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T H E V I J A Y A N L E G E N D A N D T H E A R Y A N M Y T H A Commentary on D. R. G. C. MENDIS ‘Mahabharata Legends in the Mahavamsa’ by S. J. GUNASEGARAM, M.A. (Lond.) September 1963 28 (Blank) 29 PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION My comments which form the subject matter of this booklet were written in 1958, as soon as a reprint of Dr. G. C. Mendis’ article, “The Mahabharata Legends in the Mahavamsa”, in the Journal of the Ceylon Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, reached me. (New Series, Volume V, Part I). For
nearly three years, the learned Council of the Society had toyed with my
comments and given various excuses for delaying to publish them. The shining lights of the Council during
this period were the trio, Dr. S. Paranavitane, Dr. G C. Mendis, and the late
Mr. C. W. Nicholas, a retired Excise Official. Dr. Mendis was the author of the
contribution in question, and the other two were pillars of the Society and
the custodians of the scholarship, learning and historical lore of After repeated reminders by me requesting the Society to either publish my reply or to return the typed script, I was officially informed, early in 1961, by its new Secretary, that the Council had at last decided to publish it in the Journal of the Society. The proofs were sent to me and corrected. When the final proof was ready and in print, I was informed that my article had been withdrawn from the 1961 issue of the Journal. The reason given was, that it had not reached the standard expected of a ‘learned Journal’ and that it’s ‘polemical asperity should be toned down’. I had waited for nearly three years, and borne the tantalising correspondence of the Society. I had no alternative but to thank the Society for its cultured, liberal and learned outlook, and to send in my resignation to the ‘Learned Society’, and to publish the Essay myself. Dr. G. C.
Mendis’ thesis was, in the main, a justification of his earlier assertion in
his ‘Early History of Ceylon’, that “Ceylon was influenced mainly by North
India up to the Cola Conquest”, i.e., from the time of Vijaya to the eleventh
century. He adds, “The influence of 30 the Cola, Pandya, and
Vijayanagara rose in succession.”
(‘Early History of He creates the impression in the minds of the readers that till the eleventh century, the influences that inspired Ceylon were mainly Hindu and North Indian (Aryan), and that the Pandyan and Chola Tamil Kingdoms which dominated Ceylon history after the eleventh century (Hindu again), had come into existence just about this period. Though he concedes that the earlier influences were mainly Hindu, he overlooks the fact that many of the most distinguished Kings from Vijaya to Panduvasa and Pankukka Abhya, and again from Sena and Guttaka and the great Elara to the time of Mahinda V (tenth century) (who had ordered that the regulations connected with Kama Wewa,¹ a tank in the Mihintale-Anuradhapura area, should be the same as those ordained by the Tamils of old), were all South Indians – Kalingas (Telugus), Tamils (Chola, Chera, Pandya) or Kanarese (Pallavas), another Dravidian people; and that the petty Chieftains (called Kings) of the South belonged to Dravidian tribes – Nagas, Moriyas, Ilambakkannas.² The kings that followed the Chola Tamil period, headed by Parakramabahu the Great were mainly Pandyans. Their names Parakrama Bahu, Vijaya Bahu, Vira Bahu, Wickrema Bahu, Bhuvaneka Bahu etc., are all of Tamil origin.³ The very names for tanks Kulam (Kulama), Vavi (Wewa), Eri (Eriya), are like the names of Kings, Prakritised Tamil, Dravidian, and not of ‘Aryan’ origin. The notion that the Sinhalese were Aryans, and hence from North India was one cultivated by the Buddhist Monks who began to enter this Island somewhere in the third century B.C. This belief has been strengthened by the fact that the language of the indigenous Southerner, Elu, came to be ignored and overlarded with Prakrit words, and because the birth place of the great founder of Buddhism as well as that of the Royal Champion of the Doctrine, was Northern India. I quote below what J. D. M. Derrett says in the “Origins of the Laws of the Kandyans” (University of Ceylon Review, Vol. XIV, No. 5, 3, 4, p. 149) “Yet of course the Sinhalese are not Aryans. From whence then comes the notion that their descendants are? This presents no difficulty. The Buddhists referred to any respectable member of the Sangha as Arya, and that usage must have been common throughout the Buddhist world. Moreover the Dravidians are accustomed to refer to non-Dravidians as Aryans.” 31 With the
waning popularity of Buddhism and the Saiva revival in the South in the sixth
and the seventh centuries, and later from the time of the Muslim occupation
of Northern India, Ceylon became the nearest and the most liberal place of
refuge for the displaced monks.4
From the period of the entry of Buddhism into Ceylon, the Tamils,
mainly for reasons doctrinal and religious, had become the enemies of the
Buddhist Priesthood – not because they were Tamils but because they were
Saivites or non-Buddhists. This bias
had naturally become a source of infection among their converts in the It is ominous to note that, in our day, a similar hatred is being envinced against the Roman Church, in particular, and towards the Christians in general, not because of their ‘race’ but because of their Faith. This Commentary is written in the hope that a critical and informed view of the early history of this Island and its people will, in the years to come, remove prejudices made bitter through the centuries, and make the Sinhalese majority in this country realise their intimate cultural, racial and linguistic connections with their ancient Tamil neighbours of Izham (Ilam), and bind us with a common love for our Motherland, enabling us to grow into a peaceful, united and tolerant people. S. J. Gunasegaram Kopay 32 PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION Within a month of my writing the Preface to the first edition of this booklet, I am obliged to write a Preface to the second edition. It is a
compliment to the reading public of our Making an allowance of one week for the delays in our Postal Department, and, another for the digestion of its contents by the Swabasha pundits of our English Press, one would have expected at least a line of notice or criticism of a work that has sought to clear the dust and the paint that had covered the researches and claims of the favoured historians of our Island’s story. The
“Daily Mirror”, I must say, ought to be singled out for praise in this
context. Its review which appears in
