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| Sunday, 9 November 2003 |
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Continuing: Racism and the peace process Sinhalese settled in Jaffna before Tamils by D. G. A. Perera When the Portuguese arrived here, the King of Kotte was titled the Emperor of Ceylon, for there were 15 such 'kinglets' under him, according to the historian Fernao de Queyroz. He says that the tribute of elephants was embarked on ships at a place called Quaes (de elephas) or the Quay of Elephants. He has also recorded that the Dutchmen who came after them, named the place "Kayts" which is a corruption of Portuguese Quaes for 'Quay.' Now, the point of this whole diversion is to emphasise one thing. If Dr. Vadivale wants to say that the Tamils who he insists had lived here before the arrival of Vijaya, were not the subhuman Vedars, named by Tamil writers, he would have to face a worse quandary than before. For then he must admit they were the Nagas, who were only animals! Dr. Vadivale does not also say where he picked up the story that there were no Sinhala people before the 8th century. He does not even say how Tamil Hindus could have lived here 'in the hoary past' when they had not come under the civilising Hindu influence until after the beginning of the Christian era. By then, the Sinhala people had already passed through five centuries of an Aryanized Buddhist Civilisation. The Sinhala people had already built the tallest skyscraper (Lova Maha Prasada) and stupendous monuments like the Ruvanveliseya and the Abayagiri Dagaba. Does Dr. Vadivale claim that these too were the works of Tamils? By then the Sinhala language had developed to such a high degree that the commentaries explaining the abstruse points in Buddhist philosophy of the Pali Cannon were already written down in the Sihalatthakatha. They remained written in Sinhala-only, until Buddhaghosa arrived here from India in the 5th century AC, to translate them into the Pali language for international convenience. It was the Buddhist monks and Jaina ascetics who brought down the art of writing to South India before the beginning of the Christian era. The Indian historian Prof. A. L. Basham says, "the Dravidian South first began to appear in the light of history" after about 150 AC when Rudradaman was ruling in Rajasthan. That was six and a half centuries after the establishment of the Sinhala Kingdom in Sri Lanka. "The earliest stratum of Tamil Literature" was composed only after the beginning of the Christian era. The evidence from that Tamil literature is as follows: "Their kings, and many lesser chieftains who are also mentioned, seem to have been more bloodthirsty than those of the North, and the literature contains hints of massacres and other atrocities such as are rarely heard of in Sanskrit literature; one passage even suggests cannibal feasts after battle. The ancient Tamil, by no means perfectly Aryanized, was a man of very different stamp from his gentle and thoughtful descendant. Wild, ruthless, delighting in war and drink, worshipping fierce (non Hindu) gods with bacchanalian dances, passionate in love, he compares strikingly (different) with the grave and knightly warriors of the Sanskrit epics... a streak of ruthlessness and disregard for individual life is evident in the Dravidian character down to the fall of the Vijayanagara" (The Wonder that was India p.63). That was the relative degree of the development of Tamil and Sinhala cultures during the early centuries of the Christian era. C.E. Godakumbura and Senerat Paranavitana, who have been misquoted by Dr. Vadivale, say that the origins of Sinhala poetry could be traced to inscriptions dating back to the 1st century BC (Sinhala Literature p.137 and JRASC XXXVL). Therefore when he refers to the 8th century, Dr. Vadivale seems to be confusing the late development of Tamil culture with the fully developed Sinhala culture that had passed through period of 1300 years progress by that time. If this had been the case with south India by the 1st century AC when Hinduism had not taken a firm root there, it would be hard to believe that Tamils had five "Iswarams of Siva" in Sri Lanka before the 5th Century BC as Dr. Vadivale avers. In any case, Saivism came to the fore in Hindu worship, very much later. The worship of Brahma and Vishnu preceded that stage. Siva is hardly mentioned in 5th century BC. That is why Vishnu, and not Siva, was proclaimed as the guardian of the Buddhist religion in Sri Lanka from the earliest times. Sinhala people became conscious of their ethnic identity only after the advent of the Portuguese marauders in search of booty. For half a century after that too there was no resentment against the Tamils until the middle of the 16th century when Tamil racism rose its head with the ethnic cleansing of the Jaffna peninsula to get rid of Sinhala folk who lived there ever since the 5th century BC. This lack of race consciousness among the Sinhala people was due to the following reasons. The Buddha was the first great leader in history to assert quite emphatically that all humanity belongs to one species, (while Dr. Vadivale believes it is otherwise). The UNESCO publication on Buddhism and the Race Question (p.30) makes this clear: "according to the Buddha, there are no distinguishing characteristics of genus and species among men, unlike in the case of grasses, trees, moths, beasts, birds etc. As Chalmers says: 'Herein, Gotama was in accord with the conclusions of modern biologists.' Sena and Guttika were the first outsiders to usurp the Sri Lankan throne and reign for 22 years. Elala came afterwards and reigned for 44 years. But in recording history the Sinhala people did not look down upon them on racist grounds. In fact the Mahavamsa and the Dipavamsa say that they "justly ruled" the country (rajjam dhammena karayum), although they were not Buddhists. King Dutugemunu's injunction (in 137 BC) that no one should ride on a chariot or go in a palanquin when he passed Elala's tomb, was honoured right up to the beginning of the British Period, when it was so difficult even to locate the place. This shows that from very ancient times the Sinhala people have not been racist in outlook and that they have been fair even to their enemies, (or as Geiger has put it), to 'the mortal foes of the Aryan race.' Though it has