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TRAPROBANE

When some Greek and Roman writers, after the first century B.C., said of Ceylon, that “the island was known to the ancients as Taprobane”, they were actually referring to the hearsay information placed on record by men like Onesicrates and Megasthenes (IVC. B.C.), the former, one of the Admirals of Alexander and the latter, an ambassador of Seleucus Nicator at Chandragupta’s court. The Greek ‘Taprobane’ was in fact the corruption of the Indian name ‘Tambarapani’.

From the descriptions of ‘Taprobane’ by Onesicrates and Megasthenes, it is clear that Onesicrates had drawn freely on his imagination, and that Megasthenes had obtained his information from men at Pataliputra who had some knowledge of the sea-faring activities of the merchants of Kalinga. The Kalingas, it is not generally known in Ceylon, were a Dravidian people long associated with the Andhras and the Pandyan Tamils and were one of the earliest peoples, south of the Ganges, to become Aryanised in speech. This was mainly the result of the conquest of Kalinga by Asoka. The Greek writers of Alexander’s time (who had no first-hand knowledge of the Southern extremity of Dravidian India) had merely considered the island ‘Taprobane’ as associated with Tambarapani of the Tamils, who were already a well-known sea-faring people. Megasthenes’ description of the Pandyan kingdom reveals a fair knowledge of its people and its administration.

The utter unreliability of their evidence with regard to Ceylon, particularly that of Onesicrates, may be judged from such statements as, “In the sea which surrounded the island tortoises are bred of such vast size that their shells are employed to make roofs of the houses”. Tales like the above are good enough for Mr. Nicholas to conclude that Onesicrates “would have gathered information about sea-faring men in the Indus delta”, and that “sea communication between the Indus delta and Ceylon had been established well before the time of Onesicrates’ journey down the Indus (B.C. 325)”, (vide p. 7, Ceylon Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, Special Number, 1959).

But what historical evidence is there to speak of Indo-Aryan sea-faring men in the Indus delta? If Mr. C. W. Nicholas had not limited his acquaintance to the passage quoted in the Ceylon Literary Register Vol. I, No. 3, by Dr. Andreas Nell and to that old scholar’s comments, he would have known that

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Onesicrates, in his time, was considered by Alexander and the Macedonians as ‘Liar in chief’.

I give below a quotation from Harold Lamb’s “Alexander of Macedon” (Robert Hall Ltd., London, p. 277).

“But since Onesicrates had an ear for marvels, he began to embroider his pilot’s journal with sensational events. Alexander and the older Macedonians remarked that his title should have been ‘Liar in chief’.”

We are also told that, “Onesicrates swore that he had seen an ant as big as a fox, digging gold out of the ground” (ibid. p. 299) and that Alexander had ceased to rely on the ‘braggart Onesicrates’ (ibid. p. 323).

Mr. C. W. Nicholas, however, is quite confident about the ‘sea-faring men in the Indus delta who had colonised Ceylon’ about this period. If Mr. Nicholas is to be given credit we should assume that all those ‘sea-faring men in the Indus delta’ had by the time of Alexander the Great migrated to Ceylon.

Alexander had entered India by the land route and wanted to return by the sea. He had brought his own men to build his fleet in India in order to transport his troops across the Indus, if the necessity arose. During his entire campaign there were no naval engagements as neither Porus nor any other rulers of North-Western India had a ‘navy’ or a ‘fleet’, (except possibly small river crafts such as those rare ones we find today in the interior waterways of Ceylon). In that fascinating book ‘The Generalship of Alexander the Great’, (Eyre and Spottiswoode, 1958, page 131), we are told that when Alexander wanted to find out whether he could establish a sea-route between the Indus and the Euphrates – “he must have questioned Indians about it many times through his interpreters, and though a few may have told him it was far off, undoubtedly most of them did not even know what the word ‘ocean’ meant”.

Of the Indo-Aryans, scholars like Macdonnel, Hopkins, Rogozin and many others, tell us that they had no word for ‘ocean’ and that ‘Samudra’ merely meant a ‘confluence of waters’ near the mouth of the Indus. (cf. Macdonnel, “History of Sanskrit Literature”, pp. 143-144).

Ronald Lethen in his “Inquest of Civilisation”, p. 92, writes of the Indo-Aryans thus: - “They were familiar with many domesticated animals..… They built wooden houses….. There are common words for snow and winter but none for sea and fish”.

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Z. A. Rogozin (Vedic India, pp. 306-307) says that ‘MUSLIN’, for instance ‘used to be exported by the Dravidian merchants and not by Aryan merchants as the Aryans had no export trade, not being acquainted with the sea or the construction of sea-going ships’.