the issue of No wonder our Press has been in the front line in the attack against any encroachment on the ‘freedom of the Press’. What it apparently wants is the freedom to publish and extol what it considers is likely to bring the largest quantity of shekels, while the truth, for the most part, is left to look after itself. I have no doubt that the second edition (with certain spelling errors corrected, and with the addition of an appendix dealing with the ‘Nagas and Tamil’) will be greeted with the same interest as was the first by discerning readers. I take this opportunity to thank my young friend Mr. K. Paramothayan, for reading through the proofs and for preparing the Index. S. J. Gunasegaram 33 REFERENCES AND NOTES 1. Epigraphia Zeylonica, Vol. 1, pp. 112-113. 2.(a) ‘Anthropoligy in (b) Dr. G. C. Mendis – ‘Moriyas’, ‘Lambakarnas’. ‘Early History of Mairu (Mayil), Ilambakannas, are names of Dravidian origin. Vide, Tamil Dictionaries for meanings and the ‘Dravidian Etymological Dictionary’ by T. Burrow, and M. B. Emeneau, Sections 3793; 1311. 3. Dravidian Etymological Dictionary. Tamil origin of Prakritised names of some Tamil Kings of Ceylon. i. Prakrama Bahu Pakan (3331) ‘Elephant rider’, ‘charioteer’, id. Paku. ‘art’, ‘ability’, Ak. (u) (282) ‘to make’, ‘become’, ‘increase’, ‘create’, ‘prosperity’, (in Elu, the name becomes Parakum). ii. Wik-rema – (Elu – ‘Vikum’) Vik (a) – (4477) ‘Valiant’, ‘courage’, Vik (u) – iii. Vira – Viru-Vira (4491), ‘be eminent’, ‘distinguished’, ‘splendin’. iv. Similarly Valla – BA. Val (4406) ‘lustre’, ‘splendour’, ‘fame’ Val (4317) ‘strong’, ‘might’, ‘hero’ Val (4340) ‘bounty’, ‘liberality’, ‘strenghth’ v. Bhuveneka (Nayaka) Pu. (3564) ‘flourish’, ‘bloom’ ‘richness’ Naya (2977) ‘respect’, ‘esteem’, etc. (It may also mean Puvi-Nayagam, ‘the Lord of the earth’.) 34 4. “Fa-Hian
in the fourth century was assured by the people of Reference also may be made to MHV, to note that several
thousands poured into ________________ 35 ANCIENT MAHAJANAPADAS “In the
seventh century B. C.,
(An Historical Atlas of the Indian Peninsula, p. 6, by C. Collin Davies, Oxford Press, 1959.) The Sixteen
Mahajanapadas:- (1) Anga (2)
(6) Malla (7) Chedi (8) Vatsa (9) Kuru (10) Panchala (11) Matsya (12) Surasena (13) Asmaka (14) Avanti (15) Gandhara (16) Kamboja In the sixteen Principalities, it will be noted that neither Vanga nor Kalinga of the Mahavamsa is included. In fact the Northerners knew very little of the purely Dravidian States in the South. The traditional Tamil kingdoms referred to, in the quotation given above, are the Pandya, Chera and Chola kingdoms. Again among the sixteen principalities Kuru is referred to as a power but no mention whatever is made of Pandu about which Dr. Mendis writes. “Even in the first century of the Christian era”, says the ‘Cambridge History of India’, p. 540, “the South seems to have felt little the influence of the Aryan Culture of Northern India…….Dravidian Society was still free from the yoke of Brahmin caste system.” DISTANCES A. (1) The distance from Mathura (Muttra) on the banks of the Jumna to the nearest
sea-port on the West Coast of India, to Sopra
or Supparaka (as the crow
flies – across rivers and forests), is about 600 miles. (2) The
distance from Supparaka to Mathotam
(Mantote), on the West Coast of Total
distance c. 1,600 miles 36 B. (1) The distance from (2) The
distance from Tamralipti by sea
either to Mathotam (Mantote) on
the Total distance c. 2,000 miles C.
The distance
from Old Total distance c. 150 miles ________________ INSERT MAP COMMENTS ON “THE MAHABHARATA LEGENDS IN THE MAHAVAMSA” ‘The Mahabharata
Legends in the Mahavamsa’ is the title of an Article contributed by Dr. G. C.
Mendis to the Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, Ceylon Branch, New
Serices, Vol. V, Part I, and reprinted in booklet form for the Society by the
Colombo Apothecaries Company, Limited.1 His
thesis appears to be that (a) the early kings of To suggest that the author of the Mahavamsa, sixth century A.D., had drawn mainly from tales and his imagination in writing the history of Ceylon from Vijaya to Devanampiya Tissa, and possibly from the alleged visit of the Buddha, is to pronounce an adverse verdict on the reliability of the Mahavamsa as a historical record. That the author (Mahanama) could have become suddenly dependable in his account from the time of Devanampiya Tissa, will have to be accepted with considerable misgivings. Would it be therefore unreasonable to suggest that there is the probability of a Dravidian origin of these early kings, as their names and the areas from which they hailed suggest? Is not Devanampiya Tissa referred to in the Mahavamsa as a ‘friend’ of the great Asoka3 – an association which could be 40 cherished with pardonable pride
as indicating an Aryan origin to the Sinhalese, and tracing, at the same
time, an intimate acquaintance with and regard from one of the greatest kings
of It should be remembered that inspite of the assertion by the author of the Mahavamsa that Mahinda and Sanghamitta were children of Asoka, there is neither any historical record in North India of any children of Asoka with such names, nor reference in the king’s Edicts themselves of any Mission sent to Ceylon by him through any of his alleged children. Geiger has tried to gloss over this difficulty by stating that an argument from silence is not admissible. (Introduction to Geiger’s Mahavamsa, p. XVIII). But certainly an argument drawn from reliable records will be more convincing! The Rock
Edicts of Asoka (II and XIII), refer definitely to the Tamil Kingdoms in
South India – the Cholas, the Pandyas and the Cheras – while the name
Tambapanni is supposed to indicate Ceylon.
Historians have been at pains to discover whether Tambapanni refers to
the well known Tinnevelly district in It should
not be wondered at that Vincent A. Smith in his ‘Early History of India’, pp.
115-118, calls the stories describing the conversion of There is
literary tradition mentioned in Sillappadikaram,6 the well known Tamil
Epic, to indicate that Mahendra, described as a brother of Asoka, visited the
Tamil country as a Buddhist missionary and left behind a Vihara at
Kaveripattinam. In the ‘Beal Records
of the Western World’, page 231, we are told that there was, near Madura, the
capital of the Pandayas, a Vihara built by Mahendra a brother of Asoka, and
to the east of it a Stupa constructed during the time of Asoka. In the Tailang records of Asoka (described as a great friend of Devanampiya Tissa), does not refer in his Edicts either to his ‘friend’ or even to his ‘own children’ who, it is said, had been sent by him as 41 Missionaries to The Mahavamsa is careful to add (Ch. XI, v. 19), ‘For the two monarchs Devanampiya Tissa and Dhammasoka already had been friends for a long time, though they had never seen each other’. How and
when did this friendship originate?
