A glimpse into Sri Lanka’s hidden ancient history-by Professor Osmund Bopearachchi
Review of Ranjan Chinthaka Mendis’ book An Invisible History of Early Sri Lanka, (Colombo, 2024)
Source:Dailymirror
It gives me great pleasure to write a few words about the book written by Ranjan Chinthaka Mendis, entitled “An Invisible History of Early Sri Lanka”. I warmly congratulate Chinthaka Mendis, a renowned lawyer who has stepped out of his field to write this stimulating and challenging book on the invisible history of Sri Lanka. The book contains 545 pages, including 1,577 comprehensive and precise endnotes and an exhaustive bibliography of 396 titles. With the exception of a few important French publications, he has read all the publications relevant to his field of research. In recent years, while so-called Sri Lankan historians have been writing distorted accounts of Sri Lanka’s history to please successive political powers, Chinthaka Mendis has remained impartial and courageous in his analysis.
Prof Osmund Bopearachchi
Mendis’ book, An Invisible History of Early Sri Lanka, covers the history of Sri Lanka from the time of King Panduka Abhaya in the mid-fourth century BCE to the death of King Kashyapa in the fifth century CE. Knowing that it is impossible to summarise every single feature of a 545-page book, I would like to touch on a few points that caught my attention. Before getting into the core subject of this book, a few points need to be made clear. In Part VI on the Silk Road, i.e. Chapters 36 to 42, although the author cites the recent publications of Peter Frankopan, Tansen Sen, Mac Gregor, the French researchers who have made irrefutable contributions to Silk Road studies are not being referred. It is important to refer to François Thierry who, in his Le royaume du lion. Ceylan connu des Chinois des origines à la fin des Song (The kingdom of the lion, Ceylon known to the Chinese from the beginning to the end of the Song dynasty) has faithfully translated into French all the ancient Chinese texts relating to Sri Lanka. Apart from a few exceptions, Chinese ships never came to Sri Lanka before the 7th century CE. On the contrary, as François Thierry has pointed out, from the last years of the Jin dynasty to the end of the Tang dynasty, Chinese sources recorded eleven delegations of Sinhalese bhiksunis (Buddhist nuns) sent to China. This means that these delegations embarked on Indian or Sri Lankan ships. The journey of the esoteric Buddhist monk Vajrabodhi in the seventh century CE, first to Sri Lanka and then to China, was made possible by the development of trade networks to the east. The sea route taken by the Persian ships with Vajrabodhi on board was the same one used by the Sinhalese Buddhist bhiksunis heading towards the capital of the Tang dynasty.
The chapters on Indian Ocean trade and Sri Lanka’s political and economic relations with foreign countries are fascinating. Epigraphic evidence, as Chinthaka Mendis rightly points out, attests that from this period onward, Sri Lanka maintained close relations with regions of Afghanistan. The name “Kaboja” appears as a proper name in three inscriptions from Koravakgala (Situlpavua) in the Hambantota district, in the southeastern part of the island, in ancient Rohana. Senarat Parnavitana believes that Kabojha, Kabojhiya and Kabojhika are to be connected with the ethnic name Kamboja, which appears in Sanskrit and Pali literature as well as in the Vth and XIIth inscriptions of Emperor Asoka, Kābojhīya being equivalent to the derived term Kambojiya and Kabojika to Kambojika discussed by Jules Bloch, the French Indologist, in 1950. The Brahmi inscription from Bovattegala, on the southern border of Ampare district, a few kilometers from the northeastern boundary of Hambantota district, also in ancient Rohana, refers to the ‘Kabojhiya-mahapugiyana’, i.e., to ‘those who were members of the great corporation (guild) of the ‘Kabojhivas’. These inscriptions indicate that the Kambojas had organized themselves into corporations, which means that they were certainly engaged in trade. The Kambojas are often mentioned with the Yonas (Yavanas), the Gandharas, and the ŚSakas. The Kambojas were an indigenous people of Arachosia in the far west of the Mauryan Empire, speaking a language of Iranian origin.