So much for the ‘sea-faring’ activities of the Indo-Aryans (about which the Ceylon Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, Special Number 1959 grows eloquent) and their colonisation of Ceylon. In my next contribution I propose to touch on the Asokan Edict and its reference to Tambarapani (Taprobane).

II

The famous Asokan Edicts (3^rd century B.C.) were inscribed nearly a century after Alexander the Great’s campaign in North-West India (4^th century B.C.).

Prof. Mukherjee in his “HINDU INDIA” p. 106 (23^rd Edition) tells us that from the Rock EDICT XIII of Asoka “as well as from another, we learn that four independent Tamil kingdoms existed in the extreme South and that Asoka’s missionaries penetrated there as far as Tambapani river. This gives us a chronological foothold of the Tamil Kingdoms”.

This reference in the Edict to Tambarapani is obviously to the river in the district in the Tamil country in South India known in Tamil as Tamaraparni – the latter pronounced and written by the Greeks as TAPROBANE. There were the three traditional kingdoms of the Tamils, the Pandyas, Cheras and Cholas. The fourth Tamil kingdom alluded to by Prof. Mukherjee could not have been Ceylon, if ‘Tambapani’ is to be considered to mean CEYLON, as the sixth century A.D. author of the Mahavamsa and many of our local historians have understood it. Moreover, we are told by Mukherjee that they (the Missionaries) penetrated as far as the river Tambapani (according to the Asokan Edict.) and there is no such river in Ceylon.

I have pointed out in my last article that Tambaraparni in South India is the name of a river famed in Tamil song and poetry. It is the time honoured Tinnevely area in South India visited so often by merchants from the countries of the West as well as of the East from pre-Christian times. There is a replica of Tambaraparani (Chempadu – ‘red earth’) called Tinnevely in the Jaffna Peninsula, without, of course, a golden river flowing through it as in South India. Tambaraparni was so called because of the ‘red earth or clay’ of its soil and the golden coloured river which flows through it.

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When the Asokan Inscription mentions that missionaries were sent to Tambapani, and include it in the Tamil Kingdoms of South India, it refers to the latter as ‘Antas’ i.e. independent peoples over whom Asoka had no suzerainty. The reference here, I repeat, is not to Ceylon, but exactly to the district stated in the Edict, i.e. to Tambaraparni in South India. To begin with, then, the Buddhist missionaries sent by Asoka came as far as Tambapani.

That is why Geiger himself in his introduction to the Mahavamsa, page XVII, says –

“I may observe at the outset, it is not absolutely certain whether by Tambapani of the inscription Ceylon is meant. Possibly the name may designate the Tinnevely district at the extremity of India, where the Tambapani flows into the sea.”

It is more than a possibility. It bubbles over the confines of ‘possibility’, and is definitely in the region of certainty.

So that it is no wonder that at the time of Alexander the Great, a century earlier than that of the Asokan Edicts, men like Onesicrates and Megasthenes in their hearsay reports of ‘a large island’ or region in the south called ‘Taprobane’, vaguely considered it as an extention of or associated with Tambaraparni district in the Tamil country.

The Tamil tradition (vide, “Buddhism and Tamil”, The Saiva Siddhanta Press, 1950, p. 39) is also that the missionary Mahendra (known in Ceylon by the Pali-ised name Mahinda) referred to as “a brother of Asoka” came to South India first, and then proceeded to Ceylon, not by air as the Pali chronicler of the Mahavamsa believes, but probably in Tamil ships from the bosom of the Tamil country. The Tamil epics of the early centuries of the Christian era, Silappathikaram and Manimekalai, refer to several viharas built by Mahendra (Mahinda) in the Tamil land, viharas held in veneration during the period when Buddhism was popular in the South.

Incidentally, it is significant that the Mahavamsa (Ch. XIV, v. 65) states that Mahinda “the fearless thera preached the true doctrine in two places, in “the speech of the island”, on the very day of his arrival in Ceylon! Taking into consideration the fact that Nilakanta Sastri, in his “History of South India” states that the early Buddhist and Jain cave inscriptions in the Pandyan country and in Ceylon (3^rd century B.C.) are in the South Indian Brahmi script, and the language of these is “the earliest form of Tamil known to Epigraphy”, I make bold to suggest , for whatever it is worth, that Mahinda himself had

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learnt Tamil during his sojourn in South India, and the language which the author of the Mahavamsa described as “the speech of the Island” was probably Tamil, a language not altogether alien to the ruling classes and their “Hindu” kith and kin in Ceylon.

There is no evidence whatever in Indian history for one to be able to assert definitely that Asoka had either children or even a brother and sister by the names “Mahinda” and “Sangamitta”, as the Pali chronicle of Ceylon written by the Buddhist Monk Mahanama makes us understand.