How was this alleged friendship maintained across a distance of nearly
1,500 miles? It is admitted on all
sides that Asoka had no control over the vast tract of country ruled over by
the Pandyas, Cheras and Cholas stretching between his Empire and One is compelled to infer that the same purpose which inspired the priestly historian of Buddhism in Ceylon to make the landing of Vijaya synchronise with the death of the Buddha impelled him to remark that Asoka sent his own children to introduce Buddhism into Ceylon, and to associate its ruler with that great king who was the champion of Buddhism. It will be noticed that Tissa is given the same name ‘Devanampiya’, as that by which Asoka was known. But Asoka, this great ‘friend’ of Devanampiya Tissa, does not appear to have been aware of even the existence of Buddhism in Jambudvipa, the land where his ‘friend’ ruled. Here is the account of his meeting with the thera Mahinda, as it appears in the Mahavamsa. (Geiger’s Translation, Ch. XIV, vv. 11-14). “Then came his people and surrounded him and the great thera caused the others who had come with him to be visible. When the king beheld these too he said, “When did these come 42 hither” The thera answered “(they came) with me”. And he asked moreover, “Are there in Jambudipa other ascetics like to these?” The other said, “Jambudipa is gleaming with yellow robes; and great is the number of Arahats learned in the three Vedas gifted with miraculous powers, skilled in reading the thoughts of others, possessing the heavenly Car; the disciples of Buddha.” Before proceeding to discuss the arguments urged by Dr. Mendis to prove his contention, it is necessary to acquaint ourselves with the origin and dates of the old stories and legends and the kingdom and peoples of the period under consideration. 1. Jataka Stories The Jatakas consist of stories of
the previous birth of the Buddhas. The
early Buddhist teachers adopted with but little change, the folklore and
fables already current in The collection of Jatakas which includes 547 birth stories was made in the fourth century B.C., though it had not assumed the shape it now has in the Sutta-Pitaka (a part of the Pali canon). There is a close connection between the stories contained in the Panchatantra and those found in the Jatakas. (George Havells, ‘The Soul of 2. The Mahabharata “An old
heroic poem dealing with the Bhagavatas, a tribe well known to the Rig-veda, forms the nucleus of the Mahabharata. The Mahabharata, in its present form, is
not earlier than fourth century B.C., and not later
than fourth century A.D.” (‘History of
“The Mahabharata shows that the Pandya, Kerala and Chola kings were present at the Swayamvara of Draupadi (1, 189, 7020). Before the Rajasuya sacrifice was celebrated by Dharmarajah, his brother Sahadeva is said to have fought with the Chola, Pandya, Chera and Andhra kings. These kings attended the sacrifice.” (II 31, II 73, 1134, 1988; II 52, 1893). The poem says also that Sri Kirishna conquered Kavata of the Pandyan King (VII, II, 324). (K. S. Ramaswami Sastri, ‘Hindu Culture in the Modern Age’, p. 337). 43 ‘The Kurus were one of the most prominent tribes of the later Vedic period, but it is curious the Pandus are mentioned for the first time in Buddhist literature, when they are described as a hill tribe.’ (Sinha and Banerjee, ‘History of 3. Ramayana The
Ramayana of Valmiki, a work believed to belong to an earlier date than the Mahabharata,
refers to the Kerala, Chola and ‘In the Kishkinda Kanda the poet speaks of YUKTAM KAVATAM PANDYANUM.’ ‘The
great commentator Govindaraja in his glossary on this verse refers to
Kavatapuram which was the Pandya Capital…….Valmiki describes the town Kavata
as being South of the river Tamraparni ( (K. S. Ramaswami Sastri, ‘Hindu Culture in the Modern Age’, p. 336). 4. Pandyas, Cholas, Cheras KATYANA
fourth century B.C., refers to the kings (Chera, Chola, Pandya). In Asoka’s Edicts third century B.C., there
are references to them. Asoka refers
to them as Antas, independent peoples outside his jurisdiction. “The Asokan inscriptions found in (K. A. N. Sastri, ‘History of Kalinga and the
Pandyans Kalinga
was one of the earliest Dravidian countries to be Aryanised in speech. It is important to note that though
Aryanised in speech they are a Dravidian people. The famous Hathigampha inscription of
Kharavela (first half of the second century B.C.), mentions a league of Tamil
States, 13 years old at the date of the inscription. (“History of 44 ‘In Kautiliya’s
Arthasastra (fourth century B.C.?), we can trace references to the exchange
of commodities such as cotton fabrics between Kalinga and the Pandyan
Countries. We find references to the
pearls obtained from the Southern corner of the (‘Age of Imperial Unity’, p. 229). Megasthenes and the
‘We have an explicit statement by Megasthenes that the country in the extreme South was ruled by a Pandyan Queen who maintained an orderly government and an organised administration. He further remarks that the queen’s territory consisted of 365 villages, each one of which brought its revenue to the State treasury on an appointed day…Asoka does not claim…authority over them. As neighbouring kingdoms he had to maintain the same relationship with them as with the distant western allies like the Greeks.’ (‘Age of Imperial Unity’, p. 229). The Pandyans The Cholas, the Pandyans and the Cheras were indigenous to the far South….. ‘The (Sinha and Banerjee, ‘History of Naval Traditions The North Indian people, i.e. the Indo-Aryans, never earned a reputation for being a maritime nation. ‘But it would be a mistake to think that the mystery of the sea never allured the Indian mind. The Dravidians in pre-historic times navigated the seas in pursuit of trade and commerce. The evidence of the maritime activity of the Aryans is not clear.’ (Sinha and Banerjee, ‘History of ‘The greatest achievements of the Dravidians was the art of navigation……There are Sanskrit borrowings of several 45 nautical terms from Dravidian
languages. Aryans in (S. V. Venkateswara, ‘Indian Culture through the Ages’, p. 11, Longmans Green & Co., 1958). Diole speaking of the maritime activity of the Tamils and their early contact with the East as well as the West says:- ‘We find
proof of their liaison in the people living at the further end of the great
route, the parts of South India where they serve as a link between the East
and Far-East. They were a half-way
house people. Perhaps in pre-historic
times they had watched the ships coming from the West and had loaded them for
the return journey with what their own ships had brought from (Diole, ‘4000 years under the Sea’, quoted by T. P. Minakshisunderam at the All India Oriental Conference, 1955, “Tamil Culture”, Vol V, No. 2, p. 142). From the
extracts and quotations I have given, there is ample historical as well as
literary evidence of the existence of powerful and well-organised Tamil
States – The Pandyans, Cheras and Cholas – in the South of India, in fourth
century B.C. The authors of the epic
poems of the Ramayana and the Mahabharata seem to have been aware of the
important position they held in The story
of the Pandus on the other hand, appears only in the Mahabharata, (which was
after all a poem, and not a historical record), while history as such knows
of no 46 It requires a considerable degree of credulity even on the part of modern Sinhalese historians to believe that this unknown hill tribe north of the barriers of the Vindhyas, lived and ruled in Mathura, a city near the banks of the Yamuna; and that one of the kings of this hill tribe sent his daughter and a large contingent of men and women with elephants and gifts, across a distance of about 900 miles from Mathura to the Delta of the Ganges, and a distance of another 1,100 miles from an unknown port there to the Mannar district in Ceylon. (See Map). The
Pandyas near To hold
that the author of the Mahavamsa had referred to the country of the Pandus
and not to the land of the Pandyans as the region from which the early kings
of Ceylon from Panduvasudeva to Tissa hailed, is to accuse Mahanama of
ignorance of the historic kingdoms of the South, the geography of India and
the state of navigation in the regions of which he speaks. The Pandus, by no stretch of the imagination,
could be confused with the Pandyans.
Foreign writers like Megasthenes and Ptolemy, the authors of the
Ramayana and the Mahabharata, and other Indian writers such as Katyana and
Kautiliya have nowhere associated the Pandus with the Pandyans of the ancient
historic Madura and After
this attempt to substitute the Pandus for the Pandyans, Dr. Mendis proceeds
to identify southern Madhura (referred to by the author of the Mahavamsa),
with ‘If there
were two Mathuras in On page 83, we find the following comments made by Dr. Mendis on Geiger’s views on the subject. 47 ‘Geiger
in his English translation of the Mahavamsa considered southern (Dakkhina)
Madhura to be the Madura of South India.
He probably came to this conclusion as The ‘other’ referred to above, Dr. Mendis points out in a note below, is the now well known opinion of Mr. A. Ranasinghe, a Civil Servant, the author of the “Census of Ceylon” (Vol. I, Part I, p. 2). Dr. Mendis proceeds to lay down his conclusions- (a)
The earliest historical traditions of (b)
Vijaya comes from Sinhapura in Lala in (c)
He sends a letter to the same place to secure a
successor, and Panduvasudeva comes from there to become king of (d)
Panduvasudeva marries a daughter of Saka Pandu who
rules from a city on the right bank of the (e)
Devanampiya Tissa’s relations too were limited to Then he poses the question- ‘Is it then likely that Vijaya
sought a princess from While Dr. Mendis has taken great pains to support a statement recently made by a Civil Servant in the Census report against Geiger, the official Translator of the Mahavamsa, he ignores the studied opinion of a Sinhalese scholar and historian, Mudaliyar W. F. Gunawardhana, who had unequivocally exposed the fallacies involved in such an inference. It was the Rev. Theodore G. Perera, who in his work on the Sinhalese language, repeats what Mudaliyar W. F. Gunawardhana has referred to as ‘a sporting theory, that the Pandyan 48 Princess, the consort of Vijaya, came not from Dravidian
Madura of South India but from (an implied Aryan) Mathura of North India,
situated in the (‘Siddhanta Pariksanaya’, Part I. Introduction, by W. F. Gunawardhana). The
Mudaliyar proceeds to point out that this ‘laborious theory’ built up by Mr.
