Who is Chandre Dharmawardana?

A response to ‘What to do with Dharshanie Ratnawalli?’

Published in my column in The Nation on January 27, 2013 

By Darshanie Ratnawalli

I view with extreme concern Dr. Dharmawardana’s efforts to extricate himself from a past indiscretion. This was committed when he confided to Dr. Michael Roberts in an email note that the inscriptions of Lanka in the second century B.C. are really not Sinhala or Tamil and that the utmost that can be claimed was that a betting man would be justified in placing the odds on Sinhala because the Prakrit is close to Pali. This was the gist of the part of his email note, which by reason of its extraordinary asininity impressed me. It goes;

“I personally think there were no Damila or Sinhala in the 2nd century BC. The inscriptions are really not Sinhala or Tamil. The Sinhala has an advantage because the Prakrit is close to Pali, but I personally think the ethnic distinctions came up probably after wars of Dutugamunu…”

The lexical definition of asinine is ‘failing to exercise intelligence or judgment; ridiculously below average rationality’. A more asinine statement than the above cannot be imagined, unless it’s the following written by Chandre to excuse the above.

“This is not a statement of linguistic history, but a judgment about the onset of ethnic consciousness.”

It is indeed a statement on linguistic history. ‘The inscriptions are really not Sinhala or Tamil. The Sinhala has an advantage because the Prakrit is close to Pali…’ brings it firmly into the ambit of linguistic history. The primary purpose of the statement is to declare a personal belief that in the second century B.C. there were no ethnic distinctions, no ethnic labels. While this personal belief represents a new height of asininity, it was not (and is not, even now) my intention to deal with it (It demands its own separate space). My intention was to pass lightly over it and batten down on the real treasure; which is the appalling gap in Chandre’s knowledge about the language of the 2nd century B.C. inscriptions. ‘The Inscriptions are really not Sinhala or Tamil. The Sinhala has an advantage because the Prakrit is close to Pali....’ represents the attempts of a man to fill this knowledge gap with speculation arising from the said personal belief.

Would a man who had heard at least through hearsay, of a Geiger identifying the language of the stone Brahmi inscriptions of Lanka as the oldest form of the Sinhalese language, of a Senarat Paranavithana describing the same inscriptions as being in old Sinhala, of a James W. Gair talking about inscriptions in old Sinhala dating from the early second or late third centuries B.C. of an Iravatham Mahadevan declaring that among the inscribed potsherds found in Tamil Nadu, a small but significant group is in the Sinhala-Prakrit language written in the Early Sinhala-Brahmi script, have written that the inscriptions are really not Sinhala or Tamil? More critically, having said that and upon being exposed, what kind of a man continues to insist that what he said is consistent with what Geiger said? An asinine man. Chandre’s 'The inscriptions are really not Sinhala or Tamil’ is light years from being consistent with Geiger’s ‘The inscriptions are in the oldest form of Sinhalese called Sinhalese Prakrit’. They clash horribly.

I had just remarked in my 9th December 2012 column ‘Language Problem of Speaking Stones’;

“The number of academics in history and related disciplines together with those in unrelated disciplines but dabbling in history out of keen interest, who do not know what language the cave inscriptions of Lanka are written in, would fill a good sized tourist bus. This is a bold surmise based on three clues uncovered during my personal investigations.”

The third clue was none other than this email note from Chandre to Michael. To get permission to use it, I wrote to Michael Roberts first;

“Dear Dr. Roberts following is a note from Chandre D that you sent to me some time ago. In my last article, I talked of 3 clues that led me to believe that people are clueless about the Brahmi inscriptions. This is the third clue. Could you possibly write to Chandre D and get his permission for me to quote the red text as coming from him to illustrate the state of knowledge that exists in the public realm on the language of the Brahmi scripts?”

