A historian who liked admiration too much

Published in my column in The Nation on April 28, 2013 

By Darshanie Ratnawalli

Leslie Gunawardana

Leslie (R A L H) Gunawardana, (not to be confused with Vivien’s husband, Leslie Goonewardena) was a historian specializing in the ancient period (500 BC to 1232 AD) of Sri Lankan history. He was a historical revisionist who aspired for admiration from a certain school and got it. His 1979 essay, “The People of the Lion” was reprinted in the Social Scientists’ Association (1984) and became a guiding star in an enterprise, which sought to deconstruct Nationalist ideologies (almost exclusively on the Sinhala side). This admiration had a potential dark side that could distract its recipient into byways that had dishonesty, suppression and shoddy research as landmarks. And so it came to pass. That Leslie Gunawardana had entered these byways in pursuit of a certain fan base and made these landmarks his pit stops was noticed by his peers.

“Many, though not all, of these post-modern scholars are immersed in the modern…their knowledge of the pre-British period is limited. That is where Leslie Gunawardana’s article has been of critical significance as an empirical foundation for the claims of the post-Orientalists and why it has gone through two reprints and been praised as a ‘master text’ that is marked by its ‘brilliance’ and ‘extraordinary comprehensiveness’... Such unqualified praise only serves to highlight the glaring deficiencies of empirical knowledge among the eulogists and marks an inability to discern the serious flaws in the middle segment of Gunawardana’s essay.”

- (Michael Roberts: 2003:8).

Among these serious flaws in ‘The People of the Lion’ (1979, 1984, 1990) was what could be termed Gunawardana’s Watergate or his Waterloo. He contested the conventional opinion that the term Sihala was used from the outset to refer to the generality of people in the island as well to its ruling elite. He claimed that ‘Sihala’ had extended its coverage from the ruling dynasty to the masses only by about the year 1200. From 1979 to 1992, as Leslie was collecting accolades and going from strength to strength his nemesis lay dormant among the pages of a 900 AD work called Dhampiya Atuva Gatapadaya.

Eerily, as if it had been waiting for a 1000 years to reply to someone like Leslie (perhaps it had), Dhampiya Atuva Gatapadaya gave chapter and verse of Sihala.

“How is (the term) “in the helu language” derived? That is derived on account of residents in the island being helu. How is it that (they) are (called) hela? Having killed a lion, King Sihabahu was called Sihala (as in the Pali phrase) “Sihala on account of having cut (or killed) a (or the) lion.” On account of being his progeny (ohu daru bavin), Prince Vida (Vijaya) was called Sihala. Others came to be called Sihala on account of being their retinue (evuhu pirivara bavin)”

In 1992, Dhampiya Atuva Gatapdaya found a modern outlet to confront Leslie Gunawardana: K.N. O Dharmadasa: 'The People of the Lion': Ethnic Identity, Ideology and Historical Revisionism in Contemporary Sri Lanka, Ethnic Studies Report, Vol. 10.

Let’s dissect one more error, to which Leslie had been led in pursuit of admiration. Pali is a basic requirement for any ancient period historian because it opens up doors to knowledge. Pali is also a Prakrit and a middle Indo Aryan dialect like Sinhalese Prakrit, the language of the prolific lithic Brahmi inscriptional record of Sri Lanka. A man who knows Pali is on a firm footing for deciphering these inscriptions.

To confront Leslie Gunawardana’s error, we have to go back to “The Sanskrit word ārya, first occurring in the ancient Indian text Rigveda some 3500 years ago (and related to the word airiya in the contemporary Iranian text Avesta)...”- (Indrapala: The Evolution: 108). In the Rigveda, Ārya is used for a people. “...the evidence in the Rigveda, acclaimed to be the oldest text in any Indo-European language, wherein we find that the people who composed and used the Rigvedic hymns were the Ārya.”- (ibid: 109). There are “references in the Rigveda to the ‘fair-skinned’ Āryans who fought with the ‘dark-skinned’ Dāsas”.-(ibid: 110).

These Āryans apparently did a great job of positioning their brand and built such brand equity that ‘Ārya’ became a byword throughout the Indian subcontinent, synonymous with all that was highest and the noblest. In this sense, almost a millennium after the Rigveda, the word entered the language of Buddhism, a non-racial supremacist religion and gave us the ‘ariya ashtangika margaya’. ‘Ariya’ in Pali is the diaeretic form of the Vedic ārya. See the entry for ‘Ariya’ in the Pali Text Society’s Pali-English dictionary, which gives the racial, social and ethical connotations of the word.

Now we come to the interesting part. The other Pali forms of ‘ariya’ are ‘ayya’ and ‘ayira’. ‘Ayya’ is the contracted (assimilation) form and means gentleman, sire, lord, master, a polite form of address like Sir, milord; amhākaŋ ayyo our worthy Sir. These Prakrit forms of Ārya travelled from the North to Sri Lanka and South India.