Bhandarkar to associate the Pandus with the Pandyans had encouraged the Aryan
enthusiasts in Here is what Dr. Bhandarkar had suggested- ‘What appears to be the truth is that there was a tribe called Pandu round about Mathura, and that when a section of them went Southwards and were settled there, they were called Pandus.’ It will
be noticed that when Dr. Bhandarkar said ‘What appears to be’ and ‘round
about ‘The Kurus were one of the most prominent Aryan tribes of late Vedic period, but it is curious the Pandus are mentioned for the first time in Buddhist literature, where they are described as a hill tribe.’ Not even
in the early Buddhist literature of I give
below the words of Mudaliyar W. F. Gunawardhana, who, unlike many others who
have attempted to write the history of ‘Now to the theory, to take it seriously, we shall apply a small test, something like a pin-prick, to the end of the series of propositions involved. ‘Was
there a Madura (Vel Madhura, Vel Mathura) in the 49 western bank of the ‘Madura
the capital of Pandya in the gahapayitva
pahesum-dakkinam puram, which with the context means that the ministers of
Vijaya sent an embassy conveying presents to the ‘city of ‘And from
this city the Princess came with all her numerous train.’ She therefore came not from the banks of
the distant His considered conclusion about the Sinhalese people, their origins and language, the Mudaliyar has expressed in unequivocal terms in the same work (Introduction p. 14). ‘I have found that the Sinhalese are entirely a Dravidian race with just a slight Aryan wash……. It now appears to me that the original contributors to the evolution of the language, viz. Yaksas and Nagas (the aborigines) Vijaya and his party, and the contingent from Madura, were all Dravidians.’ This was
written in 1924, by an admittedly first rate Sinhalese scholar with a knowledge of Tamil, and a student of 50 ‘We have surveyed a good part of the Kandyan Law, so far as it may be known from the published sources, where the institutions are such as might legitimately be believed to have remained little if at all modified by the passage of the centuries particularly in a highly conservative and remote community such as the Sinhalese were for at least a millennium, during which time the orthodox Hindus never mixed socially with them. (Note 278. ‘The Sinhalese were mlecchas’, (see Haradatta on Gautama dh. see 1, 9, 17) ‘and so unfit for contact of any kind. Their interference with South Indian politics in the 13th century is not likely to have made them individually more welcome amongst the orthodox’). ‘The natural inferences to be drawn from the similarity between Kandyan Law and Indian Laws and customs point in a certain direction.’ ‘We
cannot altogether neglect certain well known historical facts, although our
eventual conclusion must be laid at the feet of historians for their
consideration. It is generally
believed that Vijaya brought the first Sinhalese to ‘It seems
that the Sinhalese were a people of predominantly non-Aryan descent, with a
way of life substantially identifiable as akin to that common in modern Again in the next page (page 149) he says- ‘The antipathy of the Sinhalese to the Tamils, their closest neighbours, does not rest upon the millenium of conquests and invasions and political alliances and intrigues; there is no doubt that the racial affiliations of most of the Tamils differ from those of the original Sinhalese – the proportion of pre-Aryan 51 races in the mixture are different just as the proportion of Aryan is demonstrably different. Yet of course the Sinhalese were not Aryans. From whence, then comes the notion that their descendants are? This presents no difficulty. The Buddhists referred to any respectable member of the Sangha as an Aryan and that usage must have been common among the former Buddhist world. Moreover the Dravidians were used to refer to the non-Dravidians as Aryans.’ 8 To return
to Dr. Mendis’ repetition of his thesis, we find that in support of his argument,
Dr. Mendis assumes that the term ‘ Dr. Mendis in associating Madura with Muttra in the North does not seem to be concerned about considering whether the Ganges was and is navigable all the way from the East Coast to the neighbourhood of Muttra near the banks of the Jumna, or whether at this remote period of Indian history the Indo-Aryans or the alleged Indo-Aryan associates of Vijaya in Ceylon, had any experience of navigation to transport the large contingent of human beings, elephants and other gifts along the length of the Ganges and the sea, extending in all to about 3,000 miles from Muttra to the Gangetic delta, and then from there to the Gulf of Mannar, in Ceylon. Dr.
Mendis proceeds to adduce what he considers a weighty reason to show that
Madura of the Mahavamsa is really ‘According
to the Mahavamsa the ambassadors from He does
not seem to be aware that the ‘Ten Madhura’ of pre-Christian times was not
situated on the same site as the Madura of today. In old Tamil literature ‘Ten Madhura’ or 52 In his ‘Hindu Culture and the Modern Age’, (1936), K. S. Ramaswamy Sastri makes reference to this fact, when he says, (p. 341):- ‘Korkai, which
is said to be the Kavatapuram of the Ramayana, was a great sea-port of the Referring to the old Madura, V. Kanagasabhai, in ‘The Tamils Eighteen Hundred Years Ago’, Second Edition, p. 13, says:- ‘Madura
was doubtless the most famous and important town in Tamilakam at the period,
being the capital city of the Pandyas who were renowned as the most powerful
of the Tamil kings, and munificient patrons of the poets…… The site of the ancient Madura or Kudal was
most probably Pala Madura (or old Mattura) now in ruins, which is situated at
a distance of about six miles to the south of the modern town of “Lord of the fortified city, whose walls knew no siege by any other enemy but the waters of the Vaigai when it is swollen with floods.” (Kalithokai, Stanza 67, lines 3 to 5) But
Mahanama (sixth century A. D.), the author of the Mahavamsa certainly appears
to have known something of the geographical distances involved in his
account. Referring to the message sent
to the ‘Pandu King’, he is careful to add that messengers quickly came by
ship to the city of Referring
to Bhaddakaccana, (‘the daughter of Sakka Pandu’), who came over from “For (love of) her did seven kings send precious gifts to the king (Pandu); but for fear of the kings and since he was told (by soothsayers) that an auspicious journey would come to 53 pass, nay, one with the result of royal consecration, he placed his daughter speedily upon a ship, together with thirty-two women friends, and launched the ship upon the Ganges saying “whosoever can, let him take my daughter”, and they could not overtake her, but the ship fared swiftly thence. “Already on the second day they reached the haven called Gonamaka9 and there they landed robed like nuns.” (‘Gonamuka’, Geiger says in a note, was at the mouth of the Mahakanda Nadi, near Mannar.) Does Dr. Mendis
think that Mahanama was such a simpleton as to imagine that a ship launched
on the But to admit that Vijaya and his followers obtained their brides from the Pandyan country is not to accept that the woman whom Vijaya married was necessarily a Pandyan Princess. It is a pardonable exaggeration on the part of the author of the Mahavamsa to describe her as a Princess, though the details of the account, supported by the position of eminence that the Pandayans held in the south of India at this period, and the origins of Vijaya and the alliance he had on his arrival in Ceylon, point to a different inference. It would require a great deal of credulity to believe that some unknown king from distant Muttra (North Mathura), could have sent his daughter all the way down the Ganges and the Bay of Bengal, to be married to Vijaya, a rebel or a bandit who had landed in Ceylon from an unknown area in Vanga, (probably ‘Vengi’ or ‘Vengadam’ near the Tirupati Hills, once a Veddah dependency of the Pandyan). It is
equally inconceivable that the Pandyan King known to ancient Tamil literature
as ‘Tennavan’, the Lord of the South, would have sent his own daughter, with
a miscellaneous company of women and artisans, to marry an adventurer about
whose exploits in the Veddah-Yakka portion of It is not the normal custom among the respectable classes of an Eastern people, to whom the dignity and honour of a daughter are more closely bound up with the family than any other treasured possession in life, to send a daughter to the home or the country of the selected bridegroom for a matrimonial alliance. But to suggest that a Pandyan King, belonging to a recognised and powerful dynasty in the South of India would have sent his own daughter unaccompanied by him 54 or at least by an uncle to be wedded to a neighbouring petty ruler is to ask the reader to swallow a camel. “When the
