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DONDRA

(TENNAVAN-THURAI)

There are few coastal towns in the Island spelt in so many different forms by writers, European as well as Ceylonese, as Dondra, in the extreme South, once famous for its ancient and resplendent Hindu Shrine. Ptolemy (150-160 A.D.) refers to it as Dagona ‘sacred to the moon’. In fact in Ptolemy’s map the extreme Southern part of Ceylon is itself described as ‘sacred to the moon’, which is a literal translation of the Tamil name ‘SANTHIRASEKARAR’ by which this shrine appears to have been named by the early Tamils as mentioned in VAIPAVAMALAI; (SANTHIRA = MOON, + SEKARAR = ‘The wearer of Moon on his head’, i.e. SIVA).

It should be pointed out that Ptolemy the Geographer did not visit Ceylon in person and that the information he obtained about the island was probably from the Tamil merchants with whom the Greek and Roman mariners carried on a flourishing trade in the Tamil country in South India during the first three centuries of the Christian era.

Centuries later Ibn Batuta (XIV C.), the Arab traveler who arrived at the capital of the Tamil king in North Ceylon and visited various towns and places in the South of Ceylon under this king’s protection, refers to the shrine as DINAUR (TENAVAR). DE QUEYROZ the Portuguese writer calls the port Tenevare. BELL in his KEGALLE REPORT alludes to it as DINEVAR and TENUWARA. The author of the PALI chronicle the CULAVAMSA (XIII C.) names it DEVAPURA and DEVANAGARA. A Sinhalese Mudaliyar writing in the Ceylon Literary Register on the Shrine calls it DEVUNUWARA. Later European writers have used forms such as DONDERY, DONDERA; and finally the name DONDRA has come to stay. The Vaipavamalai refers to the port as THEIVANTHURAI.

The nearest approach to the name of the city may be inferred from Ibn Batuta’s DINAUR or TENEVAR, DE QUEYROZ’S Tenevare, and the second part of the name of the city which ends in ‘THURAI’ (a port). Ibn Batuta was accompanied by Tamil guides; the Portuguese were more familiar with the maritime regions, where Tamil was spoken then, with the Sinhalese in the interior; and Vaipavamalai is a Tamil work.

In their report written in 1700 A.D., Stafforts and Emans state that ‘among the Sinhalese there was a universal ignorance

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about the tradition’ connected with the shrine. The only evidence they could find was “an inscription in Cinghalese of a much later date than that of the structure”. The main temple had already been razed to the ground by the Portuguese. But Stafforts and Emans state at the same time that there were many similar but smaller Pagodas (Hindu Temples) on the coast. They, however add that it (Dondra) still remains sacred to the votaries of Vishnu as being “the utmost limit which now remains of his conquest”.

It was customary for early Tamil merchants who visited other countries of South-East Asia as well, to build Temples in their settlements both for Siva as well as Vishnu, the latter being considered as the patron deity of sea-farers. Dondra too similarly had shrines both for Siva as well as for Vishnu. The worship of Siva, however, seems to have played the more prominent part as the sacred Lingam and the shrines dedicated to MURUGAN (The God of Kataragama, Kumara or Murugan the son of Siva) and temples dedicated to other Hindu (Tamil) deities such as Valliammai, Theivanai, Pathini and Ganesha (Pillayar) were also found there.

With the exception of the Pali twist given in the Culavamsa and adopted by later Sinhalese writers, the endings of the name of the town in all other forms are obviously a corruption of the Tamil, ‘Thurai’. Compare the names of other coastal towns such as MATURE (MATARA), KALUTURAI (KALUTARA), PANATURE (PANADURA) etc. Since it was ‘the utmost limit’ to which the worship of Siva had extended the original name by which it was called – was in all likelihood TENAN-TURE, TENNAVAN-THURAI, ‘the port of the LORD of the South’ i.e. SIVA.

The Temple appears to have been known in ancient times to devotees both as SANTHIRASEKARAR KOVIL and as NAGA-RASA KOVILA, according to a recent Sinhalese writer. The former name in Tamil signifies ‘Siva’ and the latter is the later Pali-ised form of the older NAGA-RASA-NILA KOVIL, the temple of the blue god of the Nagas which might refer both to Siva as well as to Vishnu. In later times a Buddhist Vihara came to be erected close to the Lingam Shrine.

In Tennent’s CEYLON Vol. II, pp. 113-114, we find the following striking descriptions of the temple and its destruction by the Portuguese: -

“Dondra Head, the Sunium of Ceylon, and the southern extremity of the island, is covered with the ruins of a temple which was once one of the most celebrated in Ceylon. The

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headland itself has been the resort of devotees and pilgrims, from the most remote ages. Ptolemy describes it as Dagama, sacred to the Moon, and the Buddhists constructed there one of their earliest dagobas, the restoration of which was the care of successive sovereigns. But the most important temple was a shrine which in very early times had been erected by the Hindus in honour of Vishnu. It was in the height of its splendour, when, in 1587, the place was devastated in the course of the marauding expedition by which De Souza d’Arronches sought to create a diversion, during the siege of Colombo by Raja Singha II. The historians of the period state that at that time Dondera was the most renowned place of pilgrimage in Ceylon; Adam’s Peak scarcely excepted.”

