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THE GOD OF ADAM’S PEAK

by

Dr. S. PARANAVITANE

Ex-Commissioner of Archaeology and presently Professor of Archaeology in the Ceylon University. Book published in 1958 by Artibus Asiae Publishers, Aseona, Switzerland.

In the preface of the book the author says that this is a further instalment of the results of his investigation into the religion of the ancient Sinhalese people. He adds: “Should any devotee of the God of Adam’s Peak be perturbed at this being identified with Yama, let me remind them that this deity, the King of Righteousness (Dharma Raja) is good to the good”.

The author says that the mountain has been venerated and written about throughout the centuries not because of its scenic grandeur but due to the reason that an indentation on its summit has been venerated as the footprint of the Buddha by the Buddhists, of Adam’s by the Muslims and of Siva by the Hindus. He recalls the account given in the first chapter of the Mahavamsa of the three legendary visits of the Buddha to Ceylon and narrates how during His first visit, the Mahasumana, the God of the Samankuta mountain (Adam’s Peak) became the first convert of the Buddha. During the third visit to Ceylon undertaken by the Buddha on the invitation of Maniakkhika Naga the King of Kalyani, the Buddha is believed to have left his footprint on the Adam’s Peak for his followers to worship. In 1055-1110 A.D., Vijayabahu is said to have paid homage to the footprint. Nissanka Malla is reported to have made a pilgrimage to the peak in 1187 A.D. A learned Thera named Vedeha in the twelfth century had composed a poem containing 802 stanzas on the Footprint entitled “Samantakuta-Vannama”, a major part of which deals with the career of the Buddha and his three legendary visits to Ceylon. Parakramabahu II, his son Vijayabahu, Viravikrama or Vikramabahu, Rajasinha I, Vimala Dharmasuriya (1707) had all undertaken journeys to the Peak. Rajasinha I (1581-1593) is stated to have handed over the Peak temple to the Saivites and it was returned to the Buddhists during the reign of Kirti Sri Rajasinha (1747 - 1780).

Adam’s Peak is named as Rohuna in ancient Sanskrit works. The name Sivan-oli-padam, according to him, should be of recent origin and no evidence of Saivite worship is there before Rajasinha I who handed the worship of the footprint to the Hindus.

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Mahavamsa named the mountain as Samanakuta, the origin of the name being the abode of the God Samana. The author says that there was reason to believe that Uppalavanna and Samana were Gods worshipped by the Sinhalese when they came from North India to colonise Ceylon in the fifth century B.C. Mention of these Gods is made in the Mahavamsa to reconcile the local belief with the tenets of Buddhism. Samana in Pali, according to him, is Yama in Sanskrit.

The Sabaragamuwa Saman Devale inscription of the 39^th year of Parakramabahu VI (1410-1467) refers to the God of Adam’s Peak as Lakshmana, brother of Rama. The Jinakalamalini, a historical work written in Siam in Pali during the sixteenth century has also indicated that a God named Lakkhana (Lakshmana) is one of the Gods protecting Ceylon. Paranavitane explains that the term Footprint is expressed in Sinhalese as Pada-lasa which it is probable was often pronounced in the abbreviated form of lasa or las. As the God of the Footprint, Saman would have been referred to as Las-Saman – a name which the Brahmins who were placed in charge of the temple during the reign of Parakramabahu VI must have taken as identical with Rama’s brother Lakshmana. The prevalence in Ceylon of the Vibishana cult should have lent colour to it.

Then why the name SRIPADA? Paranavitane justifies it as follows: Sripati is a well-known name for Vishnu in Hindu puranas because he was the husband of Sri or Lakshmi. In the Rajadarma section in the Santhi-parva (Mahabaratha book XII) occurs, according to the author, the following sloka:

Visnor Lelatat Kamalam Suwarnam abbavat tadi

Sri sammbutta Yato devi patni darmasya dhimahi

Sriyat sahalad Arthai ca jata darmena pandava

Artha dar, as sathairvarthath sris ca rejyas prathistatha

The author interprets it as “At that time, a golden lotus came into being from the forehead of Vishnu wherefrom was born the Goddess Sri, the consort of wise Dharma. From Sri, by union with Dharma, O Pandava, was born the Artha. Therefore in kinship are established Dharma as well as Artha and Sri”.

Dharma being the name of Yama, he presumes that at one stage the Goddess Sri should have been the consort of Yama. The Sinhalese Jataka of the fourteenth century identifies the Saman with Yama; thus the God of Adam’s Peak is entitled to the epithet “Sripati”. He cites Hopkins for the view that in an earlier strata of the Sanskrit epics, Sri was not the exclusive wife of Vishnu. He says that an earlier union of Sri with Dharma has persisted in Ceylon while it had been forgotten in India.

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Who are the worshippers of the Footprint?

Footprint is known to have existed on the peak from times immemorial. Since it is agreed among the historians that the Buddha had never left the shores of India and had not even visited South of Vindhyas, it is established that it is not the footprint of the Buddha. Before the arrival of Vijaya, the Vibishana cult was in vogue in Ceylon. Vibishana, according to Hindu mythology, was a devotee of Vishnu’s avatar, Sri Rama. It is probable that the Footprint would have been considered as that of Vishnu from the time of Vibishana or by the ancients who believed in the Godly qualities of Vibishana.

Among the great religions of the world, adherents of no other religion except Vaishnavites – that is the followers of Vishnu – attach importance to Footprint Worship. In every Vishnu temple small or large in any part of the world, the Footprint impression of the presiding deity will be found immediately at the foot of the God and it is placed on the head of the devotee during worship. This sacred object with the Footprint of the God is called Satagopam. There will be no Vishnu temple without it.