messengers were quickly come by ship to the city of ‘Those men who are willing to let a daughter depart for Lanka shall provide their daughters with a double store of clothing and place them at the doors of their houses. By this sign shall we know (that we may) take them to ourselves.’ “When he had thus obtained many maidens and had given compensation to their families, he sent his daughter bedecked with all her ornaments, and all that was needful for the journey and all the maidens whom he had found out according to their ranks, elephants and horses and wagons worthy of a king, and craftsmen and thousand families of the eighteen guilds, entrusted with a letter to the conqueror Vijaya. All this multitude of men disembarked at Mahatittha: for that very reason is that landing place called ‘Mahatittha’.” ‘The great landing place’, now Mantota opposite
the The
Pandyan King, as suggested earlier, must have certainly known the antecedents
of Vijaya and of his marriage with Kuveni, the ‘Yaksha Princess’ of It is again a pardonable gesture that the author of the Mahavamsa should have elevated these imported brides to the dignity of Princeses, to compensate for the doubtful history of Vijaya and his followers. Mahanama graciously admits (vide, MHV. Ch. VII, V. 74), that it was the advent of the South Indian bride that transformed the life of Vijaya. For says he:- ‘When he had forsaken his former evil ways, Vijaya the Lord of men, ruling over all Lanka in peace and righteousness reigned, as is known, in the city of Tambapanni thirty eight years.’ 55 It would appear to be likely that the city in which he reigned was called Tambapanni in order to commemorate the Tinnevely area (Tambaraparani in South India) from where the brides and the craftsmen were in all probability recruited, while Andhra (Pura) recalled the country from which Vijaya himself had hailed. ____________ VERY IMPORTANT NOTES AND REFERENCES 1.
‘The
Mahabharata Legends in the Mahavamsa’, by Dr. G. C. Mendis, in the Journal of
the Royal Asiatic 2. Panduvasa The name of this king is given as Panduvasa in the Dipavamsa (fourth century A.D.). Dr. G. C. Mendis and other local Sinhalese historians of our day prefer to retain the name Panduvasudeva, as altered by the author of the Mahavamsa, for obvious reasons. B.C. Law (ibid p. 50) – has some interesting comments to make on this apparently deliberate alteration. He says, “The immediate successor of Vijaya, Panduvasa (Dipavamsa) or Paundravasudeva (Mahavamsa), who was the youngest brother of Vijaya, reigned for 30 years. Did the author of the Mahavamsa purposely change the name to Paundravasudeva, king of Vanga and Kalinga mentioned in the Mahabharata – in connection with the military campaign of Bhima?” Meaning of the name Panduvasa“It may as well be a Pali or Prakrit equivalent of Pandya, varsa meaning one from the Pandyan country i.e.-Pandya by nationality. The name Panduka is apparently of the same import. According to Megasthenes the Pandyans were originally a people who maintained the tradition of a matriarchal form of society.” (ibid. p. 52). Panduka-Abhaya
was the nephew of Abhaya, the son of Panduvasa (Panduvasudeva). Apayan ( 56 3. Mahavamsa Ch. XI V. 19:- “For the two Monarchs Devanampiya Tissa and Dhammasoka already had been friends for a long time, though they had never seen each other.” If this description of their friendship is to be taken seriously then Asoka of Pataliputra and Tissa of Andhradhapura should be considered the earliest of pen friends known to history. It may be remembered that Asoka had no jurisdiction over the Tamil States in the South. They are referred to in his Edict as ‘Antas’ i.e. ‘foreigners’. The distance between Asoka’s capital and Andhradapura whether by land, sea or even by air exceeds 1,200 miles. 4.
Devanampiya Tissa was the son of Muttasiva – a
descendant of Panduvasa (Panduvasudeva of the Mahavamsa), and was obviously a
Saivite, before his conversion to Buddhism.
What was his original name?
Panduvasa who came from the Pandyan Tamil country is said to have been
a nephew of Vijaya. B. C. Law (On the
Chronicles of Ceylon, p. 65), points out that, “the two main heroes,
Devanampiya Tissa and Duthagamini are missing in them”, i.e., in the early
inscriptions found in (a)
These inscriptions, it may be observed, are in the
South Indian variety of the Brahmi script, the script used in the Asokan
inscriptions in (b)
Dr. Mendis himself had pointed out earlier (‘Early
History of Ceylon’, 1932 Edition, p. 3). ‘No independent record of any kind
outside of 5.
Tamraparni (Sanskrit); Tambapanni (Pali);
Thamiraparuni (Tamil). Thamiraparuni ( ‘Thamiram’ ( 57 the adjoining districts, is called Champadu – ‘red earth’, because of the redness of the soil. It was originally a part of the South Indian Tamil country. The name of the river was given the prefix ‘Tam’ or ‘Chem’ because of the fact that gold washings were found in its water which made it look golden or ‘Copper coloured’. Kamban
in his Tamil Ramayanam (tenth C.). – refers to the river as, “ The
“The Tamraparni rising among the wooded hills of the Southern ghats and benefiting from both the monssons, forms a life line for agriculture in the Tinnevelly district”, (K. A. Nilakanta Sastri, ‘History of South India’, p. 44). The Carnatic or the Tamil Plain ‘This is
the real old Despite all this, Sinhalese historians assert that
the irrigation system of 6.
Silappadikaram References in the Silappadikaram, (a Tamil Epic of
which the heroine is Kannakai or Pattini, a popular deity worshipped in (a) Ch. X, lines 13-14 (b) Ch. XXVII, line 92 58 In
‘Buddhism and Tamil’, p. 25, by Mylai Seeni Vengadasamy, (The Saiva Siddhanta
Press, Tinnevelly, “Research students are of opinion that the Vihara (Indra Vihara), was built by the Thera Mahendra (Mahinda) at Kaveri-poom-pattinam.” (Mahendra becomes Mahinda in Pali). It is
obvious that Mahinda came from Tambapanni (Thamiraparuni), the Pandyan
country in Other references to Mahendra Vihara in the Tamil country, Manimekalai (A Tamil Buddhist Epic) Ch. 26, line 65 Ch. 28, lines 69-70 7. Sihala It has been already pointed out that this reference to Sihala in the Pali Chronicles is possibly a later interpolation, as in the subsequent chapters of these early Chronicles, no mention whatever is made of either a Sihala island or a Sihala people. The names by which the island is mentioned are Lanka, Tambapanni, Nagadipa. Vijaya the alleged founder of the ‘Sihala race’, is said to have been the son of Sihabahu who had slain his father and later married his own sister. The Chroniclers certainly did not want us to believe that Vijaya’s followers were called Sihala – not after Vijaya but after his father Sihabahu, the parricide. B.C. Law, commenting on the names ‘Sihala’ and ‘Tambapanni’ states:- “They offer us cheap and fantastic explanations for the origin of the two names of the island, Sihala because of the epithet Sihala carried by Vijaya’s father Sihabahu since he had slain the lion, and Tambapanni because of the fact that on their first landing in the island the hands of Vijaya’s companions were coloured red with the dust of the earth.” (B.C. Law, ibid. p. 49). 8 This assumption of an Aryan ancestry is introduced by Dr. Mendis arbitrarily. It is however in keeping with his description of the early period of Ceylon History as “North Indian”. Such has been the anxiety of the Sinhalese writers to 59 establish an Aryan ancestry for
themselves that some of their historians have made an effort to prove that
the Pandyans, the oldest and most distinguished of the early Tamil dynasties,
were Aryans. It is well known that the
kings and queens of J.D. Derrett of ‘The School of Oriental and African Studies’, in his essay on the ‘Origins of the Laws of the Kandyans’, in the University of Ceylon Review (Vol. XIV, No. 3 & 4, p. 149), gives a possible explanation for this belief. He writes, “Yet of course the Sinhalese were not Aryans. From whence came the notion that their descendants are? This presents no difficulty. The Buddhists referred to any respectable member of the Sangha as an Aryan, and the usage must have been common during the former Buddhist world. Moreover the Dravidians were accustomed to refer to non-Dravidians as Aryans.” The
Buddhists used the term ’Aryan’ to mean Mlecchas i.e., an ‘outcast’, ‘an
unclean stranger’ etc. Vide, V.
