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S. J. GUNASEGARAM B. A. (Hons - ) , M.A. (Lond. )
SELECTED WR IT I NGS
1985

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All rights reserved
Printed by Arasan Printers, Colombo 2

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CONTENTS
A Biographical Introduction
by Dr. James T. Rutnam . . . . . .
Tamil Cultural Influences in South-East Asia
The Vijayan Legend and the Aryan Myth . .
Map . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Manimekalai . . . . . . . . . . .
Elara (Elalan) and the Chronicles of Ceylon
Tamil Kings in Early Ceylon . . . . . .
Taprobane L S SLLL SL S SL S SL S L S LSL S LS SLLLS S LLLL S S LLL
Taprobane and Egypt . . . . . . . .
'Moors' - 'Chonakar' . . . . . . . .
The Moors of Ceylon . . . . . . . .
The Malays . . . . . . . 8 as O.
Trincomalee (The Holy Hill of Siva) . . .
The God of Adam's Peak . . . . . . .
Dondra (Tennavan-Thurai) . . . . . . .
Kalutara - The Boundary City of Ruhuna
Velapura - City of Muruga . . . . .
Description of the Kandy Perahera . . . .
The Historicity of Agathiar . . . . . .
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37
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90
96
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110
117
122
30
135
40
142
152

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A BIOGRAPHICAL INTRODUCTION
Samuel Jeyanayagam Gunasegaram was born on the 21st March 1901 at Chundikuli in the Jaffna Peninsula. He was the eldest son of Joseph Muttiah Gunasegaram, whose family originally hailed from Maviddapuram, and Susan Arulpragasam of Moolai. He had the advantage of receiving a sound primary education under his father-a school-master, Christian catechist and Tamil scholar.
Gunasegaram was a devoted and loyal alumnus of St. John's College, a leading educational institution in Jaffna, where he served for a time (1922 to 1934) as Senior Master in English and History. He was the Editor of the Jubilee Number of the College Magazine in 1932 and the author of the College Anthem.
He was one of the earliest students of the University College, Colombo, and he also attended the Colombo Training College for Teachers, where he distinguished himself by winning the prize for short-story writing and the Gold Medal at the annual oratorical contest. At the Training College he came under the influence of the late Professor Leigh Smith who taught him Shakespeare and English Poetry, subjects which never failed to absorb Gunasegaram's interest. He took Tamil at the London Matriculation examination, and later secured the Tamil Teacher's Certificate of the Education Department, qualifying in Tamil Language and Literature. He graduated as an external student of the University of London with Second Class Honours in Philosophy, and finally obtained the Master's degree specialising in History of Philosophy and Sociology. Professor J. L. C. Rodrigo has stated that he was "one of the first of our pupils to specialise in Sociology". Gunasegaram was a most versatile student, and some of the subjects, besides Tamil, where he obtained proficiency at the various London University examinations were Latin, History, English, Logic and Ethics.
Gunasegaram was the Principal of St. Thomas College, Matara, for two years until 1936, when he was invited to join the Government Inspectorate of Schools. He was soon made a Divisional Inspector of Schools, later Education Officer. He served in the Western, Northern, Eastern and Central Provinces of Ceylon. For a tine he was at the Head Office of the Education Department at Colombo and in charge of all Government Schools in the Island. He was also a District Commissioner in

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the Ceylon Scout Movement. In 1956 he retired from the Government Educational Service. His last appointment at Colombo before he left for Jaffna in 1958 was at St. Thomas College, Mount Lavinia, where he was a popular teacher under Warden de Saram.
He just missed an appointment as Reader in Philosophy at the University of Ceylon, but atterly he was appointed by this University as a tutor in English to new entrants who had been educated at school in the Sinhala and Tamil media. He was a founder-member and a modest benefactor of the Tamil University Movement and a member of its Executive Committee. He lectured in English and Philosophy to undergraduates at Navalar Hall, the Colombo institution of the Movement. He was associated with R. R. Crosette Tambiah in the production of the monthly journal "Tamil" during 1955.
He was a popular public lecturer and had visited Malaya where he lectured on such subjects as Tamil Language and Literature, Tamil Culture, Tamils in South-East Asia and Ceylon History. He was a member of the Ceylon Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, the Tamil Cultural Society and the Classical Association where he read interesting papers on Tiruvalluvar's Kural and on Socrates.
He was a sportsman of no mean ability, a member of the Football teams at St. John's and the Colombo Training Colleges, and a Tennis Champion of the Eastern Province in Ceylon. He liked swimming, being a confident and daring swimmer, and he would often be seen solitarily enjoying himself afloat in the Indian Ocean by the shores of Mount Lavinia or Batticaloa. In his prime he was a perfect example of mens sana in corpore Sao
The last few years of Gunasegaram's life were the most noteworthy. They formed a glorious sunset. He devoted these years almost entirely to the study of Tamil Culture. It was truly a crowded life he lived "crowded with culture" as Professor Rodrigo has approvingly written. One could say that this last and most notable and valuable phase of his life commenced in 1955 with his association with the journal "Tamil".
He then began his eventful career as an unceasing writer to the Press and a vigilant defender of what he held to be true, an exciting career, taken all in all, that was terminated only by the cruel blow of death.
He died in his sleep at his home at Kopay, Jaffna, before the day dawned on the 4th January 1964. An indefatigable

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worker, he died in harness. He was at his desk among his books until late that night working on his latest piece of research on Wallipuram, an ancient seat of the Tamil Kingdom of Jaffna.
Well deserved tributes were paid to Gunasegaram in the Ceylon newspapers. The Times of Ceylon published his epitaph the day following his death, fittingly recording, "whoever wanted to get away with half truths found this scholar a thorn in the flesh". The Hindu Organ mourned the death of a "zealous protector of Tamil culture".
Professor Emeritus J. L. C. Rodrigo formerly Professor of
Classics of the University of Ceylon lost no time to write in his inimitable style in the Ceylon Daily News as follows, "like many of the strongest advocates of the Tamil cause I knew, he counted many Sinhalese among his friends. Despite their political differences, their personal relations were as cordial as ever. No petty prejudices marred his friendship". Professor Emeritus F. H. W. Gulasekharam, formerly Professor of Mathematics and Registrar of the University of Ceylon, wrote in the Times of Ceylon "In addition to a sound knowledge of Tamil, his acquaintance with Sanskrit, Pali, Sinhala, Elu and Prakrit, was remarkable... His copious quotations from German, English and Indian scholars indicate in some measure the extent and depth of his scholarship". F. B. Wijayanayake, a cultured Sinhalese gentleman, wrote to the Times of Ceylon, "Though I have not known him personally except through the medium of the press, his demise has indeed created a void, and I am sure the reading public will miss his scholarly contributions to the Press".
R. R. Crosette Tambiah, former Solicitor-General of Ceylon and Commissioner of Assize and the Editor of the journal "Tamil" wrote to the Morning Star offering the following bouquet, "As he entered our home, there would be the loud call of greeting, and then that cascade of conversation, our home team drinking in every word. If the theme was part of Tamil History or Tamil Culture, the flow of words was copious and spontaneous, the result of a lifetime of reading and meditation..... This sincere man, this true man, this courageous man, this shining one has been taken away in this most crucial year of our struggle for existence. I sit and stare at the falling rain and I ask why? I sit and stare at the falling rain....".
D. J. Thambapillai, a friend from his boyhood days, wrote to the Morning Star, "During the last few years of his life, his one thought which became almost an obsession with him, was the future of the Tamils in Ceylon. He worked hard in his own way to safeguard the dignity, and self-respect of the Tamil race

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in Ceylon. He wielded his pen, which he could do with such ease and ability, in safeguarding and fighting for the rights of the Tamils. The Tamils have lost in him a sincere and ardent worker." M. Chelvatamby, one of his many admirers, wrote to the Hindu Organ, "Mr. Gunasegaram's (forthcoming) book on Kathirkamam and the Kathirkamam God, I thought, was going to be a revealing and epoch-making one".
The above tributes and panegyrics expressed with such obvious sincerity, understanding and sense of loss were welldeserved and it is meet that we should record them here.
The Times of Ceylon had acknowledged that he was "one of the most prolific contributors to the Letters to the Editor column of the Times of Ceylon" and added, "Inaccuracies and misinterpretations of historical facts, especially where they concerned his community always found a correction from Mr. Gunasegaram".
Gunasegaram, who ig the past used to declaim in the periods of Burke, address himself to the Ocean in the manner of the majestic numbers of Byron in "Childe Harold" and soliloquise impeccably like Hamlet, later turned to the classics of Tanni Literature for his main mental sustenance. No Tamil who has heard him recite the mellifluous lines of Kamban's Ramayanam would ever fail to remember the spell-binding effect of that unique poetry when uttered so effectively by Gunasegaram.
No one who knew him can ever forget Gunasegaram chant the psalms of Tayumanavar and other Saivite Saints, or forget that glow of pardonable pride on his face when he softly rolled the agglutinated syllables of Tamil from his lips. Have you heard him sing with the supreme joy of the satisfied man? Have you heard his uproarious laughter?
Wijayanayake in the Times of Ceylon had written, "It would be a tribute to the departing scholar if all his writings were collected and published as a memoir. Even posthumously the fruits of his research should be edited and printed without additions or subtractions giving the naked truth as seen by him". We are happy that such a publication of some of his writings is now forthcoming.
One of Gunasegaram's articles to the first issue of the journal "Tantl" in January 1955, was on the Prophet Mohamed In the same issue reviewing Rajagopalachari's English translation of the Mahabharata, he reveals himself in an autobiographical foot-note worthy of record. "The Writer" he says, speaking of

himself, "recalls the thrilling experience he had in his quiet little home in the Northern Ceylon, many years ago, when he with his two brothers (one alas ! the keenest of them, no longer alive), listened in the evening to his father, as he sang in Tamil verse and interpreted it into graphic Tamil prose the stirring incidents of this grace Epic. It laid the foundations of that literary taste which later led him and his brother to search for the pearl of great prize in the classics of other lands, with the aid of that wonderful 'open sesame' the English Language and thus experience priceless delights".
The pages of the Tamil, which continued its publication for one year, contain a number of other interesting articles by Gunasegaram. He had written on the Mahavamsa, Indo-Aryans and several reviews of books, notably one on Nilakanta Sastri's History of South India. He had also translated into English verse the references to Tiruketiswaram and Tirukonamalai found in the hymns of Sambanthar and Sundarar. A specially interesting contribution is his Sonnet to Jaffna which appeared in the February issue of the Tamil. Its two stanzas reveal a depth of feeling and love for Jaffna so characteristic of the man.
"But thou, dear Jaffna, loving nurse of mine....
to me art lovelier far than all..."
The Rev. Father Xavier Thani Nayagam, editor of the prestigious journal Tamil Culture had published five articles by Gunasegaram during the years 1957 to 1963, all of which, excepting the one on the poet Bharathi, are being included in the present volume. Apart from these, Gunasegaram had published a large number of notes and comments as "Letters to the Editor" to the daily newspapers, some of which are perhaps lost for ever, hidden as they are in the files of the media.
Gunasegaram had on some occasions challenged popular or hitherto more accepted versions of history, and had been proved correct according to critics. But he has also been opposed. There is of course no finality to history. Gunasegaram's writings are deserving of close study and the highest consideration.
Evelyn Rutnam Institute James T. Rutnam Jaffna
September 1985

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TAM I L CU L T U R A L I N F L U E N C E S
N
S O U T H E A S T A S ( A
by S. J. GUNASEGARAM, M.A. (Lond.)
December, 1957

