" The Sinhalese headman system was a very complex one, and no comprehensive study of it has yet been attempted, but from the information now available it would appear that one of its features was that these officials, especially at the village level, generally had caste rather than territorial jurisdictions. There were single-caste villages, usually smaller and less important than their multi-caste counterparts. These latter appear to have had several headmen, the number varying with the distribution of castes, and their jurisdiction limited to certain areas and localities, especially in the ports where, apart from several caste groups, ethnic minorities and aliens also lived. Thus these large villages generally had many headmen, some of them with just a dozen or even fewer families under their charge. "
-From A History of Sri Lanka, Volume 1981, Part 2 by K.M. De Silva, as noted from P.E. Pieris, The Ceylon Littoral-1593 (Colombo, 1949), pg. 27-28
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" The Sinhalese headman system was a very complex one, and no comprehensive study of it has yet been attempted, but from the information now available it would appear that one of its features was that these officials, especially at the village level, generally had caste rather than territorial jurisdictions. There were single-caste villages, usually smaller and less important than their multi-caste counterparts. These latter appear to have had several headmen, the number varying with the distribution of castes, and their jurisdiction limited to certain areas and localities, especially in the ports where, apart from several caste groups, ethnic minorities and aliens also lived. Thus these large villages generally had many headmen, some of them with just a dozen or even fewer families under their charge. "
-From A History of Sri Lanka, Volume 1981, Part 2 by K.M. De Silva, as noted from P.E. Pieris, The Ceylon Littoral-1593 (Colombo, 1949), pg. 27-28
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