Recording history:

Focus on Prof. Suraweera's Rajavaliya

The writer does not pretend to have made a survey of how many countries in the world have a tradition of recording all or most of what happened within their geographical limits over the long passage of time. But that our country has wrapped herself in such a tradition is a well-known fact, with the kings themselves in the midst of a very busy life acting as catalysts.

How these recordings survived the ordeal of trials and traumas orchestrated by Father Time and so retrieved, in part or fully, finally came to us to, is told briefly here.

The introduction of Buddhism no doubt signalled the start of this trend, the Dipavamsa and Mahavamsa leading the grand procession of its annals. Strangely, or not so strangely these books had as their linguistic medium, the Pali language, the medium of Buddhist literature.

Even the content of these two were biased towards religion. Thus we have at the outset accounts of the three visits of the Buddha to the island, the three councils and the establishment of Buddhism here. The line of kings is given beginning with Vijaya.

History

Other than these there are the particular recording events of historical interest, the most outstanding of which is the Punnapoththaka (Book of meritorious deeds) that records the great deeds of King Dutugemunu. The Mahavamsa itself makes a record of it insinuating the great importance it had earned. The king wanted it read as he lay awaiting the exit.

“He forthwith commended that the book of meritorious deeds be brought and he bade the scribe read it aloud.” Here again is history recorded. This recording of history on motivation by kings seems to have gone on and on seeping into later regimes. For example Chulavamsa has a segment that was chronicled by a king;s wish. The king is Vijayabahu I (1055-1110).

“From the time that he was Yuvaraj the wise prince that best of men had 17 years chronicled in writing.” This seems to have been a tradition started by earlier kings, all these conforming to the Chulavamsa.

Other chronicles were Uttaraviharaattakatha and Vamsatthappakasini. However, the two major chronicles, became more famed as Pali chronicles, probably having been rendered to that language, Magadhibhasha, from original Sinhala Basha. No doubt, Magadha rising above proximate kingdom had its language adopted by surrounding smaller states.

Anyway, a whole host of historical writing erupted in the island, in Pali and the native language. Some are translations while others have been written in Sinhala. Pujavaliya, Nikayasanghrahaya, Saddarmalankaraya, Dalada Siritha and Rajaratnakaraya are of this latter genre.

All this (classical Sinhala texts) went on to accumulate into a very rich content, amazingly so, due to the fact that printing was unknown at the time. The miracle of printing entered the island only during the Dutch period of course initially for proselytising purposes. The Bible was the first to be tackled. Till then all the scribe work was done laboriously on Ola manuscripts. This elevates the role played by our editors as Prof. A.V. Suraweera who when editing books as Rajavaliya and Alakeswara Yuddaya that takes the line of kings upto Vimaladharmasuriya II had to go through several manuscripts.

In “The Rajavaliya,” 2nd edition (August 2004) has tables these manuscripts that were referred to Rajavaliya - 6 mss.Rajavalliya - 6 mss, Rajavalli pota - ms.. Rajavanli pota - 1 ms. Rajavaliye potha - 1ms Rajavalliye pota - 1 ms, Maharajavaliya - 1 ms, Maharajavaliya - 1 ms. (note the slight deviations in spelling).

Author

Who was the initial author? Again it is difficult to guess. Even the religion of the author poses a problem. Was he a Buddhist or a Roman Catholic as this statement points to. “In the year 1552 of our Lord Jesus Christ and by the power of God.”

Further one mss. Almost deliberately omits a passage that vilifies king Bhuvanekabahu as one who did immense damage to Buddhism by counting the patronage of the Portuguese. It is indeed a stark truism but the author does not want to burn his fingers.

Sinhala writers paying obeisance to a Christian god is a novelty but remember the book had been written in the early years of the 16th century when the few erudite writers lived under the shadow of the newly established foreign regime. Alagiyawanna Mukaveti and Hissalle Dharmadvaja, once fervent Buddhists who offered their books to the triple gem, did so. Considering the turbulence of the time it is a wonder that they wrote at all and so the few who did so to please the rulers playing this hypocritical double game to survive.

But the recording of the island's history had to go on and so it. No Sinhala monarchy existed to carry the works on elephant's backs and herald them but instead the manuscripts lay hidden here and there in temples and houses to be rescued by those belonging to mini-renaissance period.

The Mahavamsa itself was rescued by a European from a temple in the South and we will come back to Rajavaliya again to trace the fate of these strewn manuscripts.

The manuscripts had been found found in the possession of Mudaliyar Lewis Soyza, Wijesekera Jayatileka and a concerned journalist A.D.A. Wijesinghe published of the local magazine Gnanadarshaya found it and serialised it in three annual magazines (1909-1911). These are heroic professionals groping in the dark.

Prof. Suraweera says that he used these and three other ola books and of course the Alakeswara Yuddhaya to bring out his Sinhala edition that he himself translated into English later. Telling a tale is less an onerous task than preserving these tales in written form through thick and thin which is certainly an intellectually challenging job.

We have to be thankful to scholars such as Dr. H.A.P. Abeywardena for unearthing many a book and document of this nature especially from the Kegalle area where he worked in an administrative capacity. The love for one's country and its academic heritage simply shines through the red tape of bureaucracy.