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PREFACE
The subject-matter forming this brochure was originally delivered as a lecture under the auspices of the Tamil Cultural Society, Colombo. Though there are many who have a vague idea of the spread of early South Indian cultural contacts with the countries known as South East Asia-Burma, Siam, Cambodia, Malaya and the Islands of Sumatra, Java, Borneo, Bali, Celebes, the Philippines-few have had the opportunity of studying in greater detail the early commercial and cultural activities of the Dravidian peoples, particularly of the Tamils in these far flung regions.
At the All-India Oriental Conference, 1955, held at Annamalainagar, presided over by Dr. S. Radhakrishnan, Mr. T. P. Meenakshisundaram, emphasised the fact that
"The contact with the East, which developed into a cultural empire of a Greater India, has been studied with the help of the inscriptions of the Pallava and Chola period. There are Tamil inscriptions in those distant places."
Islamic and European penetration into this area was comparitively late. The Indians, the Dravidian merchants and adventurers from the Tamil and Andhra countries mainly, have had contacts of a peaceful nature during a period extending nearly a thousand years before the Christian era. The widespread cults of Siva and Vishnu and the teachings of the Great Buddha were carried to these distant lands for the first time through the maritime enterprise of these ancient sea-faring peoples. For the researches done in connection with these movements we are indebted to European scholars, chiefly French and Dutch. The quotations from, and references to, the works of Lajonquiere, M. Coedes, Reginald Le May and Philippe Stern appearing in the body of this lecture will, to some extent, indicate the interest taken by these foreign scholars. In more recent times H. G. Quaritch Wales in his books, "The Road to Angkor" and "The Making of Greater India' has shed new light on this subject.
My interest in this subject was first roused by the allusions made in Jawaharlal Nehru's, "World History', in which he pays a handsome tribute to the peoples of South India, in particular to the Tamils, in the building up of Greater India. Nilakanta Sastri in his 'History of South India', and in the smaller but fascinating book, 'South Indian Influences in South

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East Asia', has given valuable summaries of the views of scholars who have been engaged in the task of studying the Culture, Art, and Architecture, and commented on many of the early inscriptions found in these regions. My debt to him has been great as the contents of the lecture will reveal.
It will be of interest to note what Quaritch Wales states in his work, "The Making of Greater India':
"Indian scholars seem often to have tended to overemphasise the overseas influence of their own part of the country. But M. Coedes in summing up the evidence concludes that, 'all regions of India contributed more or less to this expansion, and it is the South that had the greatest part.' I accept the conclusion unhesitatingly for the Southern half of Greater India."
The contribution made by the Dravidian peoples to the Art, Architecture, Religion, Literature and Administration of our own Island has not yet been fully and correctly estimated by the historians of Ceylon. Prejudice, racial and religious, and what appears to be an ineradicable obsession of a 'superior Aryan Origin pervading the minds of a large section of our people, combined with their ignorance of their own language as well as those of the Tamils, Telugus, Malayalis and Kanarese (the nearest neighbours of Ceylon who through the centuries have had uninterrupted association with the administration and cultural trends, and the Royal dynasties which held sway over this island), have blinded us to an objective and impartial assessment of these influences
Ceylon is now at the crossroads. The era of European domination of the island has ceased. A fresh and balanced interpretation of those factors which had helped to shape the culture of this Island will have to be made, if Ceylon is to rediscover the true pattern of the fabric of her culture and to reshape it to serve the needs of a new synthesis in a changing world. This task will have to be accomplished by the cooperative efforts of scholars representing the Sinhalese and Tamil speaking peoples without, of course, ignoring the tremendous stimulus given to the peoples of this Island by the impact of the Christian Western Culture.
S. J. Gunasegaram

EARLY TAMEL CULTURAL INFLUENCES IN SOUTH EAST ASA
References made in the early Sangan Literature of the Tamils, foreign notices found in the writings of the Greeks and Romans, and Tamil loan words found in Hebrew and Greek along with other evidences brought to light by excavations in Ur of the Chaldees and Palestine, give us some idea of the early trade and cultural contacts of the Dravidians, (and in particular of the Tamils) with ancient Egypt, Babylonia, Greece, Rome and Arabia.
The extent of this trade and a critical estimate of these contacts require a separate lecture. As a result of the more recent excavations at Harappa and Mohenjo-Daro, Chittaldrug in Mysore and at Adichanalur further south, the probability that civilization spread from India to Egypt and Babylonia, and not, as it was believed earlier, from the Valley of the Nile or the Euphrates to India, has been strengthened.
K. M. Panikkar in his, "A Survey of Indian History (1954)" says:- "One thing, however, is certain and can no longer be contested-civilization did not come to India with the Aryans. This doctrine of the Aryan origin of Indian civilization which finds no support in Indian Literature (which does not consider the Dasyus (Dravidians) as uncivilized), is the result of the theories of Indo-Germanic scholars who held that everything valuable in the world originated from the Aryans. Not only is Indian Civilization pre-Vedic, but the essential features of Hindu religion as we know it today were perhaps present in Mohenjo-Daro."
"There is enough in the fragments we have recovered," says Sir John Marshall, "about the religious articles found on the sites to demonstrate that this religion of the Indus people was the lineal progenitor of Hinduism. In fact, Siva and Kali, the worship of the Linga and other features of popular Hinduism, were well established in India long before the Aryans came."
This civilization and culture were not destroyed by the Aryans, and the Indus Valley religious ideas which centred round the worship of Siva (the oldest monotheistic religion known to the world) who combines in himself the male as well as the female principle in creation, continue to be cherished in Dravidian India, and particularly in the Tamil countries, to this day.

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"The clearest evidence of the Dravidian origin of Siva worship," says Panikkar, "is found in the Aryan attitude towards Linga and the God whom it symbolises. In Rig Veda (vii) Ch. 21-5 we have the significant statement:-
"Let those whose deity is the Phallus not penetrate our Sanctuary'.... Siva assumes increased importance only in the later Vedas, and from the period of the Yajur Veda, Siva definitely assumes the aspect of Maheswara-or the Great God."
Hall in his, "Ancient History of the Near East" wrote long ago, "The Culture of India is pre-Aryan in origin. As in Greece, the conquered countries civilized the conquerors. The Aryan Indian owed his civilization and his degeneration to the Dravidians as the Aryan Greek to the Mycaeneans."
Hall also believes that "the Sumerians derived their culture from India.... Investigators have been struck by the fact that similar seals found both in Babylonia and in India belong to the earliest phase of the Mesopotamian culture, not to the latest phase of the Indus civilization, which suggests the priority of Dravidian India."
Childe, another historian, confirms this when he states, "the Indus civilization was ahead of the Babylonian at the beginning of the third millenium B.C. This, it should be noted, is a later phase of the Indian."
Will Durant, a living American historian, speaking of the Dravidians in his book, "Our Oriental Heritage", says:-
"They were already a civilized people when the Aryan broke down upon them; their adventurous merchants sailed the sea even to Sumeria and Babylon and their cities knew many refinements and luxuries. It was from them, apparently, that the Aryans took their village community and their system of land-tenure and taxation. To this day the Deccan is still essentially Dravidian in stock and customs, in language, literature and arts."
Who were these adventurous merchant seamen who sailed the seas? Their descendants are present today in this very hall to listen-not to their glorious ventures across the Arabian and Mediterranean seas -but to their building of Greater India and their spread of Indian Culture in the regions now known as South-East Asia.
The Dravidians who were identified with Dramilas (Tamils) were also known as Thirayar-the men who rode the waves,

Early Taail Cultural Influences in South-East Asia 5
the race which in the very dawn of history carried its trade and culture across the waves to the West and to the East-the harbingers of civilization.
They were able to declare through the lips of their incomparable poets, ۔۔۔۔
untepGør Bunraub Gassfirt
The one world idea, new to the modern world, was already old to the Tamils of the Sangan age-ocean rovers, dauntless Thirayars who sang
திரை கடலோடியுந் திரவியந்தேடு
In an old Tamil poem of the Medieval period the writer mentions 17 countries where the Tamil Language, and consequently the Tamil culture, were known. I quote the words of the verse:-
சிங்களஞ் சோனகஞ் சாவகஞ் சீனந்துளுக்குடகங் கொங்கணங் கன்னடங் கொல்லந் தெலுங்கம் வங்கங் கங்கமதங் கடாரங் கவடங் கடுங்குசலந் தங்கும் புகழ் தமிழ் சூழ் பதினேழ் புவி தாமிவையே
Among the seventeen countries referred to are: Ceylon, Java, Malaya, Cambodia and China. The word Garnrarash should be taken to include Arabia and neighbouring countries.
Some South Indian Brahmins with an Aryan complex, in their histories of the Tamil language and of South India, have attributed such references to ignorance on the part of early Tamil writers. Since the appearance of such works, thanks to the energy of European scholars, much research has been done which has revealed unmistakably traces of the Tamil language and culture in these and other lands across the seas.
Similarly, Chinese historical sources which refer to the maritime traders bringing typical Indian products to China as far back as 7th Century B.C., "were generally regarded with incredulity." These accounts have received striking confirmation by the discovery in the Philippines of a number of iron age finds bearing close resemblance to objects found in South India of about the same period-the first millenium B.C.'
1. According to Paul Pelliot there is evidence in Chinese literature of diplomatic relations between south Indian Courts and the chinese Empire as early as the 2nd Century B.C. A Chinese writer, Pau Kou, who lived at the end of the 1st Century, mantions that in the time of the Ban Esperor the Chola Kings sent embassies to China.tx. M. Panikkar, "India and China", pp. 17, 28. )

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"Professor Beyer conducted a remarkable series of excavations during the years 1926 to 1930, and the evidence has been summed up by R. B. Dixon, who did a first-hand examination of the objects brought to light by Prof. Beyer. Among the finds were a large variety of iron weapons and implements and glass beads and bangles made in the Tamil country." (K.A.N.). I shall quote what Dixon has to say of these:
"Now both the iron and glass objects are similar to, and in some cases identical with, the prehistoric glass and iron finds in the South of India. They occur in the dolmen tombs and urns which are found by hundreds and thousands, and which almost ante-date the historic Chola, Chera, Pandyan kingdoms whose history goes back to the beginning of the Christian era or before. As finds of similar glass beads and bangles have recently been excavated in the Malay Peninsula, in dolmen tombs in Java and in North Borneo, the inference is inescapable that we have clear evidence of trade contact with the Northern Philippines and Southern India, running well back into the first millenium BC.
"The extensive trade and colonization and later conquests of South Indian kingdoms in Sumatra and Java as well as in Indo-China in the early centuries of the Christian era, of course, are well known. This new material, however, seems to make it clear that this was far from being the beginning of such contacts, but rather the last stages in an association reaching as far as the Northern Philippines which had begun many centuries before."
At Adichanallur, an ancient site on the banks of the Tambraparani in the Tinnevely district, extensive prehistoric urn burials and iron implements related to those found in the Philippines and Palestine have been unearthed. A remarkable find was the three-pronged fork or trident of iron. Many such tridents were discovered at Adichanallur. This evidence suggests that the worship of Murugan or Velan, the son of Siva (known as the God of Kataragama in Ceylon), was popular in the Tamil country even in those remote times. This Muruga worship would appear to have been carried by the Tamils to Palestine and Syria in the West, to Ceylon in the South, and to the distant Philippines across the Indian and Pacific Oceans.
In 1200 B.C. at Adichanallur, the Tamils were found to have cultivated rice, and it was in this region that the iron industry had its origin. There is every evidence to prove that the Tamils were the earliest people to introduce the cultivation of rice and the use of iron implements to the countries in the West as well as if South-East Asia.

Early Tamil Cultural Influences insooth-sists
In support of this contention I would quote two distinguished authorities
Piggott in his "Prehistoric India", targe 43 (Pelicafoks, 1952), says with regard to rice
"It seems probable that rice cultivation began earlier in India than it did in China and that the knowledge reached the latter country about 2000 B.C.". He adds in page 259, "The Rig Veda knows nothing of rice." In other words, the Aryan immigrants into India learnt the cultivation of rice from the Dravidians.
In the light of these facts, it is amusing to find that our local historians have been at pains to show that rice cultivation was introduced into Ceylon by the Aryans. This, of course, is the least of the glaring historical inaccuracies in some of our so-called histories of Ceylon
With regard to the centre of origin of iron, I give an extract from the Bulletin of the British Iron and Steel Federation-1949. Sir William Larke, Director of the British Iron and Steel Federation, says
"The centre of origin is variously placed in India, where there are historical traditions and remains indicating a highly developed iron culture. Hyderabad and Trichinopoly are considered by many to have been the centres of production of wootz..... This steel was noted for centuries, being carried by merchants from India to Damascus and Toledo."
It will be noted that both these sites are in South India (Deccan). Sir William gives the date of this origin of the iron age as 1400 to 1500 B.C. The iron implements found in the Adichanallur site about the same period, and the transport of iron hoes and tridents to distant countries such as Palestine and the Philippines confirms this conclusion.
拿 事
For the purpose of studying the influence of Indian Art and Culture in the countries of South-East Asia, Quaritch Wales in his recent work, "The Making of Great India", divides South-East Asian countries into two zones -the Western Zone and the Eastern Zone. --
Under the Western Zone he includes Ceylon, Burma, Central Siam, Malaya and Sumatra; while he includes Java, Champa (Siam) and Cambodia in the Eastern Zone.

