The Vijayan colonization and the archaeology of identity in Sri Lanka.

CONINGHAM, ROBIN ; LEWER, NICK

In my tours throughout the interior, I found ancient monuments, apparently defying decay, of which no one could tell the date or the founder; and temples and cities in ruins, whose destroyers were equally unknown.

SIR JAMES EMERSON TENNANT (1859: xxv).

Introduction

There are competing, yet interlinked, identities in Sri Lanka through which people `establish, maintain, and protect a sense of self-meaning, predictability, and purpose' (Northrup 1989: 55). These have become established over hundreds of years, and communities are attributed labels including Sinhala, Tamil, Vadda, Buddhist and Hindu (Coningham & Lewer 1999: 857). Sri Lanka is now experiencing what Azar (1990) has called a `protracted social conflict', wherein a section of the Tamil communities led by the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) are engaged in a struggle to establish a Tamil homeland or Eelam. International links, especially with south India, have had important implications on the formation of identities in Sri Lanka. Here we will focus on a key influence which has deep archaeological and political implications, whose interpretation has informed and distorted the present understanding of the concept and evolution of identities. This theme, the Vijayan colonization of the island, illustrates the formulation of identities, especially as derived from a historical chronicle, the Mahavamsa, which was `rediscovered' by colonial officials in AD 1826 and has played a major role in determining the dynamics of this conflict.

The Mahavamsa

The Mahavamsa chronicles the island's past from its colonization by prince Vijaya in the 4th or 5th century BC to the reign of Mahasena (r. 274-301 AD). Composed by bhikkhus or Buddhist monks in the 4th-5th century AD, it was probably compiled from earlier sources (Bechert 1978: 3). The reliability of its later parts has been established by corroboration with inscriptions (Coningham 1995: 226) and it has been used to reconstruct the island's historical topography (Coningham 1999: 16). Despite its wide use, scholars are aware of its biases (Bechert 1978: 7) and Jeganathan (1995) has challenged links made by 19th-century scholars between archaeological sites and the chronicle.

The Mahavamsa records that Sri Lanka was uninhabited by humans until it was colonized by Vijaya and his followers in the middle of the 1st millennium BC (Mahavamsa 7.1-3). Heir to a kingdom in northern India, Vijaya had been exiled and sailed until he reached the island (Allchin 1990: 169). Once there, he killed many Yakkhas or `demonic inhabitants', but had two children by the yakkhini Kuvanna (Mahavamsa 7.36) and founded six cities, including Anuradhapura in the northern plains or Rajarata (FIGURE 1). On account of his descent from a lion, Vijaya and his followers called themselves Sinhala or `people of the lion' (Mahavamsa 7.42-45). He spurned Kuvanna for an Indian princess, and his children with the former went into the jungle and created the Pulinda people (Mahavamsa 7.68). It is only following the conversion of the Sinhalese to Buddhism in the 3rd century BC that the first Tamils are recorded (Mahavamsa 21.10-14). Thus, by chapter 21, the island's three pre-European communities are identified in order of arrival, the Sinhalese, the Pulinda and the Tamils.

The Vijaya colonization: a colonial framework

The first Europeans landed in AD 1505 and encountered three independent centres, the kingdoms of Kotte and Kandy (De Silva 1981: 89). The Portuguese began a process of commerce and conquest and absorbed Jaffnapatam in AD 1620 and Kotte in 1697, but were unable to subdue Kandy (De Silva 1981: 114-17). They were replaced by the Dutch, who tightened control of the coastal plains and isolated Kandy in the hill-country. The Dutch were expelled by the British in AD 1796, who defeated Kandy in AD 1815. Thus began a period of colonial rule which ended with independence in AD 1948. The earliest 16th-century British travellers recorded many ancient ruins in the Rajarata, describing `a world of hewn stone' (Knox 1911: 165); however, they were unsure of its authorship. Knox identified three major modern populations, the Sinhalese, the Malabars and the wild-men or Vaddas and reported that the Sinhalese were `the natural proper People of the Island' (1911: 61-2). Davy also identified `the aborigines of the country, and foreigners naturalised. The former are the Singalese (sic) ... The latter are chiefly Malabars' (1821: 81).