“... the most notable linguistic development in north India after the period of Vedic Sanskrit and other Old Indo-Aryan dialects is the emergence of the Prakrits or the Middle Indo-Aryan dialects...It was not Classical Sanskrit but these Prakrit languages that played an important part in the economic and cultural developments of the first millennium BCE... Pali, the most archaic literary Prakrit, became the language of the Buddhist canon, while another literary Prakrit generally known as Arddha-Magadhi became the language of the Jaina canon. It was the Prakrits of the long-distance traders and the Middle Indo-Aryan literary dialects of the Buddhist and Jaina monks that spread to the SISL region in the EIA (900-300 BCE) bringing new influences from the north.”

- (Indrapala: 116).

The Prakrit title deriving from Ārya was prominent in the 2nd century BC social formation of Lanka. ‘Ayya’, the Pali form is used in the Mahavamsa for some of the 2nd century BC nobility. “Now in Kalyani the ruler was named Tissa. His younger brother named Ayya-Uttika, who had roused the wrath (of Tissa) in that he was the guilty lover of the queen, fled thence…”- (Mhv, xxii. 13-22: trn. Geiger). The Sinhalese Prakrit lithic inscriptions are strewn with the title ‘aya’, the Sinhalese Prakrit form. Abi Savera, whom Paranavitana identifies with Vihara Maha Devi was the daughter of Maha Tisa and wife of Aya Tisa and entered the lithic record by dedicating caves in Kotadamuhela in Yala to the sangha.

This Ārya connection survives to date in ‘Ayya’ (elder brother) in Sinhala and interestingly also in Tamil. Which perhaps is not so interesting considering.

The Brahmi script was brought to the Tamil region by the Jainas and Buddhists in the post-Asokan period. The Jainas and Buddhists also fostered the Tamil language and authored some of the most remarkable literary works, above all the two epics - Silappatikaram andManimekalai. Even Tolkappiyam and many of the 18 didactic works, including the Tirukkural, are often assigned to Jaina authorship. There is a significant influence of Jain Ardhamagadhi - and not of Asokan Prakrit - in old Tamil, the language of Tamil-Brahmi inscriptions of Tamil Nadu. Also consider the number of Indo-Aryan loan words - mainly Prakrit loan words - derived from standard epigraphic Prakrit, in old Tamil. They are all nouns - names, religious and cultural terms. Some are derived from Jain Ardhamagadhi and interestingly also from Simhala-Prakrit. - (R. Champakalakshmi ).

Yet, Leslie Gunawardana was “… inclined to take the term ‘aya’, the occurrence of which is very widespread in the Brahmi inscriptions, as a ‘word of Tamil derivation which had the same meaning as Rajha and Gamani’”- (Indrapala: 152). How this inclination was born, whether from research laziness, a shaky foundation in Pali and other Prakrits or from an irresistible yen for admiration, we will never know. But what about Indrapala who quotes Leslie on this? His comment is; “The word ayya in Tamil and Sinhalese (as well in other Dravidian languages like Telugu), denoting ‘elder brother’, may well have originally meant ‘leader’ (the older brother as the leader of the younger siblings). It is also still used in Tamil and Telugu as an honorific form of address in the same way as ‘sir’ in English.” (ibid: 363: en12). This is one of the saddest examples of incompetence that I have seen in a couple of accredited historians.

History, Historians and the dustbins of History

Published in my column in The Nation on September 30, 2012 

By Darshanie Ratnawalli

The DPhil (Oxon.) who lent me his copy of ‘The Evolution of an Ethnic Identity’ by K.Indrapala had written with a scornful pen on the last page of the preface; “So: Indrapala is NOT a charlatan, a political animal. Indrapala seeks intellectual rigour.” This is the impression the author seeks to create by marshalling, in his preface and introduction, a colourful arsenal of invective against historians who slip up. These ‘charlatans and pseudo scholars’ we are told, are ‘political animals’ who ‘have not only compromised the very fundamentals of intellectual decency but are now in the process of subverting the study of history for personal ends and political expediency’. ‘Such lumpen intellectuals’ do not ‘want the real past, but only a past that suits their purpose’ and undoubtedly ‘belong in the dustbin of history’. ‘Now, I’, Professor Indrapala seems to say, ‘am above all that’.

But he hasn’t been above all that at all. The real past remains unexplored in ‘The Evolution…’. Even the past that has been explored by the author in 1965 and 1969 is blocked out, not because the findings are out of date or have been superseded by better research, but merely to make way for a past that suits his purpose in 2005. The bitter struggle in ‘The Evolution…’ between the real past and the past that suits the purposes of K. Indrapala of 2005 will inspire many future writers to attain unmatched heights of caustic wit.