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The author (Quaritch Wales) points out that Indian scholars -most of them North Indians and a few Aryanised Brahmins of South India-seem often to have tended to overemphasise the overseas influence of their own part of the country-the implication being that they have exaggerated the role played by North Indian and Aryan culture in South-East Asia. He, however, accepts unhesitatingly the conclusion arrived at by M. Coedes, another great authority on South-East Asian Culture that
"All the regions of India contributed more or less to this expansion, and it is South India that had the greatest part, for the Southern half of the Greater India consisting of Ceylon, Java, Sumatra, Borneo, Malaya and Bal-was naturally most exposed to South Indian influence."
More recently, M. Stern has shown that even in Champa (Slam) and Cambodia which are included in the Eastern Zones by Quaritch Wales, Pallava (Tamil) influences have played a significant part from very early times in the evolution of their culture.
The Indianisation of these countries in the Western as well as in the Eastern Zone would appear to have proceeded in successive waves of cultural expansion.
The first wave-which may be termed the Amaravati period (2nd and 3rd centuries)-represents the Art of Andhra which is Dravidian and South Indian.
The second wave-which may be termed the Gupta periodrepresents North Indian Art modified by Greek influences. The Guptas were Hindus, but they did not persecute Buddhism.
The third-Pallava Art-was mainly Dravidian and Tamil Hindu Art. It must be remembered that the Pallavas (Tondayar or Tondanan) were at the same time promoters of Sanskrit learning in the Tamil country.
The fourth-Pala period-lasted from the 8th to the 10th centuries. This Art had its origin in Bengal and was mainly Buddhist.
The fifth-Chola Art-lasted from the 10th to the 12th centuries. It was again South Indian and Tamil. This wave was purely Hindu. "Their great achievement," says Panikkar, "was in plastic art known as Chola bronzes." "The Nataraja figures and images and portrait of the Tamil Saints found in Polonnaruwa and in South India have been recognised as

Early Tamil Cultural Influences in South-East Asia 9
coming among the masterpieces of the world" (Reginald Le May).
All five waves of Indian cultural expansion affected the countries in the Western as well as the Eastern Zones of South East Asia. In the Western Zone which includes Ceylon, Burma, Central Siam, Malaya and Sumatra, Quaritch Wales states that Indianisation was so intense that no indigenous art or culture ever developed, and that the bulk of the upper classes were mainly Indian Colonists. There was no evolution of any art or culture for lack of local genius to act as a shaper of evolution. "The archaeological remains represent simply the reflection of one or other waves of Indian cultural expansion. They may be justly called, colonial or Indianesque."
In the light of these facts we in South Ceylon have very little reason or right to speak of an indigenous culture. From very early times the culture of Ceylon has been one imposed on its people by successive waves of Indian cultural contacts. In more recent centuries the people of South Ceylon came under Portuguese, Dutch and British cultural influences and they absorbed them with equal avidity, though apparently devotees of "Buddhist Culture". With the coming of Independence and a "Sinhalese only" Government we witness their struggle to get back to their 'ancient culture', the shape and nature of which they themselves do not appear to be certain of.
It will be remembered that the earlier cultural influences brought to bear on Ceylon were Pandyan and Choliyan, though no archaelogical remains of any consequence are available. The truth of this contention, however, is admitted by the author of the Mahavamsa who says that Vijaya and his 500 followers got their wives from the Pandyan country, and that these "brides were followed by craftsmen and a thousand families of eighteen guilds'. He adds that all this multitude of men disembarked at Mahathitha (i.e., Mantota near Mannar, a city sacred to the Hindus.)
Could any reasonable person believe that the Tamil men and women described as a "multitude"-the women of the court, the craftsmen and the members of the thousand families of eighteen guilds, spoke to one another and taught their children in an Aryan tongue, which the modern Sinhalese assumes Vijaya and his 500 followers spoke, or that they developed a culture and followed a religion alien to their ancestral heritage? Who could doubt that the culture of these people was Dravidian, their language Tamil, and their religion Hinduism pure and simple?

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10 S. J. Gunasegaram - Selected Writings
The Mahavamsa itself associates Vijaya with the Kalingas -a Dravidian people-whose ruling family seems to have had marriage alliances with the Pandyan Tamils. The Mahavamsa records further that when Vijaya died childless he was succeeded by Panduvasudeva, a Pandyan in name, whose mother was the daughter of the King of Madda (now Madras). (vide Mahavamsa-Geiger's translation, Chapter VII). Tamil and Tamil culture are not likely to have been something strange either to Vijaya or to his successor Panduvasudeva. We cannot escape the assumption that the early rulers of Ceylon were drawn either from the descendants of Panduvasudeva or imported from South India, when no heir was available in Ceylon.
These rulers were in fact not Sinhalese but strictly speaking 'the kings of the Sinhalese'. In course of time the term 'Sinhalese' appears to have been used to designate the indigenous people of the country, and not the rulers or their kith and kin and their followers.
Emerson Tennent in his 'Ceylon', Vol. I, pp. 370,1, has noted this when he points out that
"The Mahavamsa and the Rajaratnacari, in order to vindicate the inferiority of the natives to their masters, speak of their labours as that of "men and snakes', 'men and demons'." Because they were so numerous in number, they were given seats of equal eminence with the king on festive occasions. "The feeling was encouraged and matured into a conviction which prevailed to the latest period of Sinhalese Sovereignty, that no individual of pure Sinhalese extraction could be elevated to the supreme power, since no one could prostrate himself before one of his own nation."
If you care to read the brief history of Ceylon published in the latest Ceylon Observer Directory, you will notice that whenever a recognised Tamil Hindu Dynasty took over Ceylon, the occasion is referred to as "Tamil Usurpation'. You will be puzzled to discover whom the Tamil usurped-the kings of the Sinhalese who seem to be accepted as Sinhalese even when they happen to be Dravidians, provided they had a PaliBuddhist name and professed the Buddhist religion, or the large mass of people whom the rulers looked down upon as not fit to be considered their equals, or to supply a single individual of their species to occupy the throne of the Sinhalesef
This is but a brief reference to Tamil cultural influences in Ceylon. This subject, which concerns us vitally, requires a book by itself.

Early Taail Cultural Influences in South-East Asia
Burma
From very early times Hinduism and Buddhism appeared to have flourished side by side in Burma. From the archaeological excavations made at Prom, the chief city of old Burma, Harvey says that the finds were mainly Hindu rather than Buddhist. In later times, though Burma became predominantly Buddhistic, Hindus lived with a Buddhist population and worshipped in their own temples,
This early entry of Saivaism was probably an event in the great Tamil trade movement which started in the 2nd millenium B.C., and swept across the seas to the Southern Islands and Malaya as far north as the Philippines.
The earliest colonists to exercise authority over Burma appear to have been again South Indians. The city of Prom was also known as Wanades, the name of the capital of the Kadambas in South India. The earliest inscription discovered at Prom is in the South Indian Kadamba script of the 5th C. A.D.
In the 5th and 6th centuries, however, Burma became the centre of Southern Buddhism. A number of terracotta plaques carrying the effigy of Buddha were found inscribed in South Indian characters. The contact of South Indian nerchants with Burma in the early centuries of the Christian era is attested to by Ptolemy, who had noticed that large ships used to sail from the East coast of South India to Burma.
The rise of Hinayana Buddhism in the 5th C. A.D., was mainly due to inspiration received by Burma from the great movement which started at Kanchi (Kanchipuram) in the Tamil country. Kanchi it will be remembered is referred to in Manimekalai, the great Tamil Buddhist epic. It was the home of that illustrious Tamil Buddhist Scholar Dharmapala (6th C. A.D.) who was the Head of the Nalanda University. He should not, however, be confused with the other Dharmapala, a Tamil himself and a Buddhist scholar, who came to Ceylon and wrote the famous commentaries.
In the excavations made in 1926-1927, a relic chamber of a stupa containing many finds of great interest were found The chamber was found closed by a stone slab bearing a representation of a stupa having a cylindrical dome with a rounded top and five umbrellas above, indicating that these had a South Indian origin. Though most Burmese became Buddhists, the worship of Siva and Vishnu continued to be popular, the majority of the Hindus being South Indian settlers and colonizers from India.

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12 S. J. Gunasegaram - Selected Writings
Most of the old kings of Burma, it will be noted, have the Varman ending and the scripts used in almost all the inscriptions found in the country are South Indian in character. The Pallavas of South India -Tondayar or Tondamans-have contributed the greatest share towards the culture and greatness, of ancient Burma. Of the magnificent Buddhist temple of Ananda, Quaritch Wales says -"Here we have a South Indian temple crowned with a North Indian Sikara."
Scott, an authority on Burmese Archaeology and History-in his account of the reign of Alaungsithu (11 12-1187), observes:-
"The connection with India was still maintained and the form of the many Pagan temples suggests architects from the Deccan... Many of the images and the attitudes are quite South Indian."
"The presence of a considerable number of South Indian Tamils through the centuries is attested by the well-known Grantha Tamil inscription of Pagan attesting the existence of a Vishnu temple built there by Nanadesi merchants and a gift to the temple made in the 13th C. by a merchant from one of the port towns on the Malabar Coast."- (Epigraphia Indica)
The Malay Peninsula
It has been found that in the Malay Peninsula early South Indian colonists had founded a number of independent states, There are no records except Chinese notices to form an exact idea of the nature and origin of these states. By the end of the 13th century the entire region came under the power of the Sailendras and later fell an easy prey to the Siamese.
Malacca was an early Indian Hindu colony as proved by the Makara fragment built into the retaining wall near an ancient Portuguese Church. The Portuguese generally had no regard for antiquities or relics except for those of their own faith. The find, however, is an indication that the Pallavas of South India had exercised authority in Malaya in the early centuries of the Christian era.
Perak, another district, has been identified as an ancient Hindu colony. "A seal with an inscription in a South Indian script of the 5th C., or earlier was found."
Kedah was an unmistakable Hindu settlement. Dr. Quaritch Wales investigated no o fewer than 30 sites round about Kedah. The results show that this site was in continuous occupation

Early Tamil Cultural Influences in South-East Asia 3
by South Indians-Hindus and Buddhists -mainly Tamils. On a low spar of the Kedah peak to the south have been discovered traces of a Siva Temple. A large Siva Temple also had been identified as such by a four-armed Ganesh figure and a bronze weapon of Muruga. This temple is assigned to the 11th C. M. Coedes believes that Kedah is the same as Kadaram of Tamil (Chola).
Takua-Pa.
Lajonquiere's investigations at Takua-pa, which is a town situated north of the Perak district, brought to light a number of old sculptures and monuments which go to prove that Takua-pa was a well-known harbour and an early trading centre resorted to by South Indian and particularly Tamil traders. This has been supported by a Tamil inscription discovered in 1902 by Mr. Bourke, a mining engineer of the Siamese Government. Further in the interior on a hill in a dilapidated condition were found the figure of Siva and Parvati and a danseuse. Describing the finds, Lajonquiere observes:-
"The costumes in numerous folds treated with details, the profusion of jewels, the elegant movements of the body, recall very nearly the oldest sculptures of Dravidian India."
Near this sculpture is a slab which carries a Tamil inscription. It records the construction of a tank by one who describes himself as the Lord of Nangur. The tank is placed under the protection of the members of the Manigranam, under the residents of the Cantonment described as Senanukham and one other group of which the nature is obscured by a gap in the inscription.
No one, however, knows who maintained a Senamukham at Takua-pa, and for what purpose. Was the Lord of Nangur a Tamil military Chieftain or just a Merchant Prince? The term Manigramam implies the large and influential guild of Tamil merchants of whom we read in diverse connections. These historical associations would have been lost to us but for the scientific zeal of Western explorers. (K. A. N. Sastri).
Pierre Dupont has pointed out that Pro No' Visnu of Takua-pa is a pure Pallava product of the 7th C. A.D., while the seventh century Siva temple remains excavated in Kedah by Quaritch Wales have been ascribed by him to South Indian Colonists, most of whom were from the Tamil country.
Among the statues found belonging to different periods and styles was the admirable bust of Lokeswara (Siva) discovered by Prince Dumrong and now in the Bangkok Museum.