Visvanathapillai’s “Tamil and English Dictionary”, published by the Madras
School Book and Literature Society, for the definintions of Aryan ( Pandyan Origins “The
Pandya kings claimed descent from a tribe styled Marar, which however had for
many years another important representative in the prince bearing the title
Palaiyan Maran whose capital was Mogur, near the Podiya hill not far from
Comorin.” (‘Camb. Hist. Of Palaiya ( 9 Vijaya
paid an annual tribute to the Pandyan king (MHV. Ch VII, v. 73); after the
death of Panduvasa (Panduvasudeva) his eldest son Abhaya became the lawful
king. Panduvasudeva’s mother is said
to have been the daughter of the Mada king.
Geiger states that Mada is the Sanskritised form of 60 no means an isolated instance of Geiger’s notes needing revision. Had Geiger known as much of Tamil and Tamil Literature as he knew Pali and Pali Literature, he is not likely to have made so many misleading slips in his comments and notes in dealing with Tamil words and place names in the Mahavamsa. For the significance of the term Mada which means Madura, vide, Kanagasabhai’s, ‘Tamils Eighteen Hundred Years Ago’, (p. 13). “Madura
at this time was the capital city of the Pandyans. The high towers over the four gates of the
fort distinguished it from other towns in the Tamil country. Hence it was familiarly known as
Nan-Mada-k-kudal or kudal. The site of
the ancient town was most probably Pala-Madura ( The city
referred to as ‘Mada’, in the Mahavamsa is obviously Note,
Gonamuka is the Prakritised form of the Tamil Kona Mukam ( ____________ 61 APPENDIX 1 Vijaya’s Alleged Home and Itinerary SOVIRA – SOPARA – SOPARAKA The Dipavamsa (IV A.D.), and the Mahavamsa (VI A.D.), the two early Pali Chronicles of Ceylon, were composed nearly 1,000 years after the supposed landing of Vijaya, the alleged founder of an ‘Aryan Kingdom’ in Ceylon. The authors of the Dipavamsa from which work the Mahavamsa had obtained the main facts for its version of the early History of Buddhist Ceylon, appear to have had a confused knowledge of the Geography of India. No one
could blame those Buddhist monks who led a secluded life in some isolated
Vihara in the interior of While the
Dipavamsa says that the grandmother of Vijaya by her marriage with a lion
produced two boys, the Mahavamsa improves upon the tale by making one child a
boy and the other a girl. These marry
and become the progenitors of Vijaya.
But both agree on the criminal and unsocial character of Vijaya and
his followers. Both agree also in
stating that they set out from a port in Vanga – modern They did not either know or think it necessary to investigate whether the Tambapanni of the Asokan inscription did in fact mean Lanka. 62 The
Mahavamsa, however in making the king of Vanga marry a Kalinga Princess,
gives a hint with regard to the persistent tradition in Kalinga was one of the early Dravidian states Aryanised in speech and converted to Buddhism after its conquest by Asoka. The
Pujavali (ya), a Ceylonese Chronicle of XIV Century, agrees with the
Mahavamsa version that the daughter of the Kalinga country married a king of
the Wanga country. It refers to the
place where Vijaya landed as Tammenna3 and not as Tambapanni. By the XIV century, Buddhist monks in Some
Buddhist writers of our day claim that Sopara or Soparaka,
was a seat of great Buddhist culture in early days (‘Times of Ceylon’,
27.6.61). Some of these seem to have
discarded the story of the early Chronicles that Mahinda, the apostle of
Ceylon Buddhism, had traveled through the air and landed in Lanka ( The
tradition in B. C. Law, in his Classic ‘On the Chronicles of Ceylon’, p. 60, writes:- “MAHINDA’S coming through the air throws suspicion on the account – and this is enhanced by the more probable story that Mahinda’s Missionary work has been directed to the country of Malayakuta which is no other than Tamraparni of the Great Epic, situated in the extreme South of the Deccan, below Pandya or Dravida, and the Tambapanni of the Asokan Edicts.” In Place
XL (‘Buddhist India’, by Rhys Davids), where a map of 63 1.
“Sea going merchants…… were in the habit, at the beginning
of the seventh (and perhaps at the end of the eighth) Century B.C. of trading
from ports on the South-West Coast of India (Sovira at first, afterwards
Supparaka and Bharukaccha), to 2. “These merchants were mostly Dravidians not Aryans. Such Indian names of the goods imported as were adopted in the West (Solomon’s Ivory, apes and peacocks, for instance, and the word rice) were adaptations, not of Sanskrit or Pali, but of Tamil words.” The fact is that Sovira, later Sopara or Supparaka, was not a North Indian port but an Andhra-Tamil Mart on the West Coast of Damarike, as the Tamil country was called by the Greek merchants. (Damarike means Tamilakam). Sopara (SUPPARA), was a port south of Barygaza, (that is Broach on the coast of modern Gujarat), and Caliena (which is often locally associated with Kelaniya,5 on the west coast of Ceylon, because of the similarity in sound, by Buddhists who wish to claim a North Indian origin) is further South. Sopara and Caliena were Andhra-Tamil ports. In later times Muziris and Nelcynda, still further South, became more important. These ports were in Damarike. B.C. Law has also pointed out “that the legend
recorded by Hiuen Tsang mentions The Sinhalese people influenced by the Pali Chronicles continue to show a partiality for Sinhapura on the Northern Border of Kalinga – even as they have preferred to connect the Pandyan Tamil brides sent to Vijaya and his followers from Madura, with Muthra further North-(West). REFERENCES 1. Dip. Ch. IX, vv. 15-20; MHV. Ch. VI, vv. 46-47 2. Dip. Ch. IX, vv. 1-31; MHV. Ch. VI, vv. 34-47 3.
PUJAVALIYA, 4. MHV. Ch. XIV, v. 15. 5.
