V.S.Gopalakrishnan
Sri Lanka is one of India's closest neighours. It's people resemble Indians and we have so many similarities. Yet, do we Indians have even a basic idea about its history? What isIndia's contribution to Sri Lankan history and its culture? This island was joined to Indiageographically in the Gondwana configuration millions of years ago, and today Indians give more thought and attention to the distant USA, Switzerland, Italy, China etc, for valid reasons of course, than to Sri Lanka. In fact, Lanka is hardly in the news or in our consciousness! While Taiwan, South Korea, Japan, Malaysia, Thailand, Indonesia etc have been witnessing remarkable growth and development in the last three or four decades, this country, namely, Lanka went foolishly into unbelievable retardation due its own making which has affected even our tourist interest in it. The minority Tamilians's preposterous claim for a separate "State" and their taking to mindlless violence on the one hand and the country's inability to handle that problem led to 26 years of continuous warfare and bloodshedding resulting in a lakh of deaths and severe destruction which ended only in 2009. Peace is restored and the last two years have witnessed remarkable growth.
Lanka is one of the few countries in the world with a long written history. It is one of the "longest documented countries" in the world. The epic Ramayana has much to do with Lanka but that would seem more like mythology while it is regarded also as part history. The name Sri Lanka comes from Sanskrit and it means venerable island. That is how it was referred to in the Ramayana. EARLY WRITTEN HISTORY:
The source of its early history is the historical book called "Mahavamsa" written in Pali by a Lankan monk named Nagasena around 400 AD. The written history starts from the date 543 BC when Prince Vijaya Singha from India lands in Lanka. From that date till1815 when the British took over, covering 2359 years, it appears that the island had witnessed the rule of about 190 listed monarchs. Considerable research by very eminent scholars has still not been able to give a definite answer to the question as to from which part of India Vijaya Singha went to Lanka. There are very many suppositions here which include (1) Sihor (then called Singpur) near Bhavnagar in Gujarat (2) Sinhapura, the then Capital of Kalinga and (3) Singur in West Bengal. Personally, without much scholarship, I would opt for Bengal. It is stated that nearly 50 percent of words in Sinhalese language is akin to Bengali. Secondly, various rivers in Lanka got named as This-Ganga or That-Ganga.
Vijaya Singha's reign was from 543 BC to 505 BC. He called the island Tambappanni (or Tamraparni) which meant copper-leaved. A fantastic map of the island drawn by the historian Caudius Ptolemy - he was a Roman citizen in Egypt and wrote in Greek - in the 1st century AD shows the name "Taprobana" for the island! The Arabs named the island "Serendib" (My personal guess is that since Arabs have no soft "p" but only the strong "b", the dip (island) became "dib" for them!). The English word "serendipity" comes from that. The name "Sri Lanka" mentioned in Ramayana is nowhere to be found till 1972 when "Ceylon" was changed to "Sri Lanka" when the island became a full-fledged Republic although it had got Independence from the British in February 1948.
Vijaya Singha initially married an aboriginal princess of the Vedda community and later wanted a civilised Queen and hence married a Pandyan Princess. His rule had little merit. The word "Sinhalese" for the people and the language is derived from his name. He is regarded as an Aryan Kshatriya.
LANKA GOES BUDDHIST FROM 250 BC:
Indian Emperor Asoka sent his own son Mahindra, who had achieved great scholarship in Buddhism, to Lanka as his emissary in 250 BC when Mahindra was 32 years old. I would rate Asoka as the best Emperor that the world has ever witnessed. It is meaningless to put Emperor Akbar who ceaselessly sought the pleasures of women anywhere near Asoka in comparison. All the other Greats in the world like Alexander the Great, Constantine the Great, Catherine the Great et al pale into insignificance compared to Emperor Asoka. The good that Asoka did to India and to the world and his vision can never be matched. Asoka built roads and planted trees all over the country. He taught morals to the people through edicts and inscriptions on indestructible rocks. He sent monks/emissaries to spread the message of Buddhism peacefully to dozens of countries that included even the far-flung South-East Asia, Egypt, Greece etc. If Buddhism is so widespread in the world, the reason is Asoka.
When Prince Mahindra reached Lanka in 250 BC, he was warmly received by the Lankan King who was named Devanaamapiya Tissa, and he at once took to the new religion. Mahindra gave insightful talks to the people who also converted to Buddhism. There was no force or inducement but simply the moral and religious teaching of Mahindra which converted the people. Of course, the king too played a part in it.