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14 S. J. Gunasegaram - Selected Writings
M. Coedes says of this statue:-
"The benevolent serenity of the face, the noble bearing of the shoulder and the magnificence of dress and adornment class this statue, badly mutilated, among the masterpieces of Indian sculpture."
At Ligor on the eastern coast of the peninsula was found a Tamil inscription dated in a Saka year in words. The word for the hundred figure is lost. "The record mentions sonne charity in favour of Brahmins instituted according to the orders of a Dharmasenapathi."
Malaya and Islam
The Malay Peninsula continues to be in debt to South India and Ceylon to this day to thousands of Tamil and Tamilspeaking Muslim merchants, Tamil educationists, doctors, engineers and labourers. The Malayans themselves would appear to have appreciated the value of this contact by recognising Tamil as a language to be taught at the Malayan University. The results on the cultural side of these contacts have struck all observers.
"There are many similarities," says Annandale, "between the Muhamadanism of the Labbies of the Indian shore of the Gulf of Mannar and that of the Malays. I think it would not be impossible to find striking parallels between objects in daily use, and especially in the pattern, with which these objects are adorned among the two races."
It has been established that an old type of South Indian water vessel known in Tamil as kendi, the kendi with a spout, is in use by the Malays and called by the Tamil name. Again, "The importance of Rama and Hanuman in the folklore of the Malays, Buddhists and Muhamadans alike agree with legends which link these with the region round Adam's Bridge region, whence came the bulk of the Tamils resident in Malaya."
Annandale goes on to add, "I would even hazard the suggestion that it is largely owing to the commercial activities of the Labbles and their ancestors that the Malays of the mainland were first converted from Shananism to Hinduism and then from Hinduism to what they call, in phraseology of curiously mingled derivation, the Agama Islam."
Several common Malay, words like those for washerman, kind or sort, marriage pledge, leaf, couple, and so on, have been traced indubitably to Tamil origins and these are some of the results of an unbroken contact throughout the centuries

Early Tamil Cultural Influences in South-East Asia 15
that follow the early period of colonisation. (K. A. N. Sastri, "South Indian Influences in the Far East.").
Java
By about A.D. 400, Indian culture and Hinduism had obtained firm footing in Java. Though the extant inscriptions in West Java are of a later date than those of Borneo: "There can be no doubt," says Nilakanta Sastri, "that Hindu culture must have reached Java, if anything a little earlier, from South India, than it reached Borneo." The inscriptions of West Java are engraved in the distinctly South Indian type of characters, and these are actually half a century later than the inscriptions of Mulavarman found in Borneo.
The West Javan inscriptions refer to the "Illustrious Purnavarman' who once ruled at Taruma in Java. The inscriptions are all in South Indian characters identical with the Grantha alphabet used by the Pallavas of South India (300 to 800 A.D.).
Another inscription found at Changal (732 A.D.) describes the consecration of a Linga by King Sangaya of Central Java, whose ancestors cane from Kunjara-kunjadesa in South India. Another at Dinaya of the year A.D. 760 describes the erection of an image of Agastya. In all these the era used is Saka era, an essentially South Indian reckoning. The Northern Vikrama era is unknown.
On the Dieng Plateaux, 6,500 feet above sea level, there are five groups of temples of an earlier period, all dedicated to Siva. The style of architecture is Dravidian and South Indian. Kroom points out that the Dieng Art shows "most agreement with, or properly least difference fron, South Indian Art, specifically from the square plan, symmetry, roof stages and stresses on horizontal lines."
Though Siva worship had been introduced by Tamil merchants and colonists in pre-Christian centuries, the later Pallava-Tamil influences are strongly indicated by the presence of Kala Makara over doorways, "for the Kala-Makara combined motif was a Pallava innovation in Indian Art."
The Sailendras, who ruled over Java and Sumatra and whose origins have not been finally decided upon by scholars, were Mahayanist Buddhists, and in all probability a dynasty that had its origin in South India. Throughout their imperial authority they had been in contact with South India and South Indian Buddhists till they were overpowered later by the Chola Empire.

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6 S. J. Gunasegaram - Selected Writings
Here is what K. M. Panikkar says in his "India and China' р. 20:—
"Its relations with India were of the most intimate kind. We know, for example, that Sri Vijaya Kings endowed institutions in Nalanda and had monasteries erected at their expense in Nagapatam... The Sailendra monarchs of Sri Vijaya enjoyed great prestige in India, and their envoys frequently visited Indian Courts."
It is interesting to note that while in Java there has been a fusion between Saivaism and Mahayanist Buddhism, Bali has always remained Hindu. That South Indian culture is bound up with the Art of Java is clearly evidenced in the dance forms and worship of the Balinese. The Saiva form of Hinduism ante-dated Buddhism in Java, while Bali still remains Hindu; and Saivaism was in all probability introduced by Tamil merchants and colonists in pre-Christian times. The majestic Sivan Temple in Perambanam in Java is thought by many competent judges to contain the finest sculptured panels to be found in Java. Kroom considers the Perambanam to represent "the apotheosis of Saivaism as Borobodor does of Buddhism."
"In the organisation of rural economy and village commuinities, the institution and ideas appear unmistakably to have been brought from South India. Institutions of Village Government are either unknown or quite different in their nature in non-Hindu parts. The proceedings in village meetings in Java even today strongly remind one of the conditions of village administration in South India in ancient days as it is vividly. portrayed in the numberless inscriptions of the Chola monarchs." (K. A. N. Sastri).
Java has had continuous contacts with South India in later times. The Chola Empire in the 10th and the 11th centuries had close association with Java, and Javanese culture was further influenced by Tamil culture after the Cholas defeated the Sailendras of Java. Bhikkhus from Kanchipuram praise the Javanese ruler Hayam Wuruk in the 14th C.; Jayanagara adopted the characteristic Pandyam title Sundarapandya at the coronation in the 14th century and adopted the Pandyan emblem of the two fishes for his seal.
Sumatra
The rulers of Sumatra, according to Chinese historical records, were in communication with China during the period 450-562 A.D. The names of these rulers, judged from the Chinese transcriptions, are typical Hindu names, and the manners and customs similar to the South Indian customs of

Early Tamil Cultural Influences in South-East Asia 17 Champa and Kumbuja (Siam and Cambodia).
In Sumatra are found certain names of tribal sub-divisions which are unmistakably South Indian, and specifically Tamilian names such as Choliya, Pandiya, Maehliyala, and also Pallava as well as Tekam (or Tekkanam or Deccan).
"The social organisation of some of these tribes seems to date from a very remote past and it is quite probable that these names were taken over when they were still powerful realities in South India," says Nilakanta Sastri.
No temples in Sumatra belonging to this ancient period have survived as they had probably been built of wood following the South Indian practice in pre-Christian times. This contact with Sumatra was kept up by South India for well over a thousand years.
In the 11th century A.D. the Cholas invaded Sumatra which was at that time under the Sailendras. Tamil inscriptions of this period have been found at Luba Tua, dating from the year 1088. Tamil tribal names are still found anong the Batak of Sumatra.
Thus Sumatra had not only been colonised by the Tamils but it also became an integral part of the Greater Indian Cultural Area.
Celebes
In Celebes, a large island further east of Borneo and Java and south of the Philippines, traces of South Indian influences have been found. The Buddha images there show affinities with the earliest form of the Anaravati Art (Second century A.D.). Archaeologists have not been able to decide how far this culture has penetrated into the interior of the island. Recently, however, an ancient bell and a pair of cymbals have been discovered. The bell and cymbals are very similar to those still in daily use in South India in domestic worship and otherwise. The probability is that South Indian cultural influence had preceded the arrival of South Indian Buddhism.
The Pallava-Tamil period was the age of South Indian colonisation par excellence, and unmistakable marks of evidence of Pallava rule are found scattered all over South East Asian countries including Celebes. "But," says Sastri, "palaeography and art styles are the two unmistakable marks of the antiquity of objects belonging to really early times and attesting direct contact of these lands, and the tests, as we have seen, point to a time much earlier than that of the rise of the Pallavas."

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18 S. J. Gunasegaraa - Selected Writings
Borneo
The earliest archaeological evidence in Borneo is a Sanskrit inscription, fully and decidedly South Indian, referring to the conquest of Mulavarman, a Pallava king. There is also evidence of the Agastya cult in Borneo already noticed in Java, a cult which is essentially South Indian. The Ganesha image found in Sarawak, North Borneo, a Linga and Yoni found in West Borneo and a Pallava inscription in the East coast of Borneo, prove unmistakably the early colonisation of Borneo by the South Indians, and particularly by the Tamils.
Philippines
In the early stages of this lecture, I have already referred to the iron age finds in the Philippines bearing close resenblance to objects found in South India about the same period, more than a thousand years before Christ, and also to other evidences of trade contact with Malaya, Indo-China, North Borneo and Philippines in those remote times. The Spanish who dominated the Philippines in recent centuries are not likely to have preserved religious and cultural antiquities of other Faiths. In 1820, however, a copper image of Siva was discovered in one of those islands which points to a remote period in which the worship of Siva had been introduced by South Indian merchants.
That these facts are by no means unsupported by other evidence may be shown by the remarks made by Mr. Phiroz Kutar, Technical Director, which were reported in the Madras 'Hindu' (October 1954).
"Researches into the cultural and racial origins of the people of Ceylon and of countries lying eastward have shown that they were once colonised from South India and in partcular, the Filipino script has striking similarities with that of Tamilark. These researches have also shown that Filipino dialects belonged to the Dravidian family."
Cambodia
have so far not been able to touch on Tamil cultural influences in Central Siam, Champa and Cambodia. I am afraid that the lecture is already long and that this aspect of the subject would require a separate lecture. I would crave your indulgence to refer to a state ceremony in Cambodia' where Saiva Tamil hymns are sung even today, to indicate the extent of Tamil cultural influence in these regions.
Cambodia had come under Saiva Tamil influence, not to speak of Southern Buddhism, from very early days. Though Buddhism continues to be its State religion, the old Saiva

Early Tamil Cultural Influences in South-East Asia 19
ceremonies conducted by the Tamil Brahmin priests are still found incorporated in its Coronation ceremonies. The Saiva Brahmins of Cambodia would appear to have come originally from Rameswaram in South India. Many of these, with the ascendancy of Buddhism and the adoption of the Siamese themselves as Brahmins, seem to have taken along with them, elsewhere, valuable documents which would otherwise have revealed more fully the nature of South Indian Tamil influence in the religious ceremonies and court life of the Siamese in Cambodia.
Quaritch Wales, in describing the swinging festival on the occasion of the crowning of Cambodian Kings, says:-"The King seated himself on a throne beneath an umbrella of seven tiers which, after the King was crowned, was replaced by one of nine tiers emblematic of full sovereignty. The high priest of Siva then came to him, and after rendering homage, pronounced the Tamil mantra, the name of which means "Opening of the Portals of Kailasa."
Wales adds that the Siamese priests now know neither Sanskrit nor Tamil, but that in an earlier period there were Brahmins who did understand these Indian languages.
The texts which the Siamese priests still possess are Sanskrit and Tamil hymns with instructions in Siamese for the preliminary rites intended to be used in daily worship.
The Rev. Fr. Thani Nayagam, a member of the Tamil Cultural Society and the Editor of "Tamil Culture,' visited the Brahmin Temple in Bangkok last year and heard the Brahmin priests recite the Tamil verses used in the "TriambavayTirupavay' a swinging festival at the coronation of their Kings. He has shown that the verses are actually the first two songs of Manickavasagar's Thiruvempavai.
For a further account of this ceremony and a discussion on further research that should be undertaken by Tamil scholars in South-East Asian countries, I would refer you to the excellent article by Fr. Thani Nayagam appearing in the 1955, July Number of the "Tamil Culture' Magazine.
1. "The Cambodian kings bore the title of Varman, which reminds one of the Pallava kings of South India. The magnificent temples of Angkor-Wat and of Bayon are similar to those of Southern India. Taking all these facts together, as well as the introduction of Nataraja Siva from South India one thinks that the colonists perhaps came from Southern India."
(P. Nath Boese)