In chapter 40 there is a vivid discussion about the itinerary of Sri Lankan mission to Rome lead by a certain Raki. With the exception of the accidental arrival in Sri Lanka of the Roman freedman of Annius Plocamus, Romans had very little direct maritime contacts with Sri Lanka before the second century CE, and, if they did, it was through intermediaries in southern India. Compared with the thousands of Roman denarii from the Julio-Claudian period found in India, only a handful of coins of this type have been discovered in Sri Lanka. Quoting H.W. Codrington, our author exaggerated when he spoke of a ‘large number of coins’ (p. 267). On the contrary, over 200,000 coins found in Sri Lanka that I mentioned in my essays belong to the late Republican period, starting from Constantine the Great whose reign is dated from 306 CE. This era is marked by the direct Roman maritime trade with Sri Lanka. Cosmas Indicopleustes, a merchant, traveller and later hermit from Alexandria in Egypt wrote in the 6th century, Sri Lanka was the centre of maritime trade in the Indian Ocean at that time.
I do not deny that a century after the Sri Lankan delegation visited Rome, the Romans began to have direct contact with the island. It is striking to note that recent research carried out by Italian archaeologists on the mummy of Grottarossa, that of an eight-year-old girl found eleven kilometers from Via Cassia in the north of Rome, testifies to the trade between Rome and Sri Lanka. The child’s body, placed in a sarcophagus decorated with hunting scenes inspired by an episode of Book IV of the Aeneid, is currently preserved in the National Museum at Palazzo Massimo in Rome. The mummy wore a fine tunic of Chinese silk and a gold necklace adorned with thirteen blue sapphires. Italian archaeologists and gemologists concluded that the blue sapphires came from Sri Lanka. The decoration of the sarcophagus and the analysis of the offerings led the archaeologists to date the tomb to the second half of the second century CE.
It is entirely possible that the depictions of cupids and griffins attested in the eastern Vahalkada dated to the second century CE from the Abhayagiri stupa found their way into a Buddhist monument in Sri Lanka via a Roman trader who imported a sketch of these particular Roman art forms (Figs. 1 A & B). Whatever the mode of transmission, here we have a Sri Lankan version of a Roman art form. The discovery of Roman antecedents for Andhra Buddhist art has been thoroughly discussed by art historians. Roman acquaintance with the island has its own history; thus, the existence of carvings of Roman inspiration is not surprising.
Leaving aside these minor remarks, let me come to the core of Chinthaka Mendis’ book which I read with great interest. How can a historian be impartial when writing about King Dutugemunu? The ancient chronicle Mahavamsa, attributed to Mahanama, has been regarded by Sri Lankan historians as an undisputed base for their historiography. However, in explaining his methodology, Chinthaka Mendis, in his ‘Preface’, rightly assumes that “Whenever possible, I have preferred to follow the Dipavamsa rather than the Mahavamsa as I am of the opinion that the older chronicle, which is a compilation of many authentic ancient texts drawn from different sources of the Lankan Theravada Buddhist tradition has been written with a better sense of history.”
It is hard not to admire Chinthaka Mendis’ starting point when he says courageously in his preface, in reference to the two Pali chronicles: “The chronicles narrate a history from the viewpoint of the Buddhist clergy, recording the names, order of succession and length of reigns of kings as well as important political and religious events. Apart from these matters, the Dipavamsa, the Mahavamsa and other later works are usually confined to religious activities and irrigation projects carried out by rulers. A reader is left with the impression that waging war, building monasteries and irrigation works, making donations to religious establishments and engaging in agriculture was what ancient Sri Lanka was about.”
Let us focus on the story told in the Mahavamsa of Dutugemunu who is said to have organised a great campaign to liberate Buddhism from Elara, the Chola prince who ruled in Anuradhapura in the 2nd century BCE for 45 years with the war cry ‘Not for the kingdom, but for Buddhism’.