‘KELANIYA’, is from the Tamil ( 64 APPENDIX II Early Period – North Indian or South Indian? Dr. G. C. Mendis, in his ‘Early History of Ceylon’ (1954 Edition), calls the early period beginning with 247 B.C., ‘The North Indian Period’.1 He says little about the period from Vijaya to Mutasiva in his Magnum Opus. According
to his own Map which appears on page 23 of his ‘Early History of Ceylon’, The
Northern portion of the It was Vijaya himself was a Hindu and an adventurer – probably from the Pandya-Andhra7 border known as Tiruvengadam, once a Veddah dependency of the Pandyan King. It will be noted that the Mahavamsa ‘written for the edification of the pious’, in attempting to synchronise the accession of Vijaya with the death of Gautama Buddha8 has created a good deal of chronological confusion. Regarding
the character of Vijaya and his companions before their arrival in the Vijaya
and his immediate successors were not Buddhists. We are told in the Mahavamsa that the Yakka
Temples were respected, and halls were built for Hindus and 65 Though Vijaya had left no issue by his South Indian wife, Panduvasa13 who succeeded him is said to have been his ‘nephew’. (Note the Dravidian Matrilineal descent observed.) The fact that there was an interregnum between the death of Vijaya and the coming of Panduvasa, points to the delay in finding and transporting a suitable successor to Vijaya from the Pandyan Country. While Panduvasa and Abhaya were full blooded Tamils from the Pandyan Country, Abhaya’s successor Pandukka Abhaya was a “Usurper’. The uncles of Citta (the youngest daughter of Panduvasa by his South Indian queen), were opposed to the illegitimate son of Citta14 by Dighagamini15, succeeding Panduvasa. The interregnum following Abhaya’s death was perhaps due to this. Cittu, Cita, Citi (Tam.) ‘small’, ‘young’, ‘little’, (D. E. D. 2073; 1326). Their son was named Pandukka Abhaya, the name being a combination of the names of Panduvasa and Abhaya, the grandfather and the eldest uncle respectively of Citta. They
avoid giving the name of either Dighagaminis’ father or of his
grandfather. But Pandukka Abhaya
appears to have gathered to his side local leaders such as Cittarajah16,
probably a Naga, and Kharavela17, a Yakka, to strengthen his
precarious position.18 The town
of He also built the tank called Abyaha Vapi, Vapi being the Pali-ised form of the Tamil ‘Vavi’ (335), ‘a tank’, also known as Baswa-kulam, probably an abridged form of ‘Panduvasa Kulam’. Kulam, again, is a Tamil word for ‘a tank’ (1518). Pandukka
Abhaya gives his son a Tamil Saiva name Mutasiva. We are not told whom he married, but his
second son Devanampiya Tissa succeeds him.
His real Hindu name is not known.
B. C. Law has pointed out that the name of neither Devanampiya Tissa
nor of Dutugemunu, the two heroes of the Mahavamsa, is found in the early
inscriptions.20 66 Mutasiva had apparently married a local Naga Chieftain’s daughter. Some of the sons of Mutasiva, along with ‘Devanampiya Tissa’, had become Buddhists, as their names suggest. Devanampiya Tissa is referred to as having belonged to the Moriya clan – a Dravidian tribe.21 As a Buddhist, possibly, in order to win the support of the Buddhist priesthood and the Naga converts to Buddhism, he preferred to align himself with the Moriya clan to which his mother in all probability belonged. Devanampiya Tissa is followed by his brothers as rulers, and then the Cholas replace them – Sena, Guttaka and Elara, the greatest of them being the last. Dutugemunu, again, was the son of Kakavanna Tissa, a Naga chieftain in the extreme South of Ceylon. It is interesting to note that the Dipavamsa, the earlier Chronicle, on which the Mahavamsa itself was apparently based, does not speak of a war between Elara and Dutugemunu.22 Dutta (Duttha) Tam, ‘the wicked’, ‘mischievous person’, (2696). On what
grounds could the periods either before or after Devanampiya Tissa be called
North Indian? Does the fact that
Asoka, a North Indian King, had sent out Buddhist Missionaries towards the
South, and the fact that a local Hindu ruler in Is the distinction and the honour of tracing a North Indian or ‘Aryan’ ancestry so overpoweringly great and sacred that the reasonable inferences from recorded events and statements should be brushed aside? Note The
numbers against words indicate the relevant section in the ‘Dravidian
Etymological Dictionary’, by T. Burrow and M. B. Emeneau, Clarendon Press, 67 NOTES AND REFERENCES1.
Dr. G. C. Mendis, ‘Early History of 2.
L. A. Krishna Iyer and L. K. Balaratnam,
‘Anthropology in 3.
E. H. Warmington, ‘Commerce between the ‘Tamils control the North during
the first two Centuries’; Ibid. p. 120.
It will be noted that Vijaya paid tribute to the Pandyan king; and the
mixed descendants of Panduvasa continued to rule till the Cholas took over. It follows that 4. Tamil Sangam work – Pattupattu (Pattinapalai), line 191, ‘Ilam’ (Izham). 5.
In the third century B.C. cave inscriptions in 6. Gilbert Slater, ‘Dravidian Element in Indian Culture’, p. 33. ‘That Cobra worship was dominant among the Dravidians in the Vedic period is shown by the term Naga generally superseding other names used in Sanskrit literature for Dravidians.’ 7. Pujavali; Mahavamsa Ch. VI, vv. 1-2, Geiger, ‘Culture of Ceylon in Medieval Times’, refers ‘to the renewal of the connection of Vijaya with the Kalinga dynasty’, in the X Century. 8.
9. Dip. Ch. IX, vv. 47-49, MHV. Ch. VI, vv. 39-42. 10. MHV. Ch. VII, vv. 72-74. Vijaya forsakes his evil ways after marrying a Tamil woman from the Pandyan country. 68 11.
Tennent’s ‘ 12. Tennent, Ibid. p. 340, n. I. 13.
Dipavamsa, the earlier Chronicle refers to the King
as Panduvasa. 14. MHV. Ch. IX, vv. 15-21. Digha was apparently a local Gramani; Citta was the youngest of Panduvassa’s children. ‘Cita’ is an affectionate term in Tamil used for a ‘small girl’ or a ‘young boy’. 15. MHV. Ch. IX, vv. 26-27. 16. MHV. Ch. X, vv. 84-88; Citta-Rajah is the Pali-ised version of the Tamil, Chitt-Arasu. Citta ‘Small’ (2073); and (169), Arasan – ‘King’ (i.e.) ‘a sub king’. 17.
18. Ibid. 19.
MHV. 20. B. C. Law, ibid. pp. 65-66, ‘but no inscription is found until now to confirm the truth of the battles fought by Dutthagamani with Elara and his lieutenants’. 21. Dr. G. C. Mendis, Ibid. p. 15. 22. Dip. Ch. XVIII, vv. 49-54. B. C. Law, Ibid. p. 66, ‘but no inscription is found till now to confirm the truth of the battles fought by Dutthagamani with Elara and his lieutenants”. Nor does the Dipavamsa (IV C), refer to a war between Elara and Dutthagamini, who has become today, the national hero of the Sinhalese. 69 APPENDIX III TAMRAPARUNI – TAMBAPANNI – TAPROBANE Taprobane is a term which was, for
the first time, used by Megasthenes, a Greek Ambassador at Pataliputra,
(Fourth Century B.C.), to indicate a kingdom in the extreme south of the
Indian sub-continent. Megasthenes, however,
knew very little of the geography of the south of It will be known that Hugh Neville of the Ceylon Civil Service (XIX C), edited the now almost forgotten Taprobanian which he rightly called a ‘Dravidian Journal’. Early trade of the historic Tamil
kingdoms with Dr. Barnett (Cambridge History of
India, p. 594) says-“Long before the beginning of the Christian era, the
Dravidian south had developed a considerable culture of its own, and its
inhabitants had consolidated themselves into powerful kingdoms carrying on a
thriving trade with 70 A study of the “Commerce between
the Roman Empire and India’ (E. H. Warmington), will show that the Pearl
Fisheries of Tuticorin, the Gulf of Mannar and Tamblegam were, through the
ages, till the occupation of Ceylon by the Portuguese, mainly under the
control of Pandyan Tamil kings. Most
of the wars in The Mahavamsa does not refer to
any “Sinhalese kings”, as such sending an embassy to Notes and References 1.