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20 S. J. Gunasega ran - Selected Writings
Before I close, I would bring to your notice certain facts which will enable you to understand more fully the study of the Indian influences in these colonies.
1. In most of the South-East Asian colonies the strong Dravidian cultural influence is stressed by the fact that the Saka Era, a distinctly South Indian Calendar, as opposed to the Vikrama Era of the Northerner, has been in vogue.
2. The New Year celebrated in many of these countries including Champa (Cambodia) and Ceylon is the Tamil New Year 13th-14th April. This is an ancient Tamil astronomical fixture going back to the Mohenjo-Daro period and continued through the Sangam Age. In Ceylon under the British it was termed Hindu, and has now come to be called "Hindu' or 'Sinhalese“.
3. The Brahmins, most of then Saivites, mentioned in connection with the Indian Colonies were Tamils or South Indian "adopted' Brahmins. This is a process referred to in one of the Upanishads, where it is stated that of the white, brown and dark Brahmins, the last were the cleverest because they knew all three Vedas, while the others knew only one and two respectively (Brihadaranayaka Upanishad).
4. In the purely religious inscriptions in these colonies Sanskrit was used by Vaishnavites and Mahayana Buddhists and Pali by the Hinayana Buddhists, though they came from the South, because these languages alone were considered fit vehicles for their respective religious pronouncements. Again, the Pallava Kings (Tondayars), though they were patrons of Sanskrit, became champions of Tamil after their conversion to Saivaism.
5. Rigid caste divisions were unknown among the early Tamils. The caste system, as we know it today, was brought into the South of India by Brahminism. In the maritime activity of the early Dravidians, the men who lived along the sea-coast, apparently, played the largest part. With the introduction of the Brahminical prejudice against fish and sea-faring activities (intentional or otherwise), may be said to have commenced the gradual weakening of the maritime enterprise and cultural expansion of the Dravidian peoples and of the Tamils in particular.

BBLIOGRAPHY
Childe, G.-The Most Ancient East', 1928.
Coedes, M.-Indian Art and Letters'.
Hall, J.W.-'Eminent Asians', 1929.
Marshall, Sir John-Mohenjo-Daro and the Indian Civilization',
1931.
Nilakanta Sastri-"A History of South India", 1955;
'South Indian Influences in the Far East', 1949.
Panikkar, K.M.-'A Survey of Indian History', 1954;
"India and China", 1957.
Piggott, Stuart-'Prehistoric India' (Pelican Book), 1952.
Quaritch Wales, H.G.--'The Making of Greater India', 1957;
'Siamese State Ceremonies', 1931.
Reginald Le May-The Culture of South East Asia", 1954.
Scott, J.G.-Burma from the Earliest Times to the Present
day', 1924.
Will Durant-'Our Oriental Heritage', 1942.
Sir William Larke-Bulletin of the British Iron and Steel
Federation', 1949.
Dixon-'Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society',
V. 639, 1930.
Rev. Fr. Thani Nayagam-Tamil Culture', Vol. V, No. 3, July,
1955.
Epigraphia Indica.

Page 20
APPENDIX
THE TAMIL CONTRIBUTION TO WORLD'S CIVILIZATTON
AN APPEAL
There is no doubt that the culture of the Tamils belongs to the great and immortal treasures of the world's civilization. From my own experience, however, I can say that even those who claim to have a wide outlook and deep education, both Indians and Europeans, are not aware of this fact. And it is the task of the Tamils themselves, and of those sympathetic mlecchas who try to interpret Tamil culture, to acquaint the world's cultural public with the most important contributions of Tamil culture to the world's civilization. As far as literary works are concerned, it is necessary before all to make them accessible to a wide public of readers by means of artistic translations into the world's great languages; with regard to works of arts and architecture, it is necessary to make them a common treasure of the world with the help of publications giving detailed and perfect reproductions. This may be achieved through the UNESCO as well as through the work of individual scholars and local institutions; this should also be one of the main tasks of the Academy of Tamil Culture.
The following works of art and literature are among the most remarkable contributions of the Tamil creative genius' to the world's cultural treasure and should be familiar to the whole world and admired and beloved by all in the same way as the poems of Honer, the dramas of Shakespeare, the pictures of Rembrandt, the cathedrals of France and the sculptures of Greece:
1. The ancient Tamil lyrical poetry compiled in 7645 GastatDas (The Eight Anthologies); this poetry is so unique and vigorous, full of such vivid realism and written so masterfully that it can be compared probably only with some of the pieces of ancient Greek lyrical poetry;
2. The 55 deadir (Kural), one of the great books of the world, one , of those singular emanations of the human heart and spirit which preach positive love and forgiveness and peace;

Early Tamil Cultural Influences in South-East Asia 23
3. The epical poem failugs, rig Li (Cilappathikaram), which by its "baroque splendour", and by the charm and magic of its lyrical parts belongs to the epic masterpieces of the world;
4. The school of Bhakti both Vaishnava and Saiva, which is one of those most sincere and passionate efforts of the man to grasp the Absolute; and its supreme literary expression in the works of மாணிக்கவாசகர் (Manikkavasagar), 5n serotit 1545ri (Gnanasambandar), psihi uLa sit Guntíř (Nammalwar) and essTTair (Andal);
5. The philosophical system of Saiva Siddhanta, a system, which may be ranked among the most perfect and cleverest systems of human thought;
6. The South Indian bronzes of the Chola period, those splendid and amazing sculptures belonging to the best creations of humanity;
7. The Dravidian temple-architecture, of which the chief representatives are perhaps the temples of Tanjore, Chidambaram and Madurai.
These seven different forms of contribution, without which the world would be definitely less rich and less happy, should engage the immediate attention of all who are interested in Tamil culture; they should all dedicate their time and efforts to make known (and well and intimately known) to the whole of the world these heights of Tamil creative genius.
Dr. Kamil Zvelebil "Tamil Culture', Vol. W No. 4, October, 1956.
(Dr. Kami 1 Zvelebil is the Head of the Departament of Dravidology University of Prague. He has translated many Tamil works into Czech and is a research worker.)

Page 21
APPENDIX
RECENT ARCHAEOLOGICAL FINDS N CEYLON
Reports in the local Press of Archaeological finds of great significance have been brought to the notice of the public in recent months. The age and the nature of these finds will have to be studied with care and interpreted-not by amateurs or by officers selected to prove a pre-conceived theory in keeping with sectional prejudices but by Archaeologists who have had experience in the study of similar finds discovered, particularly, in South India and in the area termed South-East Asia.
These are undoubtedly connected with the waves of cultural expansion, Hindu and Buddhist which have had their origins in India. The interpreters should not merely be acquainted with Sanskrit and Pali but also with the Dravidian languagesparticularly Tamil-and with the origin and nature of the types of scripts used in the inscriptions.
This warning is necessary because we have been made to believe by local Archaeologists in the past, that the short Brahmi inscriptions, for instance, found in the caves of Ceylon were an old form of Sinhalese, while it has been shown that similar cave inscriptions are also in existence in the Pandyan country in South India, and that all these were actually Tamil written in a Brahmi Script of the South Indian variety of the 3rd Century B.C. ( vide "History of South India" by N. K. Sastri (pp. 14 and 87). Oxford Press).
The temptation to consider that everything Buddhist in Ceylon is necessarily Sinhalese has to be resisted, as it must be remembered that the Kalingas, Andhras and Tamils also were at one time Buddhists, and had a very large share in the dissemination of Buddhist culture in the countries of SouthEast Asia.
Dr. Paranavitarane's discovery of urn-burials at the Puttalam-Marichukaddal road was rightly associated by him with those found in the Tinnevelly district in South India. It was not, however, shown that there are a large number of other sites scattered all over South India where such urn-burials have been unearthed. There is ample evidence in the Sangam literature of the Tamils and in Tholkappiyam to prove that this is an essentially Dravidian culture seen in

Early Tamil Cultural Influences in South-East Asia 25
the use of such terms as "Mudu Makal Thali' (urns or burialjars), Imatalli (funerary urns), 'Nadu Kal" (menhir), 'Pandava Kuli" (dolmens), Kar-Kidal (stone circle) and Kurrukupadai (Megalithic site) a culture that dates back to the 2nd millenium B.C.
These have been found in a very large number of sites in South India-at Adichanalur (1926-30), Sanur (1950-52), Amirthamangalam (1955), Kunathur (1956).
Their appearance in Ceylon no doubt points, as Dr. Paranavi tarane has himself suggested, to a period before the arrival of Vijaya. But what he has failed to note is that it is essentially Dravidian and Tamil. Mr. Deraniyagala similarly found traces of a Megalithic culture in the Northern portion of the Island, but he has failed to connect it with the widespread Megalithic culture noted as belonging to Pre-Aryan times in India. At the International Congress of Anthropologists and Ethnologists held in Vienna in 1952, Furer Hainendorf, defined the Dravidlans as, "South Indian iron-age Megalithic builders who introduced iron into India."
The headless statue of Buddha unearthed recently in the Eastern Province is reported to have traces of Amaravati Art. The Amaravati period in Art belongs to the 2nd and 3rd century A.D., and is Andhra and Dravidian. The other finds in the same area are said to reveal the use of the MakaraThorana. The introduction of the Makara Motif in Indian Art has been recognised as an essentially Pallava innovation. Kanchipuram was the great centre of Buddhism during the Pallava period in the history of the Tamil country--a centre from which Buddhist Art and learning spread throughout SouthEast Asia, including Ceylon.
We in Ceylon have had the benefit of several waves of cultural influences. It is necessary that we should assess them with a certain amount of objective impartiality and admit the contributions made to our country by others. Our culture, in the past has been a synthesis of different cultures, and in evolving a new culture these influences have to be taken into consideration.
S. J. Gunasegaram

Page 22

T H E V J A Y AN L E G E N D
AND
T H E A R Y AN MY TH
A Commentary on
DR. G. C. MENDS "Mahabharata Legends in the Mahavamsa'
by S. J. GUNASEGARAM, M.A. (Lond.)
September, 1963

Page 23

PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDTION
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 the pillars of the Society and the custodians of the scholarship, learning and historical lore of Sri Lanka. The so-called "University History of Ceylon", which appeared in two Volumes, in 1960, was planned and enlivened by them.
After repeated reminders by me requesting the Society either to 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 its "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 North India waned after the tenth century, as this region fell into the hands of the Muslims, and its Hindu Civilization received a set back. South India, however, continued to be Hindu and three great Empires,

Page 24
30 S. J. Gunasegaram - Selected Writings
the Cola, Pandya, and Vijayanagara rose in succession." ("Early History of Ceylon', p. 65, 1954 Edition.)
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 Pandukka 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, 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, Ilambakkannast
The kings that followed the Chola Tamil period, headed by Parakramabahu the Great were mainly Pandyans. Their names Parakrama Bahu, Vijaya Bahu, Vira Bahu, Wilckrema Bahu, Bhuvaneka Bahu etc., are all of Tamil origino The very names for tanks Kulam (Kulama), Vavi (Weva), 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."

