Response to Goonatilake.

Coningham, R.A.E. ; Gunawardhama, P. ; Manuel, M.J. 等

We welcome this opportunity to respond to Goonatilake, a sociologist, who questions the conclusions of our earlier paper. That five-year-old article presented our working hypotheses at the beginning of phase II of the Anuradhapura Project. Three further seasons are now complete and our developed models will be presented to Antiquity next year. As a result, we will focus on three issues: 'theocratic landscapes', the archaeological focus of our evidence, and the validity of drawing parallels with other tropical landscapes. Before commencing, we should like to correct Goonatilake's citation of a single researcher as our original paper was a collaborative effort drawn from different countries and different disciplines.

We interpreted the absence of towns in the hinterland as indicative of 'a theocratic landscape, where monastic centres played the dual role of religious and secular administrators' (Coningham et al. 2007:717). We did not state that they 'were a means of social control by an elite', as Goonatilake suggests, bur reiterate our statement that monasteries 'remain a focal point in the religious life of people living within its hinterland and that 'festivais.... strengthen the urban-rural bond bur also act as a means to redistribute produce through the population' (Coningham et al. 2007:716). We also note that others have drawn similar interpretations, with Dias suggesting that 'monastic institutions became the landed intermediary between the central political authority and the people' (2001:115), Bandaranayake that 'monasteries were clearly principle foci of social organisation in the countryside' (1994:16) and Gunawardana that 'it was also the venue for congregations of the lay community for educational purposes, for religious discussions and for the performance of ceremonial' (1979: 137).

We also carefully added the statement ' These models are, of course, working hypotheses and much work still remains' (Coningham et al. 2007: 717). That work is completed and we are now aware of multiple hierarchies, as anticipated in 2007 (Coningham et al. 2007: 715). Indeed, Gunawardana has also identified dichotomies of authority, stating 'an examination of the immunity grants of this period [shows] that considerable powers were transferred to the monastic administration by withholding the authority of government officials to intervene in their affairs' (1979: 190). The presence of these heterarchies has led us to seek an equally sophisticated expression to describe the authority and function of hinterland monasteries and we now use 'Buddhist Temporalities'. Whilst acknowledging its Abrahamic origins, we note that 'Temporality' has been utilised within Sri Lanka legal contexts for over 100 years and is commonly used to describe the distinct nature of Buddhist monastic property and the limitations of secular jurisdiction over such properties (de Silva 1998; Karunananda 2006).

Our second point concerns Goonatilake's inconsistent approach to texts as he appears unhappy with the use of the Arthasastra to present settlement hierarchies within Early Historic South Asia on account of its uncertain link to the fourth century BC whilst criticising our lack of reference to the Mahavamsa's description of Anuradhapura's urban plan. However, both sources share uncertainties of date and we carefully stated that 'most scholars would agree that it [Arthasastra] serves as a useful insight into the administrative framework of the Early Historic world' (Coningham et al. 2007: 700). In terms of the latter, we would argue that there is no physical archaeological evidence for such a plan bur, in any case, we focused our paper on the presentation of new archaeological data from the hinterland for an archaeological journal. Moreover, we were aware of Bandaranayake's challenge that ancient Sri Lankan 'socio-political and socio-economic functions are well known and have been well researched but as yet mainly from literary and epigraphical sources' (1994: 16) and we share his desire to readdress that balance.

Our third point is that Goonatilake misunderstands the purpose of drawing parallels between Anuradhapura's stupas, Mayan plazas and Angkor. We drew parallels by noting that each provided open spaces for communal activity which maintained links between urban and rural, and elites and non-elites. Our purpose here was to stress that central hubs, both urban and hinterland monasteries, played crucial roles in integrating the dispersed communities of the tropical hinterland of Anuradhapura, both socially and economically, and we firmly believe that we can learn from broader analogies and parallels as well as from comparative methodologies (Fletcher 2009). We reject Goonatilake's accusation that we drew simple similarities between Buddhist and Christian monasteries as we made no such claims in our 2007 paper but note that former Archaeological Commissioner Roland Silva equated Mahavihara-type monasteries with the Benedictine order, Vanavasa with Carthusian and Panchavasa with Cistercian institutions (Silva 2004: 256-7). We are similarly confused by his citation of Alexander Cunningham as a counter to eurocentrism as Cunningham pursued analogies between 'the horse-shoe temples of Ajanta and Sanchi ... [and] the form of the inner colonnade at Stonehenge' (1854: v).