Vincent Smith, (‘Early History of India’), was of opinion that the stories relating to the conversion “are a tissue of absurdities”, and again that “if he had really handed over his son and his daughter Sanghamitta to the church, and had brought about the conversion of the king of Ceylon, Asoka would not have neglected to bring it into notice”. The “name Sanghamitta” he thinks, is, “from its very meaning suspicious”. (quoted by Geiger, ‘Introduction to the Mahavamsa’, page XVII). Geiger described this as an “argument from silence”!

No Tamil works of the Sangam period and after have ever referred anywhere to Ceylon as “Tambaraparni” “Tambapani” or “Taprobane”. They were far too familiar with the island to confuse their own district with Ceylon. Since there were other “Ilankais” in South India, Tamil authors have made it a point always to refer to Ceylon as either “Then-Ilankai” (Lanka of the South) or as “Eelam”, and never as “Tambapani”. Sri Andal the Vaishnava Tamil saint (VII century A.D.) in her ‘Tirupavai’, refers to Ravana as “Then Ilankai Koman” “The lord or king of Ceylon in the South”, and Kamban in his Tamil Ramayanam frequently speaks of Ceylon as “Southern Ilankai”. Sugrivan, the Dravidian ally of Rama, in his famous description of the route to Lanka from the Godaveri instructs his spies (according to Valmiki himself) to follow the route across, the “golden coloured Porunai (Tamraporunai) river” in the Pandyan country to reach Ceylon where Sita was held captive by Ravana (vide Ramayana of Valmiki vol. 2, Hari Prasad Shastri, 1957, p. 277).

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NOTES

1. “MAHINDA” coming through the air throws suspicion on the account and this is enhanced by the more probable story narrated by HIUEN TSANG that Mahinda’s missionary work had been directed to the country of MALAYAKUTA which is no other than the extreme south of the DECCAN, below PANDYAN or DRAVIDA and TAMBAPANNI of the Asokan Edicts (R.E. II and XIII). It is from the country of MALAYAKUTA that MAHINDA went across to CEYLON, the island of Tambapanni.” (B. C. Law, “On the Chronicles of Ceylon” p. 60).

2. “It is shown that the country of Tambapanni which finds mention in Asoka’s Rock Edicts II and XIII, is not necessarily the island of Tambapanni. It is apparently the country of TAMRAPARNI, modern Tinnevely district” (ibid. p. 62).

3 (a)The old name for the river was PORUNAI. KAMBAN (tenth century) refers to this river when he writes,

”

“The gold-laden sacred river called PORUNAI.” Tamra in Tamil is red (of the red lotus); hence TAMRA-PORUNAI, became Tamraparni (Tamil); Taprobane (Greek); Tambapani (Pali).

(b) “We may note that the Tambraparni forms the life line for agriculture in the Tinnevely district. At its mouth in the Gulf of Mannar are the famous pearl fisheries often described by travelers from other countries.”

(N. A. K. ‘History of South India’, pp. 41, 43, 44).

(c) TAPROBANE (derivatives)

“There was a time when the Gulf of Mannar did not exist and the Southern part of the Indian continent took its name from the river crossing it i.e. TAMIRAPANI. Just facing Ceylon on the Indian shore runs the river Tamrapani or TAMIRAPORUNI.”

(From the unpublished work of T. C. Closset, intended to be the second part of his ‘Dravidian Origin and Philosophy of Human Speech’, printed by Times of Ceylon Co. Ltd. 1941).

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(d) Derivation of Tambapani, Tamraparni

Tamil – Tham or Chem = red, reddish, copper coloured, golden, beautiful, etc.

Chem – Thus CHEMPU = (T) a copper vessel ‘Chembuva’ (Sinhalese). Hence also Chem-eli, sheep with reddish brown coat. Eli is a term used in Sangam (Tamil) literature for ‘sheep’. The Sinhalese still use it in the form Eluva (sheep, goat). From Chem-eli is formed KUMBILI, (Tamil) blanket made out of sheep’s skin.

Tham or Tam is another form of CHEM. Red, reddish, copper coloured. Hence Tamil – THAMPOOLAM = THAM = reddish and POOLAM (the betel leaf). In Sinhalese THAM is dropped and ‘BOOLATH’ is used to describe betel. TAMPALAM (Tamil) a copper tray. The Tamil CHEM-ILA-NIR or Chevilanir becomes THAM-PILI in Sinhalese for the ‘red young coconut’. Similarly the Tamil ‘PILLAI’ ‘young’ or ‘child’ becomes ‘palle’ in Sinhalese. TAMARAI or THAMARI is the Tamil for the ‘red-lotus’. PARNI is Sanskritised form of the Tamil Porunai, the old name for the river TAMRAPARNI, from TAMRAPORUNAI (the reddish river).

‘PANI’ in TAMBAPANI also is the Tamil ‘nir’ c.f. ‘Pani’, ‘Pannir’.

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