Here I appended the entire e mail note with the relevant portion marked in red. The whole was then forwarded by Roberts to Dharmawardana with this explanatory note (Cc to me);

“Chandre, I received this note from Darshanie Ratnawalli. Do please respond to her request. I believe both of you will benefit from exchanges of views and research findings. Michael”

The crux of this note, which was the request for the permission was somehow missed by Chandre so I tried again (Cc Roberts);

“Dear Dr. Dharmawardena. I understand that you are busy right now. At this stage, the only assistance I want from you is permission to use the first part of your email note to Dr. Roberts (which he sent to me some time ago) attributing it to you by name, in my next article as an illustrative example of the current state of public awareness on the language of the Brahmi scripts of Lanka. The part of your note I am interested in goes;…I want to clinically dissect the forces that may have resulted in the state of knowledge revealed in the above excerpt from you. May I assume I have your permission to refer to this as a communiqué from you?”

This time I seemed to get through and the rest is history. But after all these explanations, what sort of a man writes; “I was not aware of what Ratnawalli wanted, she gave no clues to it and did not ask for any clarifications… So I was surprised to see a newspaper article!”? An asinine man. .

K. Indrapala; Dancing in front of the Sigiri Mirror Wall

Published in my column in The Nation on September 16, 2012 

By Darshanie Ratnawalli

Sigiri. A rock turned into a sitting lion and a secure palace complex by Kasyapa in the 5th century A.D. After his death, Sigiriya stood abandoned to the forest, the palace complex falling to ruins, desolate but not fully. During the 8th, 9th and 10th centuries A.D., the site became a visitor magnet, drawing the populace in un-orchestrated and indiscriminate flow from all over Lanka. During these centuries, the Mirror Wall of Sigiriya received the collective expressionist compulsion of the island peoples on its finely plastered surface. Because it carries the linguistic, cultural and geographic imprint of the island over three centuries, the Mirror Wall can act as a mirror for K. Indrapala’s 'The Evolution of an Ethnic Identity'. What will it show? A charlatan or a historian?

One of the most crucial missions of 'The Evolution…' is the Othering of the Northern Territory. Establishing that this part of the island was clothed in a different identity from the rest was vital for this lapsed historian in order to sustain a major premise given in his 6th chapter (covering the period from 300 to 900 A.D); that from about 300 BCE, the Sinhala identity was emerging only in the areas ruled by the Anuradhapura kings and the southern parts of Lanka while, “…In the extreme north of the island a different process, culminating in the emergence of a Tamil-speaking group, was taking place at this time…A number of factors were responsible for the strengthening of the Tamil element in northern Sri Lanka in this period. These worked against the northward extension of the process of acculturation that went on in the areas under the direct control of Anuradhapura.”

And so, the dance for the Northern Territory begins. “From about the seventh century, there are references in the Pali chronicle to three territories in the island, in addition to the ancient regions of Rohana and Malaya. These are the Uttara-desa (the Northern Territory), Pacina-desa (the Eastern Territory) and the Dakkhina-desa (the Southern Territory). There is, of course, no way of definitely identifying the geographical extent or boundaries of these territories. They were no doubt vaguely designated areas to the north, east and south of the core of the Anuradhapura kingdom over which the Anuradhapura ruler claimed overlordship.”- (p204). Here, there is a whiff of an insinuation that these were not islandwide territories. However, we know that the Jaffna peninsula was an integral part of the Northern Territory because of 1) the retention in Jaffna of the old Anuradhapura period territorial divisions like Weligama and Maracci-rata (Indrapala: 1965) 2) the occurrence in an area of only about nine hundred square miles covered by this peninsula, of over a thousand Sinhalese place names which have survived in a Tamil garb (Indrapala: 1965, building on Codrington: 1926). A considerable number of these names incidentally, was still clad in their Sinhalese garb in the17th century even after four centuries of Aryachakravarthi rule; as evidenced in ‘Map of Jaffanapatnam countries and islands and dependencies’ accessible online at beeldbank.nationaalarchief.nl/na:col1:dat516410.

“An analysis of the few notices of the Northern Territory in the Pali chronicle indicates that it was an area different from the other territories.”- (p205). An ancient period historian, who is also a reputed research scholar didn’t however have to depend on a few measly notices in the Pali chronicles to come to conclusions about the Northern Territory. These notices (It was a place where rebel princes or aspirants to the throne found ready support, the dispatch of princes to the Northern Territory is hard to find, invading armies from south India landed here, consolidated their position and marched towards Anuradhapura), do not help anyone (except a wishful thinker) to come to conclusions about the linguistic identity of the Northern Territory.