Another significant fact is that Asoka's daughter and Mahindra's younger sisterSangamitra, who was learned in Buddhism, also arrived in Lanka, in 245 BC, five years after Mahindra. She was 36 years of age at that time. She was also helpful in propagating Buddhism in Lanka and was influential with women. In fact she brought a branch of the original Bodhi tree of Gaya (under which Buddha received enlightenment) with her in the ship, and it was planted in the "mahamegha garden" in Anuradhapura. It is said that the tree is still there, one of the oldest in the world. It is actually a peepul tree and is called Bodhi which means wisdom (in Sanskrit), to denote the Fourfold Noble Paths. It is said that the whole journey of Sangamitra took nearly three months out of which the journey by ship to Lanka from Tamralipti (Tamluk), Bengal, lasted about a week.
Mahindra and Sangamitra lived the rest of their lives in Lanka and died at the age of 80 and 79 years respectively. What a great sacrifice it was on Asoka's part to have had his children go away and preach his faith rather than keep them with him!
Anuradhapura in central Lanka was the capital from 380 BC for nearly 1400 years. The Chola king Elura invaded there in 205 BC and ruled for 44 years. It has been noted that during a history of nearly 2500 years, Lanka was invaded 8 times in all by different Kings such as Chora, Chera, Pandya and Pallava. Some invasions took place from Kalinga and the Malaysian peninsula also. It has also so happened that many Lankan kings married Pandyan Princesses. Lanka was the first Asian country to have a female ruler, Queen Anula (47-42 BC).
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The fall of Anuradhapura took place in 993 AD as a result of the attack by the Chola King Rajaraja Chola I and later by his son Rajendra Chola I. Buddhism suffered a setback during these times. The Cholas were driven out from Lanka in 1070 AD, after nearly 80 years of their rule. The Kalingan attack by Kalinga Magha along with 24,000 men from Kalinga took place in 1215 AD, and this man ruled very tyrannically. Several Kingdoms evolved over the land and prominent amongst them was the Jaffna Kingdom in the North.
The Portuguese landed in Lanka in 1505 AD and built a fort in Colombo in 1517 AD. They captured the Jaffna Kingdom in due course. The Dutch arrived subsequently, defeated the Portuguese and took over Colombo in 1656 AD. The British entry followed and Sri Lanka ruled by Kings lost its independence in 1815 AD as the British took over. As I said earlier, the island got independence from the British in 1948.
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THERAVADA BUDDHISM:
It must be noted that the decision to send emissaries to Lanka and other countries was taken in the Third Buddhist Council, attended by nearly 1000 Theras (elders) and as convened by Asoka at Pataliputra, a few years before 250 BC. The Buddhist brand of Lankan Buddhism is thus called Theravada (of the seniors). It contained the original preachings and precepts of the Buddha in Pali language passed down by oral traditions in the initial centuries after the demise of Buddha. They were reduced into writing only around 89 BC. Mahindra and Sangamitra were called Mahindra Thera and Sangamitra Theri.
In India itself, a modified kind of Buddhism that came to be known as "Mahayana"started in the 1st century BC. The Buddhist scholar and teacher Nagarjuna of the 2nd century AD is credited with the major evolution of "Mahayana" (meaning Big Vehicle). Thereafter, the old Theravadin (original) precepts began to be called "Hinayana" (Small Vehicle) as if they were deficient. The word Theravadin was thus effectively replaced by Hinayana. We shall not go into the detailed differences between Mahayana and Hinayana. I may however outline the major differences in the following para.
In Theravada (Hinayana), the Arihant is the most enlightened being, and he would attain Nirvana and would have no rebirths to teach the masses, and there were to be no more Buddhas. Mahayana introduced the concept of Bodhisattvas who will become future Buddhas. Theravada did not envisage Buddha-image worship but only of his relics whereas Mahayana promoted Buddha idol for worship. (To an extent the Theravada nations now do permit image worship). The Tripitikas were the basic texts in Theravada but sutras were added by the Mahayana. Mahayana also introduced "sunyawad" (emptiness), "Trikaya" (Three bodies of the Buddha) and other concepts which were not original precepts.
On a level with the import of the Bodhi tree branch and its plantation at Anuradhapura in 245 BC, the other great religious relic imported into Lanka from India was Buddha's tooth in 311 AD that is preserved at Kandy. The other Thervadin countries, apart from Lanka, are Myanmar (Burma), Thailand, Laos and Cambodia. The countries that practise Mahayana are Japan, China, Korea, Tibet, Bhutan, Nepal, Mongolia, Viet Nam and Indonesia. The third branch of Buddhism called Vajrayana which incorporated tantrism evolved in Tibet and East India.
The expression "Hinayana" has been packed off in the 1950 meeting of the World Fellowship of Buddhists. It has been replaced by "Theravada".
In Sri Lanka, the Sinhalese generally practise Buddhism and the minority Tamils practise Hinduism. Nearly 75 percent of the population is Sinhalese speaking and about 10 percent are Tamil speaking. In terms of religion, 70 percent are Buddhists and about 10 percent are Hindus. The whole population of Lanka is only 2.1 crore which is just one-third of the population of the Indian State of Tamil Nadu adjoining it!
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