The Vijayan Legend and The Aryan Myth 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. 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 Island. It flared up recently in 1958, and has left bitter memories.
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. Gunasegaran Kopay Jaffna

Page 25
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 Island that the copies of the first edition should have been sold out before the local Press had either the time or the inclination to review it, though copies of the booklet had been promptly sent to the Editors of every English Daily in the country.
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 4-7-63, is a typical example of how a book might be reviewed without a critic taking the trouble to study it.
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. Gunasegaran 12-7-63

REFERENCES AND NOTES
l. Epigraphia Zeylonica, Wol. l., pp. ll12-113.
2. (a) 'Anthropology in India', by Wikumba (Bharatiya Vidiya Bhavan Publication), 1961, pp. 195-196. "Nagas "-the Sanskrit term for the Dravidian "Seres'. (Ceylon was known as Serentivu or Nagadipa. The Nagas were a Dravidian tribe.)
(b) Dr. G. C. Mendis-"Moriyas", "Lambakarnas".
"Early History of Ceylon", p. 5. Mairu (Mayil), Ilabakannas, are names of Dravidian origin. Vide, Tamil Dictionaries for meanings, and the "Dravidian Etymologica1 Dictionary" by T. Burrow, and M. B. Emeneau, Sections 3793; 13ll.
3. Dravidian Etymological Dictionary. Tamil origin of Prakritised names of some Tamil Kings of Ceylon.
i Parakrama Bahu
Para-(3255) Par 'earth", "world", "charioteer', 'to diffuse", "to spread". Pakan (3331) " Elephant rider", "charioteer", id. Paku. "art", "ability", Ak (u) (282) "to make", "become", "increase", "create", "prosperity", (In Elu, the name becomes Parakuma) .
ii. Wik-rema-(Elu-"Vikum")
Wik (a)-(4477). 'Valiant", "courage", Wik Ꭴu)-
iii. Wira-Viru-Vira (4491), "be eminent", "distinguished",
"splendid".
iv. Similarly Walla.-BA.
Val (4406) "Ilustre", "splendour", "fame" Wall (4317) 'strong", "mighty", "hero" Wall (4340) "bounty', 'liberality', 'strength"
v. Bhuveneka (Nayaka) -
Pu. (3564) "flourish", "bloom", "richness" Naya (2977) 'respect', 'esteem", etc. (It may also mean Puvi-Nayagam, "the Lord of tha earth".)

Page 26
34
4.
S. J. Gunasegaran - Selected Writings
"Fa-Hian in the fourth century was assured by the people of Ceylon that at that period the Priests numbered between fifty and sixty thousand. Five thousand were attached to one Vihara alone in Anuradhapura and three thousand to another." Foe Houe Ki Ch. XXXVIII, p. 336, 350, quoted by Tennent "Ceylon", Vol. I. p. 347.
Reference also may be made to MHV, to note that several thousands poured into Ceylon in later times from the Pandyan and the Chola Kingdoms.

ANCENT INDA C 500 BCMAHAJANAPADAS
"In the seventh century B.C., Northern India and part of the Deccan were divided into sixteen principalities, the sixteen Mahajanapadas of the Anguttara Nikaya. Of Southern India nothing definite has come to light, but we may suppose that the traditional Tamil kingdoms were in existence."
(An Historical Atlas of the Indian Peninsula, p. 6, by C. Collin Davies, Oxford Press, 1959.)
The Sixteen Mahajanapadas:- (1) Anga (2) Magadha (3) Kasi (4) Kosala (5) Vajji (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, 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 Ceylon, near Mannar, is about 1,000 miles.
Total distance c. 1, 600 milles

Page 27
36
S. J. Gunasegaraa - Selected Writings
B. (1). The distance from Mathura (Muttra) to Tamralipti,
C.
the nearest sea-port in the North-Eastern Coast of India either by land or by the Ganges (assuming it was navigable all the way to the sea), is about 900 miles.
(2) The distance from Tamralipti by sea either to Mathotam
(Mantote) on the North-West Coast of Ceylon or to Tiru-Kona-Ma-Malai (Trincomalee), on the East Coast, is about 1,100 miles.
Total distance c. 2,000 ailes
The distance from old Madurai, the ancient Capital of Pandya, on the banks of the Vaigai to Mathotam (Mantote), on the gulf of Mannar, is about 150 miles, by river and sea.

MAP OF INDIA - OLD SEAPORTS (300 B.C. A.B. 1700 A.D.)
守 O Masulipattama
Cu.
(Masalia )
S. Maraka nam (Sopatanam) な CEOL A e o Arikamedu (Pondi cherry) Iyndis ch さ (Padouke Emporium)
A. Cfaagang Egiptägg G Ranquebar )
& Näjä8ëën:
Sali yw'r 8 V-2S #tజరిపి
* O Trincomalee (Tirur-kona-malai) Cape Conorin
R Татraparпі O 250
Miles
MADURAI - ON THE BANKS OF THE VAIGAI (IN PANDYA)

Page 28

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 Series, Vol. V, Part I, and reprinted in booklet form for the Society by the Colombo Apothecaries Company, Limited
His thesis appears to be that (a) the early kings of Ceylon from Vijaya to Pandukabhaya are legendary and that genuine historical tradition in Ceylon dates from the beginning of the reign of Devanampiya Tissa. The stories of the early kingsPanduvasudeva Abhaya, Pandukabhaya-originate from the legends of the Mahabharata; "these stories have been considerably transformed by the author of the Mahavamsa by drawing on and imitating legends in other Jatakas as well as stories current in Ceylon such as that of Vijaya and Kuveni. Though Panduvasudeva, Abhaya and Pandukabhaya were "actual rulers of Ceylon', these stories got attached in later times, and "these legends are utilised to make up a list of kings to fill the gap of 236 years between the death of the Buddha and the accession of Devanampiya Tissa', (b) The earliest historical traditions of Ceylon associate the Island only with North India, and therefore "there is certainly some ground' for the conclusion that the "Princess' who married Vijaya and the early kings of Ceylon canne from Madhura (Muttra) in North India, and not from Madura of South India. They did not come from Pandya. The story seems to connect the royal dynasty of Ceylon with the family of Pandus'.
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? m
Is not Devanampiya Tissa referred to in the Mahavamsa as a 'friend' of the great Asoka-an association which could be

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40 S. J. Gunasegaram - Selected Writings
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 North India?
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 South India or to Ceylon. Geiger himself (Mahavansa, Introduction p. XVII) says, "I may observe that at the outset, it is not absolutely certain whether by the Tambapanni of the inscriptions Ceylon is meant. Possibly the name may designate the Tinnevelly district at the Southern extremity of India, where the Tambapanni flows into the sea'.
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 Ceylon as 'a tissue of absurdities'.
There is literary tradition mentioned in Sillappadikaram, 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 Pandyas, 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 Burma we find that Dharmapala the great Buddhist Acharya (fifth century A.D.), a Tamilian himself, lived in a Vihara built by Asoka in Kanchipura. Dharmapala, in his commentary "Netti-Attagatha', mentions that he wrote his work in a Vihara built by Asoka.
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

The Vijayan Legend and The Aryan Myth 41
Missionaries to Ceylon. The Asokan Edicts make no mention whatever of either the word "Lanka' by which name Ceylon was known to the ancient Indians or the term 'Sihala' (found only once in an early Chapter of the Mahavamsa, and interpreted by Dr. G. C. Mendis as meant "to explain the origin of the name 'Sinhala', and to show how the first settlement took place in the Island'). It will be noticed that the term 'Sihala' is used only once in the Mahavamsa of Mahanama, "But the king Sinhabahu, since he had slain the lion (was called) Sihala and by reason of the ties between him and them, all those followers of Vijaya were also (called) Sihala". (Ch. VII v. 42). But in all subsequent and earlier chapters, the Island is referred to as Lanka or Tambapanni, and nowhere, for instance, as 'Sihaladivipa', nor are the people, anywhere referred to as 'Sihalas' or 'Sinhalese'. May it be a later interpolation? Dr. Mendis himself suggests that, "The story of Vijaya seems to have been evolved to explain the origin of the name Sinhala and to show how the first human settlement took place in the Island." He adds, 'obviously the Aryans no longer remembered how their ancestors came to this country', (p. 81: R.A.S.C., Vol. V, part I).
The Mahavansa 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 Ceylon.
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 Devanampiya Tissa, this great 'friend' of Asoka, 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. 1 1-14). "Then came his people and surrounded him and the great thera caused the others who had come with him to become visible. When the king beheld these too he said, "When did these come

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42 S. J. Gunasegaram - Selected Writings
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 the 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 India, and made the hero of each story into a Bodhisatava who is destined after a number of subsequent births to become a Buddha.
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 India', pp. 167-168).
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 India', p. 11, Sinha and Banerjee).
"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).

The Vijayan Legend and The Aryan Myth 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 India', p. 46, July, 1952 Edition).
3. Ramayana
The Ramayana of Valmiki, a work believed to belong to an earlier date than the Mahabharata, refers to the Kerala, Chola and Pandyan Kingdoms in South India. (Aranya Kanda, and the first Sarga of the Kishkinda Kanda).
"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 (South India)."
(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 Mysore, Hyderabad and Kurnool vary in several respects from the Northern Edicts and have been recognised as a special variety of the Brahmi script. This must have been an already well developed script in South India and the edicts were
inscribed by the Southerners themselves."
(K. A. M. Sastri "History of South India', p. 15).
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 South India", p. 85). In other words the league of Tamil States existed in the fourth century B.C., while Vijaya is said to have landed in Ceylon in the fifth century B.C., though the date of his arrival has also been made to synchronise with the death of the Buddha.

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44 S. J. Gunasegara - Selected Writings
"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 Pandyan Kingdom."
("Age of Imperial Unity', p. 229).
Megasthenes and the Pandyan Kingdom
"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 Pandyan Kingdom is mentioned in Indian literature even in the fourth century B.C. Megasthenes gives some curious stories about the kingdom and tells us it was governed by women. In one of his edicts Asoka refers to the Pandyans as an independent people living in the southern limits of his Empire."
' (Sinha and Banerjee, "History of India', pp. 96-97, July, 1952 Edition).
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 maritine activity of the Aryans is not clear."
(Sinha and Banerjee,
"History of India', p. 2).
"The greatest achievements of the Dravidians was the art of navigation..........There are Sanskrit borrowings of several

The Vijayan Legend and The Aryan Myth 45
nautical terms from Dravidian languages. Aryans in India lost contact with the sea in course of time, and viewed sea-going with disfavour. It was left to the Dravidians to develop shipping and maritime activities of India."
(S. W. Venkates wara , "Indian Culture through the Ages', p. 11, Longлапs Green & Co., 1958).
Dole 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 then for the return journey with what their own ships had brought from China and Ceylon.......These Tamils......were Dravidian preAryans. They have a very old literature of no little importance. This Tamil civilization was quite as old as possible to estimate the extent of the debt owed by each to the other. There is little doubt that the Tamils would prove to be the greater creditors. One of their kings, King Pandya, had sent an embassy to Augustus. They had known at one and the same time the civilization of the West and the civilization of China-thanks to their familiarity with the sea. Like the Cretans the Tamils were great divers the foremost pearl divers in the world."
(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 Pandyas, 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 India.
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 Pandu Kingdom or dynasty. The only evidence available, as we have seen, is the reference to the Pandus, for the first time, in the Jataka stories where they are described as "a hill tribe'. (Sinha and Banerjee, ibid, p. 46).

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It requires a considerable degree of credulity even on the part of modern Sinhaiese 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 1,500 miles from Mathura to the Delta of the Ganges, and a distance of another 1,500 miles from an unknown port there to the Mannar district in Ceylon.
(See Map).
The Pandyas near Ceylon, were, about this period already known to history as a powerful Tamil ruling dynasty skilled in the art of administration and in the possession of naval power. They had been since the dawn of Indian history, with the Sister Tamil kingdoms of the Cheras and Cholas, the undisputed masters of the South, separated only by a narrow stretch of water from Ceylon.
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 halled, is to accuse Mahanama of ignorance of the historic kingdoms of the South, the geography of India and of the state of navigation in the regions of which he speaks. The Pandus, by no stretch of the imagination, could be confused with the Pandyas. 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 Pandyas of the ancient historic kingdom of South India.
Madura and Muttra
After this attempt to substitute the Pandus for the Pandyas, Dr. Mendis proceeds to identify southern Madhura (referred to by the author of the Mahavamsa), with Muttra in North India. He says, (vide, p. 84),
"If there were two Mathuras in North India, where was the Southern Madhura? It may be that, at the time this legend grew, the Pandus were also associated with South India owing to the names of Pandya and its capital Madura. In any case whatever Mathura was meant, the story seems to connect the Royal dynasty of Ceylon - once more with the family of the Pandus."
On page 83, we find the following comments made by Dr. Mendis on Geiger's views on the subject.