An infinitely richer source was available to Indrapala; voices from the Northern Territory, reaching us across the centuries through the Mirror Wall. K. Indrapala stands indicted for suppressing them. Let’s listen to the Northern Territory or ‘Utur pas’ through the Mirror Wall. (Paranavitana, Sigiri Graffiti)

Verse 15 (dated 8th century by Paranavitana) – “Hail! I am Samanala-bata, an inhabitant of the Northern Province. I wrote this song… (Utur-pas-vasi Samanala-batimi. Me gi limi…)”

276 (8th century) – “The song of Agala-bati, a resident of the Northern Province…”

585 (8th century) – “Hail! I am Sala Sivala who came from the Northern Province…”

288 (9th century) – “I am Gunakara (of) Ambgam-kuli (in the) Northern Provice…”

450 (1st half of the 9th century) – “Hail! The song of Agal bati, a resident of the Northern Province…”

141(2nd half of the 9th century) – “This song is of Agboy, a resident of the Northern Province…”

388 (10th century. Among the latest verses on the wall) – “I am… (name unclear) a resident of the Northern Province. I wrote this…”

Except for a single verse (558) in Sanskrit (by two traveler siblings from India) the wall speaks exclusively in a literary Sinhalese, the language of ‘a common literary culture’ (Charles Hallisey: 2003), shared between all the scattered locales represented. Hardly any influence of Pali is evident in this Sinhalese; that of Tamil is altogether absent (Paranavitana, p-clxxv). By reason of its abandoned situation, Sigiriya couldn’t filter out an Other linguistic identity. Such discrimination would have been alien during the first millennium. According to Charles Hallisey, ‘admission to Sigiriya’s “Community” was selective only in the sense that a person had to make the effort to get there…’ The Mirror Wall is democratic; kings, villagers, courtiers, monks, even women are represented while Tamil speakers are conspicuously absent. Although Indrapala:1969 too, excluded Sigiriya from his sights, his extensive researches among Tamil sources nevertheless led him to a parallel conspicuous absence; “…it is worth noting that Ceylon is conspicuously omitted in the list of Tamil-speaking areas included in the Tamil grammar Tolkappiyam, written about the fifth century A.D.” Needless to say this finding is conspicuously absent from Indrapala: 2005.

Hail! I am from the Northern Province. I wrote this…

Published in my column in The Nation on September 02, 2012 

By Darshanie Ratnawalli

“I will erase even the memory of Sparta from the histories…”

- Antagonist dialogue line from the movie 300-

Here is the storyline given in 'The Evolution of an Ethnic Identity'; “The Tamils of Sri Lanka evolved as a second ethnic group. Their evolution was parallel to that of the Sinhalese” (p 31). The start of the evolution goes back to the Early Iron Age (900-300 BC), which was a happening period. During it, ‘the Mesolithic people of the island came under new influences’ (p 56). Prakrit and Dravidian languages accompanied these influences (p147). Prakrit made rapid progress, acting as a lingua franca and unifying the various heterogeneous elements all over the island (p 101,102). The northernmost site offering evidence for unification by Prakrit is Periya-puliyankulam in Vavuniya. To the northeast, it’s Nacciyarmalai. Even Jaffna is represented through a Prakrit record made in Mihintale by a Diparajha (suggested as the ruler of Nagadipa by Paranavithane, with which suggestion Indrapala: 2005 agrees) (p 165).

Representing the diversity of the people being taken under the umbrella of unification by Prakrit are damedas and various groups/clans(of possible Tamil Nadu origin) like the ‘Baratas’, ‘Vel/Velas’, ‘Ayas’ and the people who used the Dravidian kinship term marumakan (changing into marumanaka by the 1st century CE) (p165-169).

Here, I have to interrupt the storyline and insert an explanation that Indrapala does not offer. The Prakrit phenomenon seems to have swept through the island like a whirlwind (or a cancer depending on your perspective), between 300 BC and 1st century CE, with Buddhism running through as the main motif. The evidence for this is the numerous (1234 were published by Paranavithana in Inscriptions of Ceylon Vol 1, some were published later, some remain unpublished) cave inscriptions in the Prakrit language and the Brahmi script, mainly recording donations to the Sangha. Five of these refer to donations by Damedas/Damilas. These are the earliest stone epigraphic records in Sri Lanka. The onset of the phenomenon coincides with the introduction of Buddhism to the Island by Mahinda in 300 BC as recorded by the Pali Chronicles.