What drew me to ‘The Evolution…’ was the following email from Dr. Michael Roberts, sent in response to ‘Communal claims on common land’;

“The use of the Dutch map, supported by Codrington, to reveal the fact that the “traditional homelands” of the Tamils in their heartland were also Sinhala homelands at one stage was both innovative and useful. You should develop the theme further.

But also attend to the “preceding prologue” (and Indrapala’s failures and sleight of hand in this regard.)

1. Given the ancient provenance of Tamil in southern India in the last centuries B.C. and the narrowness of the Palk Strait it is probable that there were Tamil speakers in JP and northwest THEN.

2. But with the development and expansion of the Anuradhapura kingdom from the 1-2nd Century B.C. and especially in the millennium A.D. it is probable that these peoples were Sinhala-cized and absorbed into the demographic majority (though south Indian trading communities emerged newly or remained in Mannar and such places).

3. From memory what I find striking in Indrapala’s work is the ABSENCE OF PROOF THAT TAMIL-SPEAKERS WERE found in JP in the first millennium A.D.; and the total neglect of the indirect evidence from the Sigiiri graffiti. Instead he spends (1) an inordinate amount of time on archeological evidence from the first millennium B.C. – which by its nature says little about linguistic practice and thinking; and (2) Paranavitana bashing –an easy target if you select work from Paranavitana’s lunatic phase.”

The almost staggering scope presented by ‘The Evolution…’ for the exploration of a professional historian’s odyssey from the heights of research acuity to the depths of a lumpen intellectual’s dustbin, remains, as yet, largely unexplored. One person who explored it, was Bandu de Silva (‘History Writing in an Ethnic Debate Environment. Indrapala on Evolution of Tamil Identity’, in The Island). Now on the eve of having a more academic review of ‘The Evolution…’ published in the JRAS, DGB reminisced about the writing of that newspaper article;

“After the article, I had an email from KNO to say that I had done something that our University men do not do. I sent my Newspaper Draft to several historians. None even replied except the late Dr Karl Goonewardene asking me to go ahead. The point is I am no accredited historian though I studied history and taught history at the University of Ceylon for a time. I had to be careful as I was taking on a reputed research scholar. Now I am well equipped to meet Indrapala. I was so annoyed with our historians that I addressed an email circular letter to them…”

“Look, what Sri Lankan historian has written during the past 10 years, except Nira Wickramasinghe? K. M. de Silva had been incapacitated and Leslie Gunawardana died” snapped Michael Roberts to this writer re the silence of the professional historians. Nira Wickramasinghe, of course couldn’t be expected to write on this subject, it being outside her period (which is the British and the modern) and Leslie Gunawardana had his own problems, the most publicized of which was the readiness to assign a late date (12th century A.D.) to the development of the Sinhala identity at the drop of a hat, without doing even the basic home work. ‘Dampiya Atuva Gatapadaya’ a 10th century work setting out the chapter and verse of the Sinhala identity being, literally, a closed book to this ancient period historian was exposed by K. N.O Dharmadasa.

Tales of fusion under a hegemonic umbrella

Published in my column in The Nation on March 4, 2012 
By Darshanie Ratnawalli

Some historians are good people who are ideologically excited by how harmoniously the multicultural motif lies on the landscape of this country’s past. They contemplate the Nayakkar accession to the throne of Sinhale, the medieval incorporation of South Indian immigrants and religious cults and the whole cultural syncretism thing with uncontaminated delight;

“Dravidian influence on Sinhalese society appears quite considerable…The Sinhalese literature of the period, specially works like the Pujavaliya and the Saddharmalankaraya, bear evidence of Tamil influence in so far as Tamil words are identifiable in these works. Indeed certain whole passages in the Dambadeni Asna are more akin to Tamil than to Sinhalese…..A whole range of personal names in use among the Sinhalese such as those which bear the prefix Tenna, Ponna, Alaha and the suffix peruma, koon and the like are distinctly of Tamil origin…….dictum of the sixteenth century Sinhalese poet Alagiyawanna,….a fool he is who has not mastered the Simhala, Tamil, Sanskrit and Pali languages…Throughout the long history of Sri Lanka Buddhism and Hinduism,…coexisted side by side, literally almost, in an atmosphere of harmony and concord. Hindu deities, particularly Siva and Visnu, in addition to an extensive minor pantheon, were housed in the premises of Buddhist temples and continued to be venerated by Buddhists throughout the island. In the medieval Sinhalese court Hindu ritual occupied the pride of place…”

- (A. Liyanagamage, Society State and Religion in Pre-modern Sri Lanka: 106-107)

When they carry on like this it acts as an incitement for other historians to pour some cold water on their euphoria. For, of course, the whole thing is much more layered and a big part of being an adult is being attentive to layers.

