The East meets the West

Now that the most godly dignitary of Rome is about to land on our shores it is pertinent to dwell on the initial Rome - Sri Lankan connection that surprisingly goes back to nearly 2,000 years. Then Rome was one of most powerful of empires and its ships cruised on the bluest of blue oceanic waters on varied errands.

One of these was pursuing errant tax defaulters. No. Lanka falling outside the purview of the Western Roman power was not one of the defaulters. Actually what happened in 45 AD when Chandra Sri Mukha who was ruling the island runs as follows.

One of the ships doing its vigils around the Red Sea got marooned in a Lankan port called Hipporus, the name perhaps attuned to Roman or Greek accent. A German scholar has identified Hipporus as a port city between Puttalam and Mannar and probably sited on the Wayamba coast it had been called Thudamal by the natives.

According to many sources, Chandra Sri Mukha was the king who ruled Lanka at the time. He was of a mental mould utterly different from Rajasinghe Deiyo II who ruled from Kandy in the 17th century.

Do monarchical lines regress mentally? Or perhaps you cannot blame the king but the times were such when the oceans were rife with invaders from the West bent on making the island a mighty military post in the Indian ocean. That explains the very cruel attitude of Rajasinghe 11 to the British captives on the ship Anne.

Captivity

While the elder Knox breathed his last here the son led a miserable life of captivity of 19 years only to get back to freedom ending with the publication of a world famous book, minus prejudices despite the sufferings. It was the true style of a neutral writer.

To come back, 21 centuries earlier, however, the island's ruler played a more merciful and positive role. The king not only entertained the stranded party but also encouraged them to engage in a discourse on this far off land.

A question arises as to what language served as the medium and an answer can be surmised that among the crew were Tamil merchants who while adept in Tamil and Sinhala and Roman languages, acted as trade emissaries.

Today sophisticated and complicated devices are needed for inter-language translations while centuries back goodwill and friendly relations went a long way in materialising the task of inter-communication among races.

That Sri Lanka was well on its way to good diplomatic relations even in the early days is demonstrated by the king sending envoys to Rome following the above episode.

In fact, Sir Emerson Tenant remarks that ancient Sri Lanka had mastered the art of diplomacy and that there were signs that envoys had been sent even to China. Lying in the nexus of East West trade routes, diplomacy and good international relations were essential.

Roman historian

We will now go on to Pliny, the famous Roman historian who died choked by the ashes of Mount Vesuvius.

That debacle we will recount later. In fact, it is Pliny who narrates the above incident of the marooning of the ship too (Secondary source - H.A.J. Hulugalle).

Pliny got his information of our land via the envoys and he was so taken up with the island that he devotes one whole chapter on it in the 6th volume of his saga on foreign lands dubbed Pliny's Natural History.

That the Lankan envoys, in the true style of ambassadorial officers had exaggerated facts is clearly evident from remarks made by Pliny that insinuate that the island was considered a second world by itself. It somehow gets involved even with Alexander the Great's invasions and the exaggerations going on, even its elephants are given an "Out size" and described as larger than Indian elephants!

Pleasant host

This is a general translation of how the stranding of the Roman ship in a Lankan port during the reign of Roman king Claudius is described by Pliny.

"When the Roman tax-collecting ship was cruising around the Red Sea in Arabian waters, it was driven astray for about 15 days from Carmenia and finally ended at Hipporus (in the island of Taprobane). Its king played the role of a pleasant host for six months and was audience to the descriptions the envoys engaged in, about their country.

The account so amazed the king that he decided to send ambassadors to learn more about this just and prosperous Roman Empire".

This friendly encounter is said to have heralded a period of very amicable relations between East and West. In a book Ancient Explorers edited by the London University this fact is said to earn mention. Had this trend continued the very aggressive resumption of East West relations following the arrival of the Portuguese in the East at the dawn of the 16th century could have been averted.

The friendly trend culminated in around 50 AD with an anonymous trader finding a new sea port terminus in south India.

The writer in Pliny made him highly inquisitive too. He probed into much matter on the island which embellished the 6th volume of his voluminous history text. But his untimely death at 55 also was due to his inquisitiveness.

The incident will be related at length as it reflects how fragile human life is. It can tilt at a small stroke and even vanish into limbo.

Thus Pliny died a hero's death, while trying to save this group from the oncoming terror of the furious eruption of Mount Vesuvius, one of the world's major tragedies, levelling it with the Titanic tragedy and our own Peraliya tsunami (2004).

East meets West, Rome meets king Mukha Siva of Taprobane and Pliny from Papacy's own domain was an architect of this link.