The Wijayan Legend and The Aryan Myth 47
"Geiger in his English translation of the Mahavamsa considered southern (Dakkhima) Madhura to be the Madura of South India. He probably came to this conclusion as Mathura on the Ganges is described in the Ghata Jataka as Northern Uttra Mathura. But there are others who accept neither his identification nor the view that the princess came from Pandya. There. is some ground for such conclusions."
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 Ceylon associate
this Island only with North India.
(b) Wijaya comes from Sinhapura in Lala in North India.
(c) He sends a letter to the same place to secure a successor, and Panduvasudeva comes from there to become king of Ceylon.
(d) Panduvasudeva marries a daughter of Saka Pandu who rules from a city on the right bank of the Ganges in North India.
(e) Devanampiya Tissa's relations too were limited to North India. His ambassadors went to meet Asoka by ship along the East Coast of India, and then up the Ganges to Pataliputra.
Then he poses the question
"Is it then likely that Vijaya sought a princess from South India? According to the Mahavamsa the ambassadors from Ceylon went by ship to Mathura. They could have gone by ship to a Mathura in the Ganges but not directly to Mathura in South India which is an inland town. In addition to all this Pandya is nowhere mentioned in the Mahavamsa."
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

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Princess, the consort of Wijaya, came not from Dravidian Madura of South India but from (an implied Aryan) Mathura of North India, situated in the South Valley of the Ganges in an ancient kingdom of a people known as Pandus."
('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 Pandyas had encouraged the Aryan enthusiasts in Ceylon to confirm their theory.
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 Mathura", he was obviously not fortified by any sound historical evidence for his belief. I have already quoted earlier in this article what Sinha and Banerjee, whose history is a standard text book used in Colleges and Universities in India, have to say about the Pandus. (Sinha and Banerjee, "History of India', Revised Edition, 1952).
"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 India (Circa I to IV C. B.C.), is this insignificant little hill tribe associated with the great Pandyans of ancient Tamil India!
I give below the words of Mudaliyar W. F. Gunawardhana, who, unlike many others who have attempted to write the history of Ceylon, knew at least Tamil, among the Dravidian group of languages.
"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 South Walley of the Ganges? There were-and still there areonly two Maduras in India, one the present Muttra on the

The Vijayan Legend and The Aryan Myth 49
western bank of the Jumna, which drains the Northern basin of the Ganges on the West; and the other Madura on the bank of the Waigee (Vaigai) in South India. The first lies more than two degrees of latitude to the North of the point where the Ganges begins to have a South Valley, and cannot be said to be in any sense in that valley, unless indeed we so stretch the meanings of words as to extend to their opposites. But the other lies South to the Ganges, though very far away, and if all India be divided into two valleys of the Ganges, by slight application of the stretching process, this can be said to be in the South Valley in a sense far more true, and with far less violence offered to language in our use of words. Thus on Perera's own reasons he has to admit the very thing he denies, and recognise in the Madura of South India, the Southern Madura that the Princess whom he calls Vijayi came from."
"Madura the capital of Pandya in the province of Madras is said to have been founded by Kulasekhera. It was called Daksina Mathura by way of contra-distinction to Mathura of the N. W. Province." (Geographical Dictionary, Ancient and Mediaeval India, Calcutta, 1899). With the above which fixes Southern Madura as known to science, read the story of the Pandyan Alliance as related in the Mahavamsa, Chapter 7, vv. 48-57. (Critical edition by Dr. Wilhelm Geiger, London,
1908). There in verse 49, we read
gahapayitva pahesum-dakkinam puram, which with the context means that the ministers of Vijaya sent an embassy conveying presents to the 'city of Southern Madura".
"And from this city the Princess came with all her numerous train." She therefore came not from the banks of the distant Jumna, but from the banks of the nearer Waigee, from the bosom of a nation still Dravidian, (ibid. pages 16-17).
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 Ceylon history. In 1956, J. D. M. Derrett of the School of Oriental African Studies, University of London, writing in the

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University of Ceylon Review (Vol. XIV, Nos. 3 and 4), on the "Origins of the Laws of the Kandyans'-expresses in unmistakable terms, a similar conclusion (pages 147-148).
"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 millenium, 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 Ceylon about the time of the Buddha; the Sinhalese language, despite its far from negligible Dravidian element, has been identified as an Indo-Aryan language. Both facts must be taken with some qualification, but they cannot be ignored. The upper limit for the invasion is quite unknown except to legend; and the language has developed in isolation and only a small fraction of the present Sinhalese may be even in part descended from Indo-Aryan speakers........."
"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 South India....... The Aryan strain in the Sinhalese may thus have been what the present writer chooses to call sub-Aryan.'
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

The Vijayan Legend and The Aryan Myth 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.''
To return to Dr. Mendis' repetition of his thesis, we find that in support of his argument, Dr. Mendis assumes that the term "Ganges' must inevitably refer to the great Ganges that has its source in the Himalayas. He does not seem to be aware that in ancient Tamil literature the word "Ganges' (sini, Gods) is . used sometimes to refer indiscriminately to any great river; even in Ceylon the larger rivers are called "Ganges' with an epithet attached to each of them, viz. Mahavali ( Mavali ) Ganga, Kelani Ganga, Kaluganga, etc. ( Mavali - LD Tags) 'the great pathway').
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 IndoAryans 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 Muttra, when he says:-
"According to the Mahavamsa the ambassadors from Ceylon went by ship to Southern Madhura. They could have gone by ship to a Madhura in the Ganges but not directly to Madhura in South India which is an inland town."
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 Southern Madhura referred to Madhura, a sea-port still further south, a well known ancient capital of the Pandyas and a centre of Tamil culture. It was destroyed by sea erosion and the site of the new city was shifted further north.

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In his 'Hindu Culture and the Modern Age', (1936), K. S. Ramaswamy Sastri makes reference to this fact, when he says, (p.341):ー
"Korkai, which is said to be the Kavatapuram of the Ramayana, was a great sea-port of the Pandyan Kingdom, after Madura in the extreme South was destroyed by the erosion of the sea. Ptolemy says that the Pandya capital was recently shifted to it."
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 nodern town of Madura. The ruins are now on the northern banks of the Vaigai, whereas ancient Madura stood on the southern bank; but it is quite possible that the river had changed its course since the destruction of the old city." That Madura was in danger of being destroyed by the Vaigai may be inferred from a poet's description of Pandya in the following words:-
"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."
(Kali thokai , 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 Madhura. On p. 64, he states clearly that the messengers reached a haven on their return journey, "on the second day'.
Referring to Bhaddakaccana, ("the daughter of Sakka Pandu"), who came over from India to marry Panduvasudeva, the Mahavamsa account states:
"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

The Vijayan Legend and The Aryan Myth 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 Gonamaka 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 Mahanana was such a simpleton as to imagine that a ship launched on the Ganges, at Muttra, on the banks of the Jumna, could have arrived at some spot near Mannar in Ceylon on the second day?
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 Pandyans 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 Wanga, (probably "Wengi' 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 Ceylon, he was probably already aware
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

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or at least by an uncle to be wedded to a neighbouring petty ruler is to ask the reader to swallow a cannel.
"When the messengers were quickly come by ship to the city of Madhura they laid the gifts and letter before the king. The king took counsel with his ministers and since he was minded to send his daughter (to Lanka) he, having first received also daughters of others for the ministers (of Vijaya), nigh upon a hundred maidens, proclaimed with beat of drum
"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 then 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 waggons 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 Mantotal opposite the island of Mannar, Geiger, n. p. 60)
The Pandyan King, as suggested earlier, must have certainly known the antecedents of Vijaya and of his marriage with Kuveni, the "Yaksha Princess' of South Ceylon. Under the circumstances, one would not be far wrong in inferring that the women who came over to marry, though belonging to the Pandyan territory, were in all probability of such circumstances that they had consented to leave their homes and parents in the hope of more glamorous prospects in Lanka.
It is again a pardonable gesture that the author of the Mahavamsa should have elevated these imported brides to the dignity of Princesses, to compensate for the doubtful history of Wijaya and his followers.
Mahanana 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 reignಣ್ಣೇ, as is known, in the city of Tambapanni thirty eight yearз.

The Wijayan Legend and The Aryan Myth 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. w
VERY MPORTANT NOTES AND REFERENCES
1. "The Mahabharata Legends in the Mahavamsa", by Dr. G. C. Mendis, in the Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, Ceylon Branch, Volume V, Part I, New Series (1957). Reprints of this Article were made for distribution as it was apparently considered by the Council of this 'learned society', a product of profound research.
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 Wanga 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 natriarchal form of society." (ibid. p. 52).
Panduka-Abhaya was the nephew of Abhaya, the son of Panduvasa (Panduvasudeva). Apayan (9|Luugi, ), was a title often used by Tamil kings, particularly, the Cholas. Panduka Abhaya ruled after Abhaya.

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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 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 Andhradhapura 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 Ceylon.
(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 Mysore as well. The name Devanampiya (Skt. Devanampriya), is the same as that which Asoka bore. I an inclined to believe that the pious Chroniclers have similarly added the name "Tissa' to Devanampiya Tissa. Tissa was the son of Mogali, the author of the Kathavatthu and President of the third Council held in Asoka's reign under his patronage.
(b) Dr. Mendis himself had pointed out earlier ("Early History of Ceylon', 1932 Edition, p. 3). "No independent record of any kind outside of Ceylon supports the view that Mahinda was the son of Asoka, and he believes it to be a pure invention". (vide, Physical Anthropology of Ceylon; p. 24).
5. Tamraparni (Sanskrit); Tambapanni (Pali); Thamiraparuni (Tamil). Thamiraparuni ( 5 ITAu Luo Goof ), is a river in the Pandyan kingdom in the extreme South of South India adjoining the Northern district of Ceylon. Tamraparni (Skt.) and Tambapanni (Pali) are the Sanskrit and Pali forms respectively of the Tamil "Thamiraparuni'. It is also known as Porunai ( Gum (C60s ) in Tamil.
"Thaniram' ( art L6p th ), in Tamil means "red lotus' ( 57 popT ); "red"; "copper" (Tam or Chem). Hence "Chempadu"- "red earth'- The area in North Ceylon, including Tinnevelly and

The Vijayan Legend and The Aryan Myth 57
the adjoining districts, is called Chempadu-"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 ive as " பொன் திணிந்த பொருநையெனும் திருநதி "-"The sacred river called Porunai (Thamiraparuni), whose waters are thick with gold."
The Tamraparni River
"The Tamraparni rising among the wooded hills of the Southern ghats and benefiting from both the monsoons, 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 India of the South, the land where all the great historical kingdoms of South India fixed their capitals, the land of innumerable temples of indigenous arts and of almost pre-historic industries. Here artificial irrigation was practised from remote antiquity, and the irrigation system of the fertile belt between Karur and Tanjore must be as old as agriculture itself.' (ibid. p. 48).
Despite all this, Sinhalese historians assert that the irrigation system of North Ceylon was the work of Aryans from North India. It may be noted that our "Aryan' conscious Sinhalese historians of our time want the world to believe that the irrigation system in North Ceylon had to wait till the IndoAryans introduced the cultivation of rice, a plant unknown to the pastoral Aryan Marauders of North India during the second millenium B.C. Dr. S. Paranavitane, once the accredited head of Ceylon Archaeology and History, has discovered that even Tamralingam, an early Saivite South Indian settlement in the Malay Peninsula, is the Sinhalese Tamralingama. One has only to add 'a' to the tail end of the Tamil word and the word becomes original Sinhalese.
6. Silappadikaram
References in the Silappadikaram, (a Tamil Epic of which the heroine is Kannakai or Pattini, a popular deity worshipped in Ceylon as well by the Sinhalese), to the Vihara built by Mahendra-i.e. Mahinda of the Pali Chronicles, may be found in
(a) Ch. X, lines 13-14 w (b) Ch. XXVII, line 92

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In "Buddhism and Tamil', p. 25, by Mylai Seeni Vengadasany, (The Saiva Siddhanta Press, Tinnevelly, Madras), we read:-
சிலப்பதிகாரத்தில் காவிரிப்பூம் பட்டினத்தில் இருந்ததாகக் கூறப்படுகிற "இந்திர விகாரை" என்பது மகேந்திரதேரரால் கட்டப்பட்ட விகாரை என்று ஆராய்ச்சியாளர் கூறுகிருர்கள்.
"Research students are of opinion that the Vihara (Indra Vihara), was built by the Thera Mahendra (Mahinda) at Kaveripoom-pattinam." (Mahendra becomes Mahinda in Pali).
It is obvious that Mahinda came from Tambapanni (Thamiraparuni), the Pandyan country in South India, to Ceylon. It is significant that the Mahavamsa says that Mahinda had preached the true doctrine in two places, "in the speech of the island...... (MHV Ch. XIV. v. 65).
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