You won’t see the cohabitation of Buddhism and Hinduism in pre modern Lanka in its proper perspective unless you viewed it in the contrasting illumination thrown off by the whole ash thing.

“the sangharajjuruvan (Saranankara) and (other) leading monks, having failed in the attempt to preach and persuade the king to give up his heretical practice of anointing himself with ash, declared ‘we cannot sustain the sasana in cooperation with this heretical Tamil,’ and the monks of (the) Malvatte (temple) and radalavaru (“aristocrats”) taking counsel (decided) ‘Let us place some other worthy person as our king…’”

– (Sasanavatirna Varnanawa/K.N.O Dharmadasa 1979).

This ash episode featured in the 1760 rebellion against Kirti Sri Rajasinha, the second king of the Nayakkar lineage . One outcome of the rebellion was that “… the Sangha were reconciled after Kirti Sri gave up his ‘heretical’ practices and continued with added zeal his policy of being the lavish patron of Buddhism…..The king placed the blame for the rebellion upon himself and not only gave up the practice of anointing ash, but went so far as to ban the use of ash in preparation of ola-leaf manuscripts!...”- (K.N.O.-1979).

 Kirti Sri (as well as all the Nayakkar kings) was probably always in a state of dynamic equilibrium between ‘heretical Tamil’ and ‘amhakam sihalindo’ (this is what the author of the late 18th century installment of Culavamsa calls Kirti Sri, meaning ‘our Sihala king’ and ‘our happy, sublime Sihala ruler’), and after getting over the ash hurdle ruthlessly steered the equation towards ‘amhakam sihalindo’. Apparently as a definitive marker of Saivism, ash was a ricocheting, corrosive motif regardless of how many Hindu gods dwelt inside Buddhist temples. It were to surface again in 1815, attached to Sri Wickrama Rajasinha’s Nayakkar relatives who were all “anointing ash and appearing like matured ash-pumpkins” and “having anointed ash like dogs who had lain in (an abandoned) fireplace”-(Kirila Sandesaya/K.N.O 1979).

If you are partial to the incorporation motif present in Lankan history, however you’d like it served, with layers or without, you will always enjoy the Vanniyars. If you are a genuine multicultural fetishist, their story in Lanka will make you writhe in ecstasy. They came;

“It is significant that in the late thirteenth century some of the Sinhala kings appear to have induced a few immigrant chiefs to move across from southern India in order to re-settle specific districts that had been abandoned. The Malavara dignitaries, for instance, are described in one of the documents as having “cleared the jungle when there was no one else” (D G B de Silva 1996: 158, 172-73, 177). The Sinhala kings granted them land rights to these areas or, alternatively, responded to requests for land in this manner. Parakrama Bahu II (1236-70), in particular, pursued a programme of irrigation works and resettlement that attempted to recover the Nuvarakalaviya and Tamankaduva regions so that this migratory influx seems to have been linked with such policies.”

– (Michael Roberts: Sinhala Consciousness in the Kandyan Period: 74).
They fused;

“What language the Vanniyās used; or customs they followed; and private laws they used could have varied according to circumstance; but as Vanni chieftains they had received Sinhalese names on their investiture. They were supported by a hierarchy of local officials in the Rata Sabhās, when they adjudicated over matters concerning violations of local custom including failure to oblige with duties in respect of maintenance of irrigation work and agriculture. Some of them like the Malalas had fully assimilated into the local social and cultural milieu as seen from the positions they held at the Court and outside; one of them as the leading Vanniyā at Kaluvila; and two of them as the prelates of important places of learning. However, one also finds the Vanniyās retaining their original language (as Knox found at Nuvara väva); and some of their laws of succession, (as Hugh Nevill found existing among the chieftains of Hurulla which were similar to those of Malabārs and the Mukkuvās).”

- (D. G.B de Silva 1996: 190-191).
They remained distinctive;

“… Vanniyās formed a single class or caste intermarrying within their families, irrespective of whether they lived in the king’s territory or outside, whatever language they spoke; or what laws and customs they followed, the only exception being the Mukkuvās of Puttalama area and on the eastern coast.”

- (D. G.B:1996: 191).
And they were loyal;

“The “väddan” and “vannilayō” were among the forces of Rājasinha I of Sītāvaka (SH 1999:v.565); and in describing Rājasinha II’s preparations for battle against the Portuguese in the year 1638, for instance, the Rajasiha Hatana describes how he assembled forces from various regions, including

From Ratdala, Kitulāna, Yāla, Panama and Māgampura; from Wellawāya, Pālugama and Tirukkōvila from the Vädipattu and the great harbour of Kottiārama; and from many a land of the famed Vanniyäs.

P E Pieris’ reference to the “King’s Vanniyās,” albeit a passing remark, is in line with this information (1995a: 45).”

- (Roberts: 74-75)