“The temple, they say, was so vast, that from the sea it had the appearance of a city. The Pagoda was raised on vaulted arches, richly decorated, and roofed with plates of gilded copper. It was encompassed by a quadrangular cloister, that opened under verandahs, upon a terrace and gardens with odoriferous shrubs and trees, whose flowers were gathered by the priests for processions. De Souza entered the gates without resistance; and his soldiers tore down the statues, which were more than a thousand in number. The temple and its buildings were overthrown, its arches and its colonnades were demolished, and its gates and towers leveled with the ground. The plunder was immense, in ivory, gems, jewels, sandalwood, and ornaments of gold. As the last indignity that could be offered to the sacred place, cows were slaughtered in the courts, and the cars of the idol, with other combustible materials, being fired, the shrine was reduced to ashes. A stone doorway exquisitely carved, and a small building, whose extraordinary strength resisted the violence of the destroyers, are all that now remain standing; but the ground for a considerable distance is strewn with ruins, conspicuous among which are numbers of finely cut columns of granite. The dagobas which stood on the crown of the hill, is a mound of shapeless debris.”

Referring to this shrine Mudaliyar H. E. Ameresekara (C.L.R., Vol. I, No. 5) writes, ‘According to legendary history KUMARAYA, the son of Siva is said to have landed at this place from India. His sacred weapon was the Vel. Cordinar states that near the shrine ‘stands a Lingam or altar to MAHADEV (SIVA) in the generative character having a canopy of leaves erected over it apparently still frequented and revered’.

In recent centuries as in the case of several other Hindu shrines such as KATARAGAMA, Dondra has become a sacred place of worship to Sinhalese Buddhists as well. At the annual

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festival though the gods worshipped remain the same, very few Tamils are found among the pilgrims.

According to the RAJAVALI (p. 248), a traditional history of ancient Ceylon written in Sinhalese in the XVIII C.; King Dapuloo is said to have repaired it in 650 A.D., and Parakramabahu the Great in 1180. The Dapuloo of the Rajavali is probably the same Chief of Ruhuna as SAMY DAPPULA who is said to have build ‘KADIROLI’ Vihara (KADIROLI is another form of the Tamil KATHIRKAMAM, a temple dedicated to Siva’s son MURUGA).

The Ruhuna Chiefs (called Kings) were obviously Saivites who were liberal in their endowments to the Buddhist Sangha as well. In trying to explain away this fact in note 3, page 94 of Chapter XV, of the Culavamsa, we are told.

‘Presumably there was at the spot a local Hindu cult, probably of SKANDA, the God of KAJARAGAMA, a kind of Patron Saint of Ruhuna; and the king did not neglect to reverence the deity’. The Sanskrit term ‘SKANDA’ and the PALI ‘KAJARAGAMA’ are used avoiding the term MURUGA, KUMARA and KATHIRGAMAN, names more familiar to the Tamils as well as the Sinhalese. But there is a tacit admission that MURUGA the son of Siva was the Patron Saint of Ruhuna. This corroborates the fact that Ruhuna was known in early times as SANTHIRASEHARAM, ‘Sacred to Siva’.

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NOTES

1. Ptolemy (A.D. 150) when he compiled his Geography probably learnt about Ceylon from Tamil mariners. (Warmington ‘Commerce with the Roman Empire and India’, p. 151).

‘Even in Ptolemy’s time the Greeks were still content to pass by without paying a visit to Ceylon’. (ibid. p. 123).

2. Ptolemy indicates expressly that even in his time and afterwards the bulk of the produce of Ceylon reached the Greeks by way of Tamil (and especially Malabar) marts in Indian Vessels. (ibid. p. 120).

3. Tennent ‘Ceylon’ Vol. I, p. 582.

4. C.L.R., Vol. I, No. 6, p. 279.

5. C.L.R., Vol. I, No. 6, p. 279.

6. C.L.R., ibid.; Cordiner, ‘Ceylon’ pp. 185-187.

7. C.L.R., Vol. I, No. 5, p. 199.

8. C.L.R., Vol. I, No. 7, p. 661; MHV XV, vv. 49-56.

9. ‘Culavamsa’, XIV, p. 94, n. 3.

10. Pridham says that the pillars of the temple at Dondra resemble those of the Hindu temple at Trincomalee.

(Pridham’s Account of Ceylon’, p. 282).

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