Patti is a traditional caste of Herdsmen from

Sri Lanka Sri Lanka, officially the Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka, also known historically as Ceylon, is an island country in South Asia. It lies in the Indian Ocean, southwest of the Bay of Bengal, separated from the Indian subcontinent, ...

’s feudal past. They were a part of the feudal

land tenure In Common law#History, common law systems, land tenure, from the French verb "" means "to hold", is the legal regime in which land "owned" by an individual is possessed by someone else who is said to "hold" the land, based on an agreement betw ...

system and a sub-caste of the

Govigama Govigama (also known as Goyigama, Govikula, Govi Vansa or Goyi Vansa) is a Sinhalese caste found in Sri Lanka. They form approximately half of the Sinhalese population and are traditionally involved in agriculture. The term Govigama became popula ...

caste. Found in the highlands and the maritime provinces but now mostly merged into the Govigama caste.

References

* Ryan Bryce 1953 Caste in Modern Ceylon, Rutgers University Press * Ceylon Gazetteer 1855 Sinhalese castes {{SriLanka-hist-stub