How many movies have been made to glorify Dutugemunu’s legacy? Politicians of the past liked to play the role of King Dutugemunu, the most powerful symbol of historical Sinhalese power, who was also known for being the first to unify the whole island of Sri Lanka. It is worth re-examining the over exaggerated heroic figure of Dutugemunu who waged war against King Elara that Mendis boldly qualifies as “Elala the Just” (p. 100). Further to justify his position, our author quotes the Dipavamsa, which records Elala (or Elara) avoided the four evil paths of lust, hatred, fear and ignorance and that “this incomparable monarch reigned righteously.” Even the Mahavamsa (XXI, 21-26), which is partial to Dutugemunu, says: “When the king, who was a protector of tradition, albeit he knew not the peerless virtues of the most precious of the three gems, was going (once) to the Cetiya-mountain to invite the brotherhood of bhikkhus, he paused, as he arrived upon a car, with the point of the yoke on the wagon, an injury to the thupa of the Conqueror at a (certain) spot. The ministers said to him: ‘King, the thupa has been injured by thee’. Though this had come to pass without his intending it, yet the king leaped from his car and flung himself down upon the road with the words: ‘Sever my head also (from the trunk) with the wheel.’ They answered him: ‘Injury to another does our Master in no wise allow; make thy peace (with the bhikkhus) by restoring the thupa’ and in order to place (anew) the fifteen stones that had been broken off he spent just fifteen thousand kahapanas.”
Having praised the noble qualities of the pious and old Elara, it was not easy for the author of the Mahavamsa (XXV, 67-70) to turn him into an enemy of the people in the face of the young and ambitious King Dutugemunu. The easiest way to make him a hero is to have him proclaim to the sound of the drum: ‘No one but me will kill Elara’. It was an easy fight for the young king, who threw his dart at the elderly Elara, who must have been at least 65 at the time. The duel between Dutthagamani and Elara has been greatly exaggerated in history books and films. An 18th-century painting by the Maharajalena of the Raja Maha Viharaya in Dambulla vividly depicts the scene (Figs. 2 A & B). The elderly Elara is depicted as a young man (Fig. 2 B). At Wat Pho, a complex of Buddhist temples in the Phra Nakhon district of Bangkok, also known as the Temple of the Reclining Buddha, where scenes from the Mahavamsa are painted on the walls, the confrontation between the armies of Dutthagamani and Elara takes centre stage. (Fig. 3).
The question arises in our mind, why Sri Lankan historians, story tellers, movies directors, and above all politicians made Elara the enemy of the people. Reverend Walpola Rahula in his book History of Buddhism from the 3rd century BC to the 10th century AD, published in 1956 (p. 79- 89) correctly points out: “The entire Sinhalese race was united under the banner of the young Gamini. This was the beginning of nationalism among the Sinhalese. It was a new race with healthy young blood, organized under the new order of Buddhism. A kind of religio-nationalism, which almost amounted to fanaticism, roused the whole Sinhalese people. A non-Buddhist was not regarded as a human being. … Thus orthodox religious opinion encouraged Buddhist nationalism.”
Reverend Walpola Rahula refers to the episode where, after the defeat of Elara, the victorious Dutugemunu repented for the destruction of several thousand human lives. When the arahants in Piyangudipa knew his thought they sent eight arahants to comfort the king. King then questions the arahants: ‘How shall there be any comfort for me, O venerable sirs, since by me was caused the slaughter of a great host numbering millions?” to which arahants reply: “From this deed arises no hindrance in thy way to heaven. Only one and a half human beings have been slain here by thee, O lord of men. The one had come unto the (three) refuges, the other had taken on himself the five precepts. Unbelievers (micchâditthi) and men of evil life (dussîlâ) were the rest, not more to be esteemed than beasts (pasusamâ). But as for thee, thou wilt bring glory to the doctrine of the Buddha in manifold ways; therefore cast away care from thy heart, O ruler of men!’” Mahavamsa, XXV, 103-111. As the late eminent Sri Lankan scholar, Gananath Obeyesekere in his book Dutthagamani (Dutthagamani): The Buddhist conscience of a warrior king correctly says: “The troubled conscience of the king, however, has been a troublesome one for Buddhists, and especially for monks.”