The island elites local, foreign, North/South Indian origin seem to have fallen under this strong compulsion to record on stone in Prakrit. That a similar compulsion is not evidenced in Tamil points to a significant direction in the linguistic, cultural evolution of the island.

That they are all in Prakrit, while the contemporary lithic inscriptional record in Tamil Nadu is in old Tamil, marks Sri Lanka’s evolutionary divergence from Tamil Nadu. Despite positing a common cultural region encompassing SL and South India, Indrapala: 2005 lets this slip, in a Freudian way; “…The earliest stone inscriptions in Sri Lanka, datable to about the second century BCE are all in Prakrit. There are, however, traces of Dravidian-language influence in vocabulary and phonology. The earliest stone inscriptions in Tamil Nadu, also datable to the second century BCE, are in Old Tamil but betray influence of Prakrit. The graffiti on potsherds, whose dates have not been precisely determined but which belong to the EHP, are mostly in Prakrit with a few in Tamil as far as Sri Lanka is concerned. On the Tamil Nadu side the potsherd graffiti are mostly in Tamil with a few in Prakrit…”- (p 88-89).

While Indrapala: 2005 rhapsodizes about the unifying effect of the sea between South India and Sri Lanka, telling us that “…before the formation of the states (and even afterwards), people belonging to the same ethnic group would have lived on both sides of the Palk Strait. The IIla (Hela) and the Dameda in such a context, would have been freely moving between south India and Sri Lanka at the time we begin to get written records…”(p144), it’s impossible not to hear the strangled tones of the 1960s Indrapala ghost admonishing 2005 Indrapala; “But there was a difference! Even though freely moving, the same group acted differently on the two sides of the Palk Strait, reflecting the different linguistic climates. Tell this. Tell this..!” At this point, Indrapala of the 2000s would have succeeded in throttling this annoying ghost.

But luckily, he survives in JRAS/1969/Vol. Xiii and tells us that, Damedas in this side indited inscriptions in Prakrit, (the dominant language of the region), mentioning specially that they were Damedas, just like the Helas in the Tamil Nadu side indited inscriptions mostly in old Tamil, making special mention of their name ‘Illa”.

There is a strong parallel between Sigiriya and the Prakrit cave records. Just like the latter represents an expressionist compulsion in the earlier centuries, signifying a particular cultural/linguistic direction, the former represents a compulsion (about seven centuries later), for all Toms, Dicks, Harries and Janes (both elites and not so elites) from all over the island to express themselves in a certain language, once more pointing to a particular cultural/linguistic direction. More next week.

Sinhalese Buddhism, an oozing primordial evil or squeaky modern?

Published (as a severely edited version) in my column in The Nation on August 05, 2012 

By Darshanie Ratnawalli

“The comparative religious tolerance of Lankan kings, their willingness to perform to the sacral expectations of many moral communities, can be dazzling to modern eyes. But it ought not to blind us to the presence of quite other boundaries, often irrelevant or submerged, but summoned to the surface when the relationship between kingship, samgha and people was placed in jeopardy…” Curiously enough the converse of this statement from Alan Strathern: 2007 is also true. These boundaries and their manifestations can blind a certain type of modern eye to the comparative religious tolerance of Lankan pre-modern States, their willingness to cater to the sacral expectations of many moral communities, their cosmopolitan proclivities, their hunger for foreign groups (Vanniyars, South Indian military, commercial, artisan and aristocratic groups, Brahmins, Malays, Kaffirs, Yons, assorted Westerners, etc.) and their readiness to incorporate them en-mass, without homogenizing pressure.