Padapuja is an all-important element in all religious ceremonies of the Vaishnavites. Water is sprinkled on the footprint of the sages and the drops held in great esteem swallowed by the pious. This water is called “Sripada Theertham”. Pada Worship had been an exclusive form of worship in vogue among the followers of Vishnu from a very early state of Hinduism.

If one is to believe that the term Sripati has come from the so-called union of Sri with Yama and that Yama was identified with Saman, the argument that Saman was the God of the Footprint and therefore the Peak obtained the name Sripati was wrong. For, Saman had never been held as the God of the Footprint but one who worshipped the Footprint, himself believing that it was the Footprint of the Buddha. Therefore the name Sripati could not have come from this argument. Again the Peak is not called Sripati but Sripadam. Sripadam is very different from Sripati. The whole argument appears to be intended to confuse the reader rather than enlightening him.

Nowhere in Hinduism had Sri been considered as the consort of Yama. Neither was she credited to have been born from the forehead of Vishnu.

Vibishana’s surrender to Rama is pregnant with meaning – surrender at the feet of righteousness. Ramayana relates in detail how Vibishana fell at the foot of Rama and this should have induced him to worship the foot of the Lord rather than his entire self. For it was his act of surrender at the foot of

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Rama that drove evil from Ceylon and gave him the Kingdom. Worship of the Footprint at Adam’s Peak might have begun to symbolise the “Surrender theory” of which the Vaishnavite was the staunch believer more than any other religionists.

Yama was of course a Vedic God but he was never worshipped as such by the Hindus at any time in their long history. Neither Yama nor Indra, Agni, Varuna and Soma had any temple anywhere in India at any time in her history. Modern researches by great thinkers and archaeologists of India did not show the existence of any temple to any of these Gods who were looked upon more as Dik Palakas than Gods. They had the right to receive the offerings, which were in the nature of wages paid for their service of waiting upon the gods in various directions at ceremonial sacrifices. Apart from this they had no temples of their own for habitation.

The theory that Sri was once the consort of Yama and that this fickle woman married Vishnu at a later stage will be ridicules by the Hindu thinkers in India. The obvious attempt to portray that the Sinhalese who migrated to Ceylon were those who practiced the Vedic religion and not Hinduism and that they were pure and unmixed Aryans and therefore the practice of worshipping the Vedic Gods persisted among them will hold no water, as it is well known that the Sinhalese of the pre-Christian era were an admixture of the so-called pure-blooded Aryans and the Dravidians. Vijaya was certainly not a pure-blooded Aryan of Paranavitane’s concept as Vijaya was a contemporary of Buddha and therefore a contemporary of Ajathasathru. The period marks the end of a roughly three thousand years of the Puranic period and the beginning of the historic period. Vedic religion, if at all there was one as such in North India, should have died three thousand years before the birth of Vijaya and the Buddha himself. To maintain that the Vedic Aryans migrated to Ceylon some four thousand years ago with the Vedic Gods and their system of religious practices persisted in Ceylon when Buddhism was introduced and that Yama occupied an important place in the Vedic religion could hold good if there was even a semblance of such notion in India at any time in her long history. If the ancient practices could persist in Ceylon in spite of her vicissitudes in the centuries past with the impact of various cultures, surely, some semblance of it should still persist in some part, at least in the place of the origin of the Vedic cult. While we are able to unearth the Mohenjo-Daro civilisation which is much older than the Vedic civilisation, while we are able to gather enough material to assess the extend of the Dravidian Kingdoms during the three Sangam periods which extend beyond eight to nine thousand years back in the history of human existence, it should have

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surely been possible to have some material to establish the supremacy of Yama in the Hindu Pantheon, if at all it were a fact in the land of the origin of the Vedas.

If Buddha believed in the Vedic Gods and held Yama as the Supreme deity, he should have called him instead of the Sakka to protect Ceylon for the next five thousand years as Mahavamsa declares. Buddha was a born Hindu and knows the Gods of his religion more than Paranavitane. To him Vishnu was Supreme and hence he called the God with Chakra (that is Vishnu) to his assistance. If Saivaism was in power in the North at the time of the Buddha, it would be appropriate to interpret Sakka as Sankara, meaning Lord Siva, the Supreme entity of the Brahma, Vishnu, Siva triumvirate.

Paranavitane’s concluding paragraph of the book is worth recording. For it exhibits his anxiety to establish the pure-Aryan blood of the Sinhalese of yore. Says Paranavitane: “Yama with whom the deity of the Adam’s Peak was originally identical possesses names or characteristics in common with the personages to whom the Footprint is attributed by the adherents of different religions today. Yama is Dharmaraja; so is Adam to the Muslims; Yama Kala, the destroyer; so is Mahakala and his function is to destroy the world when necessary. A mountain originally sacred to Yama could thus have become a place sacred to the adherents of Buddhism, Islam or Saivaism, by natural process of assimilation, when Yama came gradually to lose his hold on the religious consciousness of the people.” Yama was of course considered as Dharmaraja – not one who propagated Dharma but a Judge administering Dharma propagated and propounded by someone else. The epithet Dharmaraja to Yama has always been used in the Puranas as one who administered Dharma and not Dharma personified. Secondly, Yama had never been considered as the father of the human race and no proof to this effect could be shown in any Sanskrit or other literature. On the other hand the epithet father of the human race or the creator of the human race is applicable only to Brahma. Yama was not the destructor of the world when it suited him. His power had been limited only to kill human beings when the time came for them to depart from the world – and not one second earlier. His function was to snatch the life of the human beings at the predestined time of death and assess the virtues and sins of the departed in the other world according to the set rules he was called to administer just like a paid servant of the judicature. From which source Paranavitane gained the impression that Yama was Dharma personified, the father of the human race and the ultimate destroyer of the world, one would like him to enlighten.