There was a time when the 2. KAMBAN (X C) in his Tamil Ramayanam wrote- “ ‘The sacred Porunai (Tamraparuni) river, stuffed with gold.’ 3.
Of Tambraparni Nilakanta Sastri in his “History of
South India”, p. 44 writes-“We may note that the Tamraparni, rising among the
wooded hills of the southern ghats and benefiting from both the monsoons
forms a life line of agriculture in the Tinnevelly district. At its mouth, in the SINHAPURA 4.
“The legend recorded by HIUEN TSANG mentions South (B. C. Law, ‘On the Chronicles of Ceylon’, page 46). 71 SIHALA 5. “The Dipavamsa and the Mahavamsa offer us cheap and fantastic explanations for the origin of the two names SIHALA carried by VIJAYA’S father SINHA BAHU since he had slain the lion, and TAMBAPANNI because of the fact that on their first landing in the Island the hands of Vijaya’s companions were coloured red by the dust of the earth”. (B. C. Law, ‘On the Chronicles of Ceylon’, page 49). TAMBAPANNI 6. In the appendix the origin of the word TAMBAPANNI has already been discussed. The explanations of the names SIHALA and TAMBAPANNI as already suggested by me were probably later interpolations. The word SIHALA appears only once in the MAHAVAMSA of MAHANAMA and in the earlier Chronicle, the Dipavamsa. It is known that the Manuscript of the Dipavamsa was found in Burma and that the old leaf text of the Mahavamsa from which TURNOUR made his translation was not more than ‘two hundred years old’. “The age of the oldest available manuscript written in old leaves, is perhaps not more than two hundred years.” (Dr. G. C. Mendis, ‘Early
History of APPENDIX IV MAHINDA According to Dr. G. C. Mendis, ‘no
independent record of any kind outside of (Quoted in ‘Physical Anthropology of Ceylon’, 1961, p. 24). And still Dr. G. C. Mendis wants us to believe that the Mahavamsa is reliable in its account from the time of Devanampiya Tissa. “The Indian tradition is that
Buddhist Missionaries led by Mahendra, a brother of Asoka, penetrated as far
as Tamraparni river in the Pandyan (Prof. L. Mukherjee, ‘History of India’, Hindu Period, p. 106) 72 APPENDIX V NAGAS OR SERES This In an inscription dated Eleventh Century A.D., at Mamallai-Puram, by the Chola king Kopari-Kesari-Varman, alias Udiyayar Sri Rajendra Deva (1040-1069), who defeated the Chalukya king at the battle of Koppa, a copy of a deed by which a piece of land was granted to a temple at Mamallai-Puram is found. It was signed by the following Nagas amongst the high officers of the Chola Tamil King1……. Olinagan Madaiyan Alagiya Chola, Amurnaddu Muvenda Velan, Olinagan Chandra Sekaran, Olinagan Narayanan, Indupuravan Sanga-Nagan, Uchan-Kilavan Muguli Nagan. A Tamil poet of the Sangam age,
describing a tribe of Nagas, refers to them as ‘chivalrous and intrepid
warriors, fierce as tigers in the battle field’.2 Kanagasabhai in his ‘Tamils
Eighteen Hundred Years Ago’, has pointed out that-judging from Ptolemy’s
account3 at Uraiyur, the Chola capital, the Cholas had been
displaced by the Sore (Sora) Nagas who were evidently the descendants of the
Chola and Naga families who had intermarried.4 About this period the Nagas,
probably as feudatories of the Chola Kings of South India, appear to have
been placed as petty kings in various parts of South Ceylon.5 Note the following names of some
of the early Khallatanaga …… 109 B.C. (son of Sadatissa, the brother of Duttugamunu) Cora Naga …… 63 B.C. (son of Valgamba) Ila Naga …… 36 A.D. (nephew of Sivali) 73 Mahallaka Naga …… 136 A.D. (grandson of Vasabha, a Lambakanna) Kuhunna Naga ….. 186 A.D. (brother of Batiya Tissa) Kudda or Kunca naga …… 188 A.D. Siri Naga I …… 189 A.D. (son of Batiya Tissa) Abhaya Naga …… 231 A.D. (brother of Vera Tissa) Note: (It is apparent that the Tissas in
the list of early kings of Again, the Parathars, (Paravas),
the ancestors of some of the older inhabitants of the maritime coast of They were famous pearl divers;
they dived for pearls and conch shells; they knew the charm to drive away the
Sharks. According to Mathurai-Kanchi,
a Tamil Sangam work, they were the most powerful people in the country around
Korki in Then-Pandi-Nad (South Pandyan Tamil country). They were well fed on fish and flesh, and
armed with bows they terrified their enemies by their dashing valour.6 The Nagas were skilled in many
arts one of which was the art of weaving.
The Nagas of the Tamil poets allude to a famous
Chieftain Ay who offered to the image of Siva, one of these priceless muslins
which had been presented to him by NILA-NAGA.8 “It was from the Nagas that the Aryas first learnt the art of writing, and hence Sanskrit Characters are to this day known as Devanagiri.” If Siri Rahula, the Elu poet of 74 century A.D.), as late as in the fifteenth century Nagas
were still found in Kelaniya. He
refers to Naga maidens singing and dancing at the 1. V. Kanagasabhai-‘Tamils Eighteen Hundred Years Ago’, p. 44. 2. Mathurai-Kanchi 140-144 (A Tamil Sangam work). 3. Mc. Crindles Ptolemy, p. 185; Kanagasabhai, ibid. p. 44. 4. Kanagasabhai, ibid. p. 44. 5. ibid. p. 44. 6. Mathurai-Kanchi, 140-144. 7. Kanagasabhai, ibid. p. 45. 8. Chiru-Parnartu-Padai, (96-99) (A Tamil Sangam work). THE NAGAS - TAMIL AND ELU The Nagas who lived in In the Tamil Anthologies of the
SANGAM period of Tamil Literature, we meet with several poems written by Naga
poets. In the Anthologies known as
NARRINAI, KURUNTHOKAI, and AHA NANURU we come across the composition of
Ilathu Poothanar (‘ILATHU’-means ‘belonging’ to Izham or There were
other early __________ |
) is used
sometimes to refer indiscriminately to any great river; even in 
), was a
title often used by Tamil kings, particularly, the Cholas.
), is a river
in the Pandyan kingdom in the extreme South of South India adjoining the
Northern district of Ceylon.
) in Tamil.
), in Tamil
means ‘red lotus’ (
); ‘red’;
‘copper’ (Tam or Chem).
) “-“The
sacred river called Porunai (Thamiraparuni), whose waters are thick with
gold.”
).
) has the same
meaning as ‘pandu’ (
) in Tamil,
and means ‘old’ or ‘ancient’.
)
) i.e., ‘old 
); which means
‘a maritime district surrounded by salt marshes’.
), KALANI
meaning ‘an agricultural tract’, ‘field’, ‘paddy field’ etc.
”