As late as the mid 19th century, the island's Colonial Secretary, Tennant, stated that the builders and destroyers of the ruins of the Rajarata were unknown (Tennant 1859: xxv), but from this period onward the antiquity of the island's modern communities was correlated by officials with reference to the Mahavamsa. Tennant, for example, suggested that the modern hunter-gatherers, the Vaddas, were identifiable as the Pulinda, suggesting (Tennant 1859: 316) that `the fate of the aborigines was that usually consequent on the subjugation of an inferior race ... a subjugated people'. This more civilized race was identified as the Sinhalese, and he attributed the cities of Rajarata to this Buddhist group: `everything tending to exalt and civilise ... was introduced by the northern conquerors' (1859: 340). Finally, Tennant identified the Tamils as the modern community of Malabars, commenting `all that contributed to ruin and debase it is distinctly traceable to the presence and influence of the Malabars' (1859: 340).

Parker contested this framework and suggested that the Mahavamsa's description of Nagas or `snake beings' in the island prior to Vijaya's arrival referred to a south India, Dravidian population, `who occupied Northern Ceylon long before the arrival of the Gangetic settlers' (Parker 1909: 16). Earlier still, Bertolacci (1817: 13) had suggested that the ruins of Mantai in the northeast marked a Tamil trading civilization which had been destroyed by the Sinhalese. However, by the middle of the 20th century Tennant's framework had been accepted by most colonial scholars. Indeed, the author of the island's first history, Codrington, could state (1939: 10) that `the evidence all points to Vijaya having come from the western coast' of India: `the evidence' being the Mahavamsa and the fact that the Sinhala language belonged to the Indo-Aryan language family of north India and was different to the Dravidian languages of south India, such as Tamil (Tambiah 1986: 4-5).

It is now clear that, prior to independence, strong identities were created using the Mahavamsa to sort and date Sri Lanka's inhabitants. This relative chronology ignored contesting models (Bertolacci 1817; Parker 1909), and its adoption can be interpreted on a number of levels. The first is the British preoccupation with the concept of an invasion of south Asia by Aryans. Leach has argued that such racial concepts helped free anti-Semites from their Judeo-Christian heritage (1990: 240) but it also legitimized British rule as Aryans supporting the Aryan lion race, whose kings were now of a mixed descent. Such concepts were not unwelcome to colonial officials whose income from the coastal provinces was disrupted by Kandy and whose objectives for declaring war on Kandy's king, Sri Vikrama Rajasinha (r. 1798-1815 AD), included `the deliverance of the Kandyans from their oppressors and the subversion of the Malabar dominion' (Codrington 1939: 172), the latter point noting that Rajasinha was a south Indian Tamil (De Silva 1981: 221). By using the Mahavamsa to portray Tamils as destructive, legitimation was awarded to the British by `delivering' the Kandyan people. These concepts can be found in the British recolonization of the Rajarata, their conservation of its Buddhist monuments and even their foundation of a provincial colonial capital amongst the ruins of Anuradhapura.

The Vijaya colonization: indigenous interpretation and reactions

As British colonial officials ordered the past with reference to the Mahavamsa, indigenous communities were also creating frameworks. Sinhalese interpretations were fashioned by colonial pressure on traditional systems; for example, the Sangha or `Buddhist order' lost its major source of patronage and guidance, the Kandyan king, at a time when Christian missionaries were intensifying their efforts. Rather than resulting in the rout of Buddhism and the loss of Sinhala identity, the reverse occurred. Buddhism experienced a revival as bhikkhus challenged missionaries in public debates and a new Sinhalese elite supported them. One of this elite, Angarika Dharmapala (1864-1933), began a Buddhist reformation against the island's colonial and Christian influences (Obeyesekere 1995). His version of Buddhism has been interpreted as `protestant' by some (Bond 1992: 56), but his reading of the Mahavamsa was directed against the colonialism: `This bright, beautiful island was made into a paradise by the Aryan Sinhala before its destruction was brought about by the barbaric vandals' (cited in Little 1994: 24-6). Dharmapala identified these vandals as Tamils and Europeans, and while colonial officials began to restore the ruined cities, members of the Buddhist revival paralleled their efforts and were responsible for reviving Anuradhapura as a focus of Buddhist pilgrimage and frequently referred to colonial restorations as irreverent (Bell & Bell 1983: 41). Utilizing the Mahavamsa to provide what Obeyesekere terms `identity affirmation', the Sinhalese enhanced their communal self-esteem in the face of colonial rule (1995: 238).