We have then two types of modern blindness exemplified by two modern schools of thought. One, post-orientalism seeks to fill the pre-modern Lankan landscape with fun-zombies metaphorically carrying a surf board (a pre-modern, Lankan version) in one hand and a joint (the pre-modern Lankan version) in the other; who just wanted to chill without worrying about brand identities and boundaries, who, if asked about religious and ethnic consciousness would have answered “huh?”. The other school of thought casts the majority ethno-religious consciousness of Lanka as a persistent, primordial evil, which oozes across the millennia to make the present political, social and cultural landscape inimical to the minorities. Both schools exemplify a debased scholastic tradition, the defining feature of which is the preference of its disciples for naval gazing over serious research.

Post-orientalists credit the colonial British with filling the pre-modern Lankan zombies with brand-defining animus. Post-orientalists themselves are credited with laudable motivations (political correctness, anti chauvinistic zeal) for coming up with this vision. But ultimately, ignorance fails to impress, no matter how many laudable aims it is coupled with. To illustrate the special nature of this ignorance, let me give an example; to show how supremely unimportant religious boundaries were in pre-modern Lanka, post orientalists point to how Anglican missionaries of the early 19th century used Buddhist temples to preach. Then later in the century (they say), religious boundaries sprang up and this innocent past was no more. If post orientalists had been genuine knowledge seekers and willing to delve a little further back, at least into the Portuguese period, they would have found perspective.

There is evidence of equanimity to other religions; “…comments of the Franciscan chronicler Paulo da Trindade, also writing towards the end of Senarat’s reign (1604-35). The Buddhist monks, ‘though they are pagan, they are friendly towards our religious, since they consider them as men of the same profession, especially since, also like us, they go out each day and in great silence beg for alms from door to door.’”- (Strathern 2007). But this evidence co-exists with evidence of strong brand preserving drives, which came to life in critical moments to ensure that vital boundaries were not crossed; “The fate of Dharmapala is a morality tale on what happens to princes…Even the rumour of his conversion in 1551 and his failure to protect the Temple of the Tooth led many of his subjects to defect to Mayadunne. Observing the general flight from Kotte, the viceroy himself reported, “it was said that all this was due to the fact that the pagoda was going to be turned into a church and that the king was becoming a Christian”. A few months after his baptism in 1557, there was a popular riot in Kotte, orchestrated by Buddhist monks, in which his palace was pelted with stones.”- (Strathern: ‘The Conversion of Rulers in Portuguese-Era Sri Lanka’). Then there was Jayavira, the King of Kandy who ‘dallied with the Portuguese in the 1540s’ and was ‘actually baptized in 1546’ but ‘wanted it hushed up “lest his people should kill him”’. “For when news of it did leak out, rioting followed. In order to pacify his subjects he had to spread the story that it had all been a ploy to deceive the Portuguese.”- (ibid)

The defining flaw in post orientalist arguments has been to see pre-modern Lanka as a dazzling Eden covered with culture incorporative, religiously open landmarks without a boundary in sight to announce the ethno religious serpent. But there were boundaries, not all around, high security, electrocuting ones, but placed strategically around certain select spaces; the ‘king space’ for instance. “ ‘Native’ clearly did not then mean of pure indigenous blood, for kings routinely married brides – or were themselves imported- from abroad.”- (Strathern: 2007). Nevertheless “…some sort of symbolic indigenization is generally required of sovereigns or consorts. In Sri Lanka, one way this was expressed was through the transformative ritual of the consecration ceremony in which the Buddhist commitments of kingship were lent heavy emphasis.”- (Ibid).

On the other hand, the defining flaw in the ‘Sinhala Buddhism -an oozing primordial evil’ school is to fester and ooze and turn sour within mental prisons of their own making and not see the dazzling (albeit complex) pre-modern Lankan landscape. They will try to make out that ethnic superiority of the Sinhalese and a fundamentalist Buddhist bhoomiputhrahood were two major pillars of the pre-modern Lankan state, not knowing (or caring) that South Indian lineages were brought over and settled in parts of pre-modern Lanka and functioned as an order/caste, above the Sinhalese Govigama caste. “…though the Vanniyas and Korale Atto now belong to the Govigama caste, a distinction is still observed on occasions of marriage and other social events, the Vanniyas seeking a superior status.”- (D.G.B de Silva: 1996: “Nuvarakalaviye Samaja Sambandhata: 1815-1900”).