The death of “Elala the Saint” as Chinthaka Mendis calls him justly, “Dutugemunu was not well in Anuradhapura” (p. 163), because “the inhabitants of metropolitan Anuradhapura were outraged at the killing of their just and benevolent monarch, Elala.” To win the popularity of the outraged inhabitants of Anuradhapura, Dutugemunu, who has killed a saint, has only one choice, and Mendis makes it very clear: “It was decided that the best option was for Dutu Gemunu to show solidarity with the people and to honour his fallen rival. It would be an unprecedented act of chivalry that would instantly and permanently enhance Dutu Gemunu’s prestige and popularity as a virtuous and magnanimous conqueror” (Chapter 23, p. 164).
It goes without saying that I fully share our author’s opinion, which no other historian before him has had the intelligence and courage to formulate in such clear terms. Chinthaka Mendis has therefore examined, with scientific equilibrium, the hidden history of Dutugemunu, which has been deliberately fabricated by nationalist historians.
Although it is impossible to review all the other interesting and important chapters of Chinthaka Mendis’ ‘An Invisible History of Early Sri Lanka’, I thought, it was nevertheless worth mentioning their content and showing how his approach differs from that of other historians. The death of King Dutugemunu after a long reign of 24 years, but leaving behind unfinished projects, led to a political crisis. More than his own two sons, Saliya and Siva, who has gone unnoticed in the historical records, Saddha Tissa, King Dutugemunu’s younger brother, once his worst enemy, became the King of Lanka, and his sons and grandsons assumed the throne of the kingdom. Mendis provides a detailed overview of the history of Sri Lanka under the ‘Second Dynasty’, which reigned for over two hundred years. This history is marked by civil wars, assassinations, rebellion, foreign invasions, drought and famine, and many other events that are well analysed by our author, who places them in the context of historical developments in other countries beyond Sri Lanka.
Mendis devotes the final chapters of his book to discuss the reign of King Kashyapa one of the controversial kings of Sri Lankan history. This story begins with the reunification of the island by King Dhatusena, Kashyapa’s father. Dhatusena proclaimed himself king and by defeating Pithiya, the last of the ‘Six Dravidian’ and reunified the country. As our author rightly points out, Sri Lanka became a major player in international trade under his reign. According to the story revealed in the Cûlavamsa, Kashyapa killed his own father and became king. For this reason, he was not appreciated by the Buddhist clergy and the chroniclers do not give much information about him and his reign. The chronicle only states: “But as he was unable to slay his brother, he betook himself through fear to Sihagiriya which was difficult of ascent for human beings. He cleared the land about, surrounded it with a wall and built a staircase in the form of a lion. Thence it took its name (Sihagiri). He collected treasures and kept them there well protected and for the riches kept by him he set guards at different places. Then he built there a fine palace, worthy to behold, like another Alakamanada and dwelt there like (the god) Kuvera”. The lack of textual and epigraphic evidence about Kashyapa’s reign and of information about the Sigiriya complex, which can be seen as the abode of a god-king built in a magnificent location, a steep-sided natural escarpment skilfully integrating geometric gardens and palaces to impressive effect, has prompted scholars and art lovers to come up with sometimes convincing hypotheses and sometimes hilariously speculative interpretations. Mendis, aware of these interpretations, takes us on an illuminating tour of this magnificent creation, unique in the world.
Chinthaka Mendis’s historical approach is not that of a religious nationalist, but that of an impartial and scientific analyst. Our country desperately needs historians of his calibre. I can only congratulate him and encourage him to continue writing.
Prof. Osmund Bopearachchi is a Corresponding Member of the French Academy of Inscriptions and Belles-Lettres, and is the Emeritus Director of Research of the French National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS-ENS), Paris. He is a numismatist, art historian, and archaeologist, and former Professor of the University of California, Berkley and Visiting Professor and Member of the Doctoral School of the Paris-Sorbonne University. He holds a B.A. from the University of Kelaniya and a B.A. Honours, M.A., M.Phil., and Ph.D. from the Paris 1 Sorbonne University, and a Higher Doctorate (Habilitation) from the Paris 4 Sorbonne University. The French Academy of Inscriptions and Belles-Lettres has honored five of his books with prestigious awards, including the distinguished George Perrot Medal. In 2006 the French government honored his career achievements with the L’ordre des Palmes Académiques (“Order of Academic Palms”).
