The importance of the VOC archives
SRI LANKAN ARCHIVIST KARUNASENA DIAS PARANAVITANA

The National Archives of Sri Lanka contains unique documents of
the Dutch East Indian Company (VOC). Sri Lankan archivist
Karunasena Dias Paranavitana, assistant-commissioner of the
National Archives, was recently awarded a Ph.D degree at the
University of New South Wales in Sydney, for his thesis on these
documents.  

By A. van Schaik

Cinnamon was the spice in which the Dutch East Indian Company was
most interested. Cinnamon Gardens is the name of a beautiful,
green, garden-like part of Colombo, the capital of Sri Lanka. The
Department of the National Archives is situated in this
residential quarter in a white high-rise concrete building. In
fluent Dutch, Dr Paranavitana explains that the land registers,
part of the VOC administration kept in the archives, are unique
in the world. Even the Dutch State Archives (Algemeen
Rijksarchief) does not have such a collection. These so called
Dutch tombos are still used in court as a proof of landownership.

Unfortunately these old Dutch documents are being studied only by
a few Sri Lankans. Paranavitana: "The problem is the Dutch
language. Sri Lankans cannot read Dutch. And in my country there
are no courses in this language, nor are there any in archive
work. It would be wonderful if at least once a year one or two
students could go to Holland to train to become archivists and to
study Dutch". In 1978 Paranavitana himself attended the
Rijksarchiefschool in Utrecht. As he had been an archivist since
1970, in 1975 he was asked to put together an exhibition of Dutch
historical documents. Then he became so interested that he taught
himself Dutch from books and by meeting as many Dutch people as
possible. 

MINUTEN
Through the help of Mr. Evert Jongens, who founded the
Netherlands Alumni Association (NAAL), he was eventually able to
study in Holland. He emphasizes that it is important that a new
generation of archivists be able to study the archives. Besides
the Dutch tombos, the National Archives also contains the rare
'minuten', the proceedings of the meetings of the Council of
Ceylon. The authority of the council extended only to the western
and southern provinces of the island. These records are not only
interesting to Dutch historians, but also to Sri Lankans, the
Lascaryn rolls being a prime example. Lascar was the name for a
native soldier in the service of the VOC and these documents give
fascinating data about these men, such as date of birth,
marriage, property and so forth. 

(K.D. Paranavitana. The Archives of the Dutch East India Company
Administration in Ceylon 1640-1796. University of New South Wales
in Sydney, Australia, March 1994).