Some people are born to be chartered accountants and some are born to be scholars. The former may have difficulty in reconciling to distinctions, gradations and standard defying behavior. The latter are supposed to welcome those and have fun with interpreting them. Post-orientalist and the oozing primordial evil schools mark an interesting cross-pollination between chartered accountancy and scholarship. That’s why they have each settled on two opposite reckoning standards for pre-modern Lanka; an irreligious acultural big easy and a fundamentalist Buddhist bhoomiputhrahood.

Pre-Colonial Sinhala Buddhist Consciousness - Fact or Fiction?

Published in my column in The Nation on July 22, 2012 

By Darshanie Ratnawalli

Is religious rivalry in Sri Lanka a modern thing begotten and sustained by another modern thing; the Sinhala Buddhist consciousness? Or is it an old thing, which owes its genesis to something deeper and older? The latter of course. The former is a 1980s 90s delusion of a particular Ism; Post-orientalism. This school of thought, which traces the genesis of Sinhala Buddhist consciousness to the colonial encounter, has been thoroughly licked. Usually in journalese, one can only say smugly ‘that theory is now totally debunked’. Space issues and complexity usually forbid anything else. But in this case, the debunking has been so data rich that one itches to demonstrate.

The reason rivalry and anti-Other discourse get spotlighted so much in discussions on Sinhala Buddhist consciousness is because they are strong and conclusive evidence of a ‘We-ness’ standing out in a sea of ‘Otherness’. The Buddhistness of the pre-colonial Sinhalese, the post-orientalists have claimed, failed to develop into a distinct brand. A brand’s characteristic pre-occupation with maintaining a distinct identity that sets it apart from other brands, they say, was conspicuously absent. The pre-colonial Buddhism of the Sinhalese, insist the post-orientalists, did not maintain sharply defined boundaries (policed by strict brand custodians with false-belief detectors), between itself and say Saivism.

There indeed was an unusual degree of tolerance. Buddhism has borrowed from and incorporated other belief systems and Hindu deities. Siva and Visnu and an extensive Company of minor gods share venerated space within Buddhist temples. At times, due to Hindu influences, even the way Buddhism was practiced by the Sinhalese was changed in essence, not just in trimmings and trappings. Hindu ritual occupied pride of place in medieval royal courts, Brahmin ‘purohitas’ galore and kings dispensed multi-religious patronage.

The defining failing of post-orientalism is in interpreting all this to be proof of an absence of a Sinhala Buddhist consciousness. To them, the proof of a consciousness lies in sharp Othering and unremitting rivalry. Such a love-fest as the above could only have existed because there was no Sinhala Buddhist consciousness, no such brand as ‘Sinhala Buddhist’ to sustain rivalry.

Post-orientalists have been informed by numerous scholars that if only they’d bother to look, Sinhala Buddhism “often appears to be at once conservative and mutable, defensive and tolerant”-(Alan Strathern:2007) and that “sometimes new religious forms were attacked outright and sometimes they retained an integrity that would tug Sinhalese religiosity in new directions”- (Strathern:2007); that far from being evidence of no consciousness, these are the defining features of this particular consciousness; that far from indicating absence of a brand, these comprise important brand attributes. Post-orientalists have not been able to take this on board because multi-layered reasoning is not their thing.

Into this sea of fuzzy logic, other scholars have sailed with plenty of evidence of rivalry and sharp Othering. ‘They want rivalry? We will give them rivalry’ is the spirit that conclusively broke the back of post orientalism. Rivalry that has its wellspring in one major colonial encounter (with the Colas) in the late Anuradhapura period (latter half of the first millennium) and flows like a river across the centuries (carrying Saivism as its main flotsam) until it comes to the second major colonial encounter (with the western powers) and gets its second cargo of flotsam (Christianity) not as an original burden but strangely fused with the first burden.

Michael Roberts: 2004 informs us “...one should recall that anti-Saivite expressions had entered a range of Sinhala texts intermittently from the late Anuradhapura period onwards (See Sahassavattuppakarana, Saddharmakaraya and Rasavahini …Also Culavamsa…This list is not exhaustive.)” It was Charles Hallisey: 1988 (we are told by Strathern: 2006) who first highlighted the role of anti-Saivite and anti-Brahmanical discourse way back into the first millennium.

