This Godage International Publishers edition is printed in Sinhala. International buyers who read only English should take that into account before ordering: the text is not bilingual and is not an English-language reference work. Godage is a long-established Colombo publishing house issuing titles in both Sinhala and English, and it keeps a good deal of older Ceylon scholarship in print.
The work is credited to H. W. Codrington — Humphrey William Codrington — a British scholar of Sri Lankan history and ethnography. He was educated at Winchester and New College, Oxford, entered the Ceylon Civil Service, and served in France during the First World War before returning to the island. He retired as Government Agent of the Central Province, the administrative post covering the Kandyan districts, and his scholarly interests ran closely alongside that official career: coinage, land tenure, revenue systems, the dress and standing of chiefs and headmen, and the general history of the island.
His published writing includes:
- Notes on some of the Principal Kandyan Chiefs and Headmen and their Dresses
- Ceylon Coins and Currency
- A Short History of Ceylon
- Ancient Land Tenure and Revenue in Ceylon
Codrington's work on currency and on land tenure is still cited by historians of pre-colonial and colonial Ceylon, and anyone working through those subjects meets his name early. A glossary bearing his name sits naturally beside that body of writing, where terminology drawn from Sinhala, Tamil, Portuguese, Dutch and English administrative usage is a constant practical difficulty for the reader.
Suited to readers of Sinhala with an interest in Ceylon's colonial-period scholarship, to students of language and administrative history, and to collectors assembling Codrington's output.
- Author: H. W. Codrington
- Publisher: Godage International Publishers
- Language: Sinhala
- Pages: 76
- ISBN: 9789553062666
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