants of land (accommodessan) or inkind (mainctementos). For the temporary work the per-former either got nothing or a small allowance, alsocalled mainctementos. An impressive number of lists re-garding all these labor obligations, sometimes alsocalled thombo, have been preserved in the Sri LankanNational Archives in Colombo. These lists can be con-sidered as appendages to the thombos. About casteand community obligations, their extent, their burdenon the performer, their efficiency and application onlyvague notions exist, mostly founded on unverified as-sumptions and copied from author to author. TheVOC-documents, of which the thombos constitute animportant part, contain a lot of material to give a morebalanced judgment.
The name of a person in the thombo reflects his fam-ily history, his caste and social status and is as such animportant source. A honorific, or patabendi name, con-ferred to the head of the family by the sovereign, isadded to, or even substitutes, the vasagama or familyname. The latter usually carries the lineage and theobligatory services and commonly ends in -ge (thehouse of). Strangely, we do not find this suffix for thetop-ranking indigenous chiefs, nor with persons ofsome low service castes. In some cases a person isrecorded by his alias name, which, as we could expect,also carries a multitude of meanings. The given nameequally contains an abundance of meanings. There arePortuguese, Dutch, Muslim and ‘classical’ Sinhalesenames which split into typical goyigama and all kindsof low or service caste names. In the same family wefind for the sons and daughters clearly Christiansnames, followed by distinct traditional Sinhalese givennames. The suffix -wa denotes low caste: Appu is typi-cally goyigama, Appuwa has a contemptuous meaning,indicating a person of low cast. Much more informationcan be gleaned from the Sinhalese names.
4. Research agenda
A source compiled in the middle of the eighteenth cen-tury containing relevant variables for around 350,000 in-dividuals described in their extended and geographicallydistributed family network and linked to 120,000 sharesof land would clearly constitute a huge potential asset tohistorical demography in any part of the world. However,to realize this potential, a number of steps are essential.First of all, researchers need to immerse themselves in
the complicated family system of Sri Lankan by combin-ing Kandyan (family) laws, the scattered impressions offamily practices by foreign travelers and colonial author-ities, and the detailed ethnographic studies of the mid-twentieth century. Moreover, we need to reconstruct thelogic behind the description of family groups as we en-counter them in the thombos, as the original administra-tive procedures have been lost. Who were actuallyregistered and does the source capture families withoutproperty as well? Can we reconstruct the different formsof marriage (including informal marriage) from thissource? Finally, we need to create a sizeable dataset, pref-erably covering adjacent villages in different ecologicalsettings. Ideally, all extant thombos should be digitized.Currently, a relatively small pilot project (financed byUtrecht University, The Netherlands) is carried out,entailing the transcription and digitization of practicallyall the variables of the head and land thombos of eightvariegated villages or groups of adjacent villages. Cur-rently, the database consists of 1345 family groups(15,635 individuals), connected to 2318 plots of land,the details of which have been entered as well. This re-search note aims to present the source to the global re-search community of historical demography in the hopethat reactions and proposals for research or cooperationwill stimulate the research team at the Sri Lanka NationalArchives to expand the database. For questions and sug-gestions, we encourage you to contact the first author.
It is not difficult to sketch the research prospects ofthe thombos. The singular mixture of traditional southAsian society and western influence is a unique charac-teristic of the material. We can compare traditional ruralvillages to emerging trading towns in the littoral, andassess the impact of commodification (e.g. in the formof dowries) and commercialization on family relations.Comparing household structures and demographic pat-terns across villages can yield important insights in theinterplay between subsistence agriculture, emergingcommercialization in a setting of colonial extraction,and demography. We can also compare different ethnicand religious groups, e.g. assess to what extent convertsto Catholicism or Calvinism differed in marital behav-ior, the presence of illegitimate children in households,adoption et cetera. However, the real trump card ofthis source is of course the possibility to link familygroups to their landed properties described in great de-tail in the land thombos. This allows us to study the inter-play between property and the composition of the familygroup. Because the thombo of 1760 was updated in 1770,we can link – to some extent, at least – property to house-hold and family dynamics. For instance, did families witha low (male) labor/land ratio bring in adopted or foster
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sons and/or did they bring in husband to marry theirdaughters in the binna fashion? Conversely, did familieswith too many sons dispose of them, e.g. by marryingthem to their cousins in other villages? Once we have asufficient number of adjacent villages in the database,we can also try to uncover intricate patterns of marriagealliances between families and villages. Finally, becausethe thombos keep track of migrated family members,they are a unique source to study family dispersion andmobility in a colonial, pre-industrial society.
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