The Vijayan colonization continues to form a foundation of Sinhalese identity, and archaeological evidence for this event is sought. Whilst expressing doubts as to the authenticity of parts of the Mahavamsa, Sri Lanka's leading historian has stated that Vijaya's colonization has `a kernel of historical truth' (De Silva 1981: 3). Recent excavations at Anuradhapura have also been utilized and north Indian traits have been identified within the Early Historic levels (c. 600-500 BC), causing its excavator to hypothesise `it is tempting to see a connection with the legend of Vijaya and his followers' (Deraniyagala 1992: 711). Even the earlier presence of Late Stone Age tools and an Iron Age `megalithic' culture have been interpreted with reference to the colonial framework. Late Stone Age communities are identified as the ancestors of the Vaddas (De Silva 1981: 7-8) and the Iron Age culture as an earlier phase of Aryan invasion, despite attempts by some to attribute the latter to south India (Seneviratne 1984: 283). The presence of Prakrit, an Indo-Aryan language, on sherds dating to the middle of the 1st millennium BC at Anuradhapura has also been interpreted as indicating a `major Indo-Aryan impulse' (Deraniyagala 1992: 747, 728) and attempts made to link names on these sherds with the Mahavamsa. This framework was re-affirmed in 1989 with the state's publication of a new edition of the Mahavamsa, whose editor (Guruge 1989: 90) has stated that

Linguistically and culturally, the Dravidian element in the Sri Lankan population had remained sporadic, intermittent and secondary. On the whole, the material evidence for its presence and impact dates from a much later period than the arrival and the entrenchment of Indo-Aryan Sinhala population in the entire island.

Tamil reactions also occurred as their systems and elites became pressurized. Christian missionary activities led to a revival of Hinduism and this separation of Tamil communities led to a growing `self-consciousness on the part of northern Tamils as a cultural, linguistic, and religious collectivity' (Tambiah 1986: 107). Tamil scholars were aware of the negative identity created by the Mahavamsa and attempted to correct this bias. Rasanayagam, author of the first Sri Lankan Tamil history, suggested (1926: xix) that `feelings of just pride and patriotism would swell in the heart of every true son of Jaffna, if he could but have a peep into the glories of her past'. Using the Mahavamsa, he created an alternative identity by suggesting that the Nagas had established a `highly civilised state' before the arrival of Vijaya and that they were `akin to the South Indians ... in their religions, manners, customs, language' (1926: 129) and that they `excelled in Tamil literature' (1926: 177). He developed Bertolacci's identification of an early Tamil trading community in the north (Bertolacci 1817: 13) and suggested that it had been part of an independent kingdom in Jaffna (Rasanayagam 1926: 32). Proposing that the Sinhalese were a mixture of Yakkhas, Nagas, Tamils and northern Indians, he suggested that many Sinhalese kings had Naga and Tamil origins (1926: 230).