Roberts: 2004; “In the folksy poetry of the Budugunalankaraya the god Siva is even presented as “he … who wears a leather garment around his loins, he who holds the maid Uma over half his body, … [and] who burnt Kama’s body to ash.” In depicting the polluted and libidinous character of Saivism, such expressions were designed to render the religion repulsive to Buddhist listeners and readers”. Strathern: 2007 talks more about pre- colonial Sinhala Buddhist boundary erection against its ideological Other;

“Hierarchs wrote denunciations of the insidious influence of bhakti or ridiculed the behavior of Saivite ascetics, notably in the fifteenth-century texts Saddharmalamkaraya, Saddharmaratnavaliya, and Budugunalamkaraya.

The latter, written c. 1470, reveals a world of religious competition between opposing Saivites, Vaisnavas, devotees of Agni, Buddhists and Jains. The great educational centres- the pirivenas –that flourished in Parakramabahu VI’s reign would have prepared their students for inter-religious debate through the comparative study of Brahmanic texts. (We know also that the Brahmajala Sutta, which discusses a wide range of metaphysical positions as a list of 62 false beliefs, was taught at the Karagala monastery of the vanavasi sect in Parakramabahu VI’s time,…) … We can say then that Sinhala Buddhists could have recourse to something like a conception of heresy, if by that we mean a conception of false and even dangerous doctrines that require vigorous denunciation. The suggestion that it was not until the Christian challenges of the nineteenth century that that Buddhism was configured as a ‘religion’ (or ‘a deployable ideological entity’) can therefore mask a long and vibrant history of theological opposition.”

In a sense, it’s on ground primed by R.F. Young and G.S.B. Senanayaka in 1998 that Roberts and Strathern are playing. It was their work ‘The Carpenter-Heretic. A Collection of Buddhist Stories about Christianity from 18th Century Sri Lanka’ ’that irrevocably undermined the assertion, that the kind of Sinhala Buddhist consciousness required to sustain religious rivalry did not arrive until the modern era. These texts of heresy were inscribed in palm leaf in 1762 and emerged from a background of non-textualized lay Buddhism. They inspired Young and Senanayake to come up with their fascinating theory (what I’d like to call the ‘fused flotsam in the river of rivalry theory’). The theology of these texts fuses and merges Christianity and Saivism together, or assimilates Christianity to long-standing tropes defaming and demonizing Saivism. It’s common in these stories for the same characters to crop up in different contexts under different names without losing their identities. One such character is Isvara or Siva who is presented as the fount of all evil. But Isvara also appears as Ispittu or the Holy Spirit. The Christian God and the Saivite god were thus merged. (Roberts: 2004 and Strathern: 2006). In other words, Christianity did not dig this particular trench in this particular ground, merely stepped into a trench already dug.

Even without all this, there were clues that could have alerted the post-orientalists to the possible unsoundness of their theory on sacred space and false belief as modern concepts. Both concepts; mithyadrushti (false belief) as well as Lanka as a sacred space for Buddhism (dhammadeepa) possess wide and ancient currency in Lankan communiqués. There is that striking and famous passage in Pujavaliya, written in the 13th century in a spirit of resurgence and hope after Kalinga Magha’s ravages and which neatly crossed the written- oral divide by being a galloping good read in simple Sinhala (Personal experience. Read it and Saddharmaratnavaliya at 15. A good many of the stories have a delicious earthy sexuality) and passing easily into the repertoire of the illiterati via memorizing during customary read aloud or chanting at religious ceremonies. Here’s the passage;

“This island of Lanka belongs to the Buddha himself. It is like unto a treasury filled with the triple Gem (Buddha, Dhamma, Sangha). Therefore the residence of false believers in this island will never be permanent as that of the demons (yakkhas) of bygone days was not permanent. Even though a non-Buddhist king may some time rule this island by force, his lineage will never be established in this country. This is a special power of the Buddha. Therefore, this island of Lanka is befitting only for the kings of right belief, and their lineal heritage will certainly be established and flourish.”

- (Translated in Walpola Rahula: 1974.)