62 SOCIAL SCIENTIST
the above words, appears not only eclectic but a jumble of undigested and contradictory concepts.
The "philosophy" as we learn from other pages is also full of contradictions and ignores several facts of the real world. Thus it defines that development should start from the village "by their own collective efforts"... "an economic development founded on self-reliance". Yet contradicting this very noble principle is the well known fact that the Sri Lankan Sarvodaya movement depends financially mainly on foreign aid.
The "philosophy" Ariyaratne expounds in the collected works is apparently aimed at a foreign audience because he explains-in detail alleged principles of Eastern life which should be well known to every South Asian villager.
In these descriptions of Ariyaratne blatant distortions of the local way of life are made. Sri Lankan society before the colonial period, he depicts, for example, as idyllic and being governed by "equality", "sharing" and "pleasant speech" (p.51). According to Ariyaratne "our people practised a socialist way of life'9 then (ibid). He ignores the harsher realities of life that governed the life of the commoner during the pre-colonial period. He has ignored the divisions of caste and economic class that existed then in Sri Lanka, divisions sometimes of an even more extreme kind than found in modern times. He ignores, for example, the institutionalised rules that forbade certain strata of the population from wearing clothes above their waist, from polluting the presence of other "higher" beings and from whitewashing or tiling their houses for fear of extreme penalties.
In describing this idyllic and completely imaginary society (which apparently is the example on which Ariyaratne models his present Sarvodaya) Ariyaratne notes that everybody partook in the sharing, everybody getting his share or panguwa. "The king, the monks, the physician, the service agents of the state, the black-smith, the washerman, the aged and the widowed, all received their share or pangu}va" (p. 52). Clearly it does not worry Ariyaratne that the rulers got the larger share and the others only much more paltry shares. He recognises the act of sharing but ignores how the shares were distributed and who distributed them.
In ancient times, "while equality of all was recognized, yet due recognition and respect were given to those that deserved it", says Ariyaratne (p.53). Further, in the use of language in this ideal society "everyone's worth and dignity was well recognised". Ariyaratne clearly ignores that the "socialist" way of life that, he alleges, existed then had, for example, hierarchical grades of addressing people according to their social status. Some of these forms of address used in the case of lower orders were identical with forms reserved for animals. The remnants of these unequal forms of address