Recent archaeological discoveries of Iron Age `megalithic' burial complexes in much of the island add to the identification of a pre-Vijayan, non-Aryan presence. Interpreted by some as being `genetically related ... and ... part of the Iron Age burial tradition of the southern part of the Indian subcontinent' (Begley 1981: 94), their presence is identified as `proto-Dravidian' by Ragupathy (1987: 180). He has attempted to demonstrate that in the northern peninsula `continuity could be traced from 500 BC to the beginnings of the kingdom of Jaffna' (1987: 169). This `continuity' includes the presence of an independent polity, a pivotal role in Indian Ocean trade and a unique adaptation of Buddhism (1987: 182-3). Stating that his research was `kindled by the contemporary actualities and needs of Jaffna society -- the quest for the identity, territoriality and heritage' (1987: 4), Ragupathy concluded `the Tamil dialect and the folk religion in Jaffna can be traced back to the protohistoric times' (1987: 182). The role of the past in modern politics is illustrated by the Tamil United Liberation Front land claims on the extent of the kingdom of Jaffnapatam -- extinct in AD 1628 -- or by the LTTE adopting the Chola crest -- the Tiger -- and their targeting of Anuradhapura and Kandy (Coningham & Lewer 1999).

The Vijayan colonization: a conclusion

It is clear that the colonial framework and its preoccupation with culture history has created key identities, and has generated a quest to demonstrate who were the first and most legitimate identities on the island. Communities are being polarized into two main identities Hindu-Dravidian-Tamil and Buddhist-Aryan-Sinhalese (Coningham & Lewer 1999: 864), when there is little evidence for such clear identities in the past. Brahmins, for example, patronized the early Sangha (Coningham 1995: 231), the later Buddhist chronicle, the Culavamsa, records that Moggallana (r. 491-508 AD) and successive kings had Tamil commanders and courtiers (De Silva 1981: 20). Inscriptions confirm that even the Temple of the Buddha's Tooth was protected by Tamil bodyguards (Codrington 1939: 57).

Ethnic identities, whilst blurred in the historical period, are invisible in the archaeological record, even though regional traits and dynamics within material culture are identifiable but the concept used to link identities in the past is questioned by many archaeologists (Renfrew 1987). Claims and counter-claims of an Indo-Aryan or proto-Dravidian linguistic foundation for the island (Deraniyagala 1992: 747; Ragupathy 1987: 202) ignore the fact that linguistic changes can occur without recourse to population changes (Coningham et al. 1996: 94). Such changes can occur through the creation of a trade language (Sherratt 1988: 461-2) or even random processes (Robb 1991: 287). This question is intensely complex, as indicated by the presence of a strong Dravidian element in the Sinhala language (Godakumbura 1946: 827) and genetic evidence linking the Sinhalese more closely to south India than north Indian communities (Roychoudhury 1984). The attribution of the collapse of the Sinhalese Buddhist civilization of the northern plains must be re-examined with reference to new modes of explanation. Archaeologists have shifted away from concepts of external stimuli, such as invasions, and are concentrating on the concept of systems collapse and multicausal factors (Tainter 1988: 119).

We have illustrated how the interpretation of archaeology and history has influenced the formation of identities in Sri Lanka and the ways in which colonial scholars used the Mahavamsa, archaeology and the Aryan theory to legitimize colonialism. The ways in which indigenous elites explored the adjustment of personal identity to fit in with the modern resurgent concept of a collective and more assertive `nation-state' identity have also be highlighted. The question of `who was here first' assumes prime importance, and the Mahavamsa has played a crucial role in defining the identity and historical claims made by sections of the major communities in Sri Lanka. Its significance as the inspiration for the Buddhist revival is undisputed, and the manner in which it was used to link state and religion together, particularly by post-independence politicians and nationalists, has been a major factor in recent events. It is equally true that the Mahavamsa has aided the development of a historical Tamil identity. We have been selective in looking at the Sinhala-Tamil relationship but, like Eller, we acknowledge that the present situation in Sri Lanka is `much more complicated than a mere bi-ethnic face-off and that other groups, and groups within these groups, contoured along other cultural or political or economic lines, exist and help to move and shape the dominant national conflict' (Eller 1999: 96).

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ROBIN CONINGHAM & NICK LEWER, Coningham, Department of Archaeological Sciences, University of Bradford, Bradford BD7 1DP, England. dr.a.e.coningham@brad ford.ac.uk

Lewer, Department of Peace Studies, University of Bradford, Bradford BD7 1DP, England. n.lewer@bradford.ac.uk