We are not the first academics to face this sociologist's convictions (Lynch 2002; Bass 2003); bur we do note with disappointment that he has failed to engage with the archaeological analysis itself as we firmly believe that our multidisciplinary team has presented an invaluable Sri Lankan dataset for future generations of researchers to study and debate.

Website: http://www.dur.ac.uk/arch.projects/anuradhapura/.

References

BANDARANAYAKE, S. 1994. Traversing an archaeological landscape, in S. Bandaranayake & M. Mogren (ed.) Further studies in the settlement archaeology of the Sigiriya-Dambulla region: 9-22. Kelaniya: Postgraduate Institute of Archaeology.

BASS, D. 2003. Review of S. Goonatilake "Athropologising Sri Lanka: a Eurocentric misadventure'. Comparative Studies in Society and History 45(2): 423-4.

CONINGHAM, R.A.E., E GUNAWARDHANA, M.J. MANUEL, G. ADIKAR1, M. KATUGAMPOLA, R.L. YOUNG, A. SCHMIDT, K. KR1SHNAN, I. SIMPSON, G. McDONNELL & C. BATT. 2007. The state of theocracy: defining an early medieval hinterland in Sri Lanka. Antiquity 81: 699-719.

CUNNINGHAM, A. 1854. The Bhilsa Topes or Buddhist monuments of central India. London: Smith, Elder and Co.

DE SILVA, K.M. 1998. Religion and nationalism in nineteenth century Sri Lanka: Christian missionaries and their critics. Ethnic Studies 16(1): 103-139.

DIAS, M. 2001. The growth of Buddhist monastic institutions in Sri Lanka from Braa hmi inscriptions. Colombo: Department of Archaeological Survey.

FLETCHER, R. 2009. Low-density, agrarian-based urbanism: a comparative view. Insights 2(4): 2-19.

GUNAWARDANA, R.A.L.H. 1979. Robe and plough: monasticism and economic interest in early medieval Sri Lanka. Tuscon (AZ): University of Arizona Press.

KARUNANANDA, U.B. 2006. Nuwarakalawiya and the North Central Province under British administration 1833-1900. Kelaniya: University of Kaleniya.

LYNCH, C. 2002. Review of S. Goonatilake 'Anthropologising Sri Lanka: a Eurocentric misadventure'. American Anthropologist 104 (4): 1240-41.

SILVA, R. 2004. Buddhist monasteries of ancient Sri Lanka. Ancient Ceylon 22: 251-7.

R.A.E. Coningham (1), P. Gunawardhama (2), M.J. Manuel (1), G. Adikari (3), R.L. Young (4), A. Schmidt (5), K. Krishnan (6), I. Simpson (7), C.E. Davis (1) & C.M. Batt (5)

(1) Department of Archaeology, Durham University, South Road, Durham DH1 3LE, UK (Email: r.a.e.coningham@dur.ac.uk; m.j.manuel@dur.ac.uk; christopher.davis@dur.ac.uk)

(2) Department of Archaeology, University of Kelaniya, Kelaniya 11600, Sri Lanka (Email: prishantagunawardhana@yahoo.com)

(3) Post-Graduate Institute of Archaeological Research, University of Kelaniya, 407, Bauddhaloka Mawatha, Colombo Z Sri Lanka (Email: osteologypgiar@yahoo.com)

(4) School of Archaeology and Ancient History, University of Leicester, University Road, Leicester LEI 7RH, UK (Email: Rly3 @le.ac. uk)

(5) Archaeological Sciences, University of Bradford, Bradford BD7 1DP, UK (Email: Armin.R.Schmidt@Gmail.com; c.m.batt@bradford.ac.uk)

(6) Department of Archaeology and Ancient History, Faculty of Arts, The Maharaja Sayajirao University of Baroda, Vadodara 390 002, Gujarat, India (Email: krishnan_msu@yahoo.com)

(7) Biological & Environmental Sciences, University of Stirling, Stirling FK94LA, UK (Email: i.a.simpson@stir.ac.uk)