been said that these early invaders were Damilas it has been pointed out that they could not have come from South India. One reason for this is that their names are north Indian and not Tamil. Furthermore the Sena and Guttika were engaged in the horse trade while south India was also not a place known for breeding horses. That honour goes to the Sindh region in Northwest India famous for breeding and exporting "Saindhava" horses. South India was so primitively backward at this time that even Emperor Asoka did not send missionaries there. The 'autochthonous' people of South India as well as Sri Lanka had still not learnt the use of metals before the advent of Indo Aryan, and later the Dravidian, cultures that brought civilising influences to the region. Both these advanced cultures seem to have come from the same region of Northwest India. But the Aryan influence that brought the Sinhala culture into being, came to this island several centuries (six and a half according to Professor Basham) before Dravidian influence came to South India to civilize the primitive tribes who were living there, some of whom came to be known as Tamils thereafter. Fr. S. G. Perera, S. J., says: "In the 16th century the Kingdom of Jaffna was inhabited by Tamils who had come to the island as conquerors or settlers. Before that it was peopled by Buddhist Sinhalese as shown by the recently discovered remains of viharas and dagabas and the large number of Tamulicised Sinhalese place names" (History of Ceylon for Schools, 1931, p.2) Dr. Vadivale tries to maintain that Fr. Gnanaprakasar supports his racist claims. But here is a quotation from Fr. Gnanaprakasar, with chapter and verse cited to prove that the latter thought otherwise. 'Mr. Horsburgh's article on "Sinhalese Place Names in the Jaffna Peninsula" places beyond doubt the fact of "a Sinhalese occupation of the Jaffna Peninsula antecedent to the Tamil Period." (Fr. S. Gnanaprakasar O.M.I., Ceylon Antiquary Vol. II, Part III of January 1917 page 167). Another authority who wrote a book to establish a stake for the Tamils in the Jaffna Peninsula was Mudaliyar C. Rasanayagam. But he too had to admit that Sinhala people occupied Jaffna Peninsula before the Tamils began to arrive there after the 13th century. Here are some of the reasons he gives to substantiate that fact: "That Jaffna was occupied by the Sinhalese earlier than by Tamils is seen not only in the place names of Jaffna, but also in some of the habits and customs of the people. The system of branding cattle with the communal brand, by which not only the caste but also the family of the owner could be traced, was peculiarly Sinhalese. The fact that the Kovias, Tanakaras and Nalavars were originally Sinhalese can be seen from the peculiar dress of their women who wear the inner end of their cloth over the shoulders (Kandyan Osariya style) in a manner quite strange to the genuine Tamils" (Ancient Jaffna pp.383,384). It is difficult to believe that Dr. Vadivale is so obtuse as to be unaware of these facts that his own fellow Tamils have come out with, against the wild views he has put forward in his article. It is a long-standing mistake in the translation of a verse in the Mahavamsa (ch.7v.49) that has led to the misunderstanding that King Vijaya sent for a princess to be his queen from "Southern Madura." Southern Madura in the Pandya region simply did not exist at that time. This is apparently the reason why Nilakanta Sastri, the South Indian historian calls these references as "the early quasi-legendary connection" between Sri Lanka and South India (UCHC p.344). Perhaps the earliest reference to Southern Madura is in the inscription of Parantaka I in 910 AC, where he styles himself the 'Captor of Madura'. Even there the place is only called 'Madurai-konda,' which translates to "The Sweet-water Pond." (The same meaning is found in the place name Madura Madu in the Puttalam District). In a lecture given at the Royal Asiatic Society, the present writer has explained in more detail how this mistranslation of the Mahavamsa had occurred. But it suffices to say here that the Pali word 'dakkhinam' has the ambivalent meaning of both 'noble gift' and 'south.' So what was to be taken as the statement that Prince Vijaya sent a 'noble gift' by envoys to Madura (in North India) has been misunderstood as 'sent envoys to dakkhina Madura' which was not in existence at the time. It is easy to see where the real Madura was, in a Historical Map of India, close to Sialkot, in what is Pakistan today, please note that this is another bit of original and creative thinking that may soon be plagiarised again. The Rama and Ravana episode is another story that has been evoked by Dr. Vadivale for his purposes. He ascribes it to 420 BC when it is well known that its author Valmiki could not have lived before the 2nd century BC, judging from the style of Sanskrit used in the early parts of that document. Valmiki also claims to have personally associated Rama and his wife Sita. This would also mean Ravana had to be a King of Lanka during the same historical period. But recorded history does not support such a possibility. Again, Basham the historian has called this bluff. He has shown that the Ramayana is a work of fiction by Valmiki, who drew his plot and characters from the Dasaratha Jataka and the Valahassa Jataka of the Buddhists. The fact that he took the character of god Rama, from Buddhist Jataka where he is the Bodhisatva, is made more obvious by Valmiki's warning: "Beware of the Buddha, for he is an atheist." It is no surprise that Basham has come to the conclusion that: "The story of Rama's adventures in exile has no historical basis whatever, even if we rationalise his monkey allies into aboriginal tribesmen with monkey totems" (The Wonder that was India p.415. NB: This section has been left out in the Sinhala translation of Basham's book by the Dept. of Cultural Affairs). Dr. Vadivale's indirect message to the Government is loud and clear. Do not concede any absolute powers to a minority group. They are not going to be satisfied with that alone. They will not rest, until they gain absolute control over the whole island "from the North to the South, East to the West and the Central Highlands." That is the gist of Dr. Vadivale's whole argument. Concluded |
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