The Wijayan Legend and The Aryan Myth 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 Ceylon considered it a pride to ally themselves with the Pandyan dynasty of South India. It is equally well known that in Tamil writings the Aryans are referred to often with contempt.
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 mot 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 definitions of Aryan ( ஆரியன் ).
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 India', p. 539)
Palaiya ( luopuu ) has the same meaning as "pandu" ( Lunar ( ) in Tamil, and means 'old' or 'ancient'. (usivG)
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 Madras. Madras is a recent city that came into prominence during the British period. Mada, in fact, means Madurai and not Madras which did not exist during this period. MHV. Ch. VIII, v. 7, v. 10. Sumitra the father of 'Panduvasudeva' is said to have married the daughter of the Mada king. Geiger in n. 1, below writes, "Madda-Sanskrit Madura now Madras". This is by

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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 (up Logisept) i.e., "old Madurai'. It was situated at a distance of about six miles south of the South-east of the modern town of Madurai."
The city referred to as "Mada", in the Mahavamsa is obviously Madurai, Mada being an abbreviation of the familiar designation Nan-Mada-k-kudal. Though the Mahavamsa says that the daughter of king Pandu of the Maddas reached Gonamuka near Mannar, on the second day, Dr. Mendis has taken considerable pains to show that, here, Mada or Madurai meant Muttra or Mathura on the banks of the Jumna, in the North of India.
Note, Gonamuka is the Prakritised form of the Tamil Kona Mukam (Gas Teppsb); which means 'a maritime district surrounded by salt marshes'. It is more than 1,500 miles from Mathura in North India, for any ship or ships to reach Gonamuka from the nearest sea-port that was available to the alleged "Pandu of Mathura"-"on the second day". Madura, the Pandyan Capital, on the banks of the Vaigai is less than 150 milles from Gonamuka.

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 Ceylon, for the lack of an accurate knowledge of the Geography of India. But the credibility of modern Buddhists in Ceylon, in not merely accepting but in elaborating with conviction, these tales of an early day, is puzzling. The Dipavamsa and the Mahavamsa have mentioned and mixed up such places as LALA, MAGADHA, WANGA, KALINGA, and SINHAPURA, and have found no difficulty in making the exile Vijaya and his followers who are said to have taken ship somewhere in the East Coast of India and landed at Suppara or Supparaka on the West Coast, and being driven away from there for their wicked and savage conduct, to disembark at Tambapanni by which name the Chronicles designate Lanka or Ceylon.
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 Bengal-(or was it Vengi or Vengadam, a Veddah Pandyan dependency on the Southern border of southern Andhra or Kalinga?) and that they landed at Sopara, a once famous port on the western sea board of the Andhra country. Driven away from there, they are said to have reached Tambapanni of the Asokan Inscription.
They did not either know or think it necessary to investigate whether the Tambapanni of the Asokan inscription did in fact mean Lanka.

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The Mahavamsa, however in making the king of Wanga marry a Kalinga Princess, gives a hint with regard to the persistent tradition in Ceylon that this particular band of early colonists hailed in fact from Kalinga or Andhra, an early Dravidian state, well known for its sea-faring activities and maritime trade.
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 Tammenna and not as Tambapanni. By the XIV century, Buddhist monks in Ceylon must have realised that Tambapanni was in fact Tamraparni in South India to which the Asokan edict had referred
Some Buddhist writers of our day claim that Sopara or Soparaka, was a seat of great Buddhist culture in early days ("fines 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 travelled through the air and landed in Lanka (Ceylon). It is now alleged by them that Mahinda took ship at the port of Sopara.
The tradition in South India, supported by the early Chinese Buddhist traveller Hiuen Tsang has been that Mahendra (Mahinda), had done missionary work in South India. He had probably crossed over from Tamraparni ruled over by the Pandyan King, to Ceylon, in a Tamil merchantman.
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 had 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 Plate XL ("Buddhist India', by Rhys Davids), where a map of India with the principal sites of the Buddhist period is found, no mention is made of Sopra. But on pages 60-61, Rhys Davids says

The Vijayan Legend and The Aryan Myth 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 Babylon, then a great mercantile Emporium."
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, 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 South India as the scene of action of the Lion and the Princess. Presumably behind this legend was the history of Sinhapura in the Southern portion of Kalinga." (ibid. p. 48).
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, Ch. I. *n
4. MHV. Ch. XIV, v. 15.
5. "KELANIYA", is from the Tamil (a teaf), KALANI meaning 'an agricultural tract', 'field', 'paddy field' etc. D. E. D. See 1141.

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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 Idian Period'. 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", Northern Ceylon was known as Nagadipa. Now, Nagadipa is the Sanskrit transliteration of the Tamil Serentivu (Serendib of the Greeks and the Arabs), or the island of the Cheras, a historic Tamil Kingdom closely associated with the Pandyas.
The Northern portion of the Island was, from the remotest times-under the rule of the Tamils with the famous pearl fisheries of Mannar on the West coast and Tablegam on the East coast under their control.
It was South Ceylon, that was known to early Tamil Sangam literature and referred to in the third Century B.C. cave inscriptions, as Izham (Ilam). It was ruled by petty Chieftains of the Nagas, a Dravidian tribes, till Vijaya appeared on the scene.
Vijaya himself was a Hindu and an adventurer probably from the Pandya-Andhra border known as Tiruvengadam, once a Veddah dependency of the Pandyan King. It will be noted that the Mahavamsa owritten for the edification of the pious', in attempting to synchronise the accession of Vijaya with the death of Gautama Buddha has created a good deal of chronological Confusion.
Regarding the character of Vijaya and his companions before their arrival in this Island, the Dipavamsa and the Mahavamsa give a lurid picture. The Mahavamsa is of opinion that his reformation was brought about only after his marriage with the South Indian Tamil bride.
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 at Anuradhapura. No reference is made to a single edifice for Buddha. To protect Vijaya and his men Vishnu is said to have tied threads on their arms.

The Vijayan Legend and The Aryan Myth 65
Though Vijaya had left no issue by his South Indian wife, Panduvasal 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 Cittal by Dighagamini, 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 Dighagamini's father or of his grandfather. But Pandukka Abhaya appears to have gathered to his side local leaders such as Cittarajah, probably a Naga, and Kharavela, a Yakka, to strengthen his precarious position.
The town of Anuradhapura was however, completed by Pandukka Abhaya, and he appointed an officer, a Nagara Guttika, apparently a Tamil officer, imported from the Pandyan Kingdom. It is the Pali-ised form of the Tamil "Nakaram", meaning a city (3554), and Katti-Karan, (i.e.) "a regulator or builder" (961).
He also built the tank called Abhaya 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 Devanamplya 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?

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Mutasiva had apparently married a local Naga Chieftain's daughter. Some of the sons of Mutasiva, along with "Devanamplya Tissa', had become Buddhists, as their names suggest. Devanampiya Tissa is referred to as having belonged to the Moriya clan a Dravidian tribe. 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 then-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 of 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 South Ceylon had become a convert to Buddhism justify the conclusion that the period was North Indian?
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, Oxford, 1961.

10.
NOTES AND REFERENCES
Dr. G. C. Mendis, 'Early History of Ceylon', p. 16; (1954 Edition).
L. A. Krishna Iyer and L. K. Balaratnam, "Anthropology in India, l961, pp. 195-196. "Chera or Sera is the Dravidian equivalent of the Nagas'.
E. H. Warnington, 'Commerce between the Roman Empire and India". The Embassy to Claudius from Ceylon in the first Century A.D., was from the Seres of North Ceylon, "perhaps merely to confirm the earlier embassy by the Tamilis". (p. ll9) 'Tamils control the North during the first two Centuries"; Ibid. p. 120. It will be noted that Wijaya paid tribute to the Pandyan king; and the mixed descendants of Panduvasa continued to rule till the Cholas took over. It follows that Ceylon in fact, was under Tamil control from the very beginning of recorded history.
Tamil Sangan work-Pattupattu (Pattinapalai), line 19l, "Ilam" (Izham).
In the third century B.C. cave inscriptions in Ceylon as well as in the Pandyan country, the language used is Tamil. Ceylon is referred to as 'Ilam", K. A. N. Sastri, "History of South India", p. 87.
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 the Dravidians."
Pu ja vali; 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.
Mahavamsa, Ch. WI, v. 47. Wijaya is said to have landed in Ceylon on the day Buddha attained Nirvana, i.e., in 483 B.C. Dip. Ch. IX, vv. 47-49: MHV, Ch. VI, vv. 39-42.
MHV. Ch. VII, vv. 72-74. Vijaya forsakes his evil ways after marrying a Tamil woman from the Pandyan country.

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11.
12.
l3.
l4.
15.
6.
17.
18.
9.
20.
2.
22.
S. J. Gunasegaraa - Selected Writings
Tennent" s "Ceylon", Wol. I, p. 340.
Tennent, Ibid. p. 340, n. I.
Dipavamsa, the earlier Chronicle refers to the King as
Panduvasa. Ch. X., v. 2. In the MHV composed two hun
dred years later, he is referred to as Panduvasudeva. B. C. Law remarks "Did the author of the Mahavamsa purposely change the name to Panduvasudeva mentioned in the Mahabharatha?' 'On the Chronicles of Ceylon", p. 50, 'Panduvasa means one from the Pandyan country". Ibid. 52. 'Panduka, has the same import'. (Ibid).
MHV. Ch. IX, vv. l5—21. Digha was apparently a local Gramani; Citta was the youngest of Panduvasa's children. "Cita' is an affectionate term in Tamil used for a 'small girl' or a young boy".
MHV. Ch. IX, vv. 26—27.
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'.
Ch. X, v. 104. Karavela was a Yakka Chieftain. Karavela does not stand for the Sinhalese 'dried fish", but rather for the Tamil 'Karuvalan". The Yakkas and Weddas seem to have adopted Dravidian names, (Kalu; Karu (ll75), both mean "black', in Tamil.)
Ibid.
MHW. Ch. X, v. 81.
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".
Dr. G. C. Mendis, Ibid. p. 15.
Dip. Ch. XVIII, vv. 49-54 B. C. Law, Ibid. p. 66, "but no inscription is found til 1 nov to confirm the truth of the battles fought by Dutthagamini 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.

APPENDILX III
TAMRAPARUN - TAMBAPANN - 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 India, and wrote a fabulous account of the south from hearsay reports of the Dravidian merchants of the eastern coasts of India who had visited Pataliputra. By "Taprobane", he was actually referring to Tambraparni (Skt.) in the extreme south of the Indian Peninsula, a portion of the Pandyan Tamil kingdom. Ceylon too owing to its proximity to the southern tip of India, was considered to be an extension of Tambraparni or Taprobane. It has been pointed out that the Tambapanni of the Asokan Edict, probably, referred, to the extreme south of India watered by the Tambaraparni river. (B. C. Law, "On The Chronicles of Ceylon", p. 60). Hence the alternative use of the name "Tambapanni" and "Lanka", to indicate Ceylon, found in the early Fall Chronicles of the Island.
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 Egypt is a well established fact. Reference to the "Cambridge History of India", will show that the words for rice, ginger, cinnamon, sandalwood and peacock known to the Egyptians, Hebrews and Greeks were all of Tamil origin.
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 Western Asia, Egypt and later with the Greek and Roman Empire." In his "History of South India", p. 76, Nilakanta Sastri writes,—"It has been pointed rightly that rice, peacock, sandalwood, every unknown ar, which was imported by sea to Babylon before the fiftheritury B.C., brought with it a Dravidian and not a Sanskri'ifesignation." Reference also may be made to B. Lalodiscoveries establishing "a significant link between the èñt Nubians of upper Egypt and the early Dravidians of Suth India" (Wide, report in the "Ceylon Observer", 25.5.62

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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 Ceylon (according to Warmington, ibid. p. 120), were largely due to the rivalry between the Pandyan and Chola Tamil kings, for the control of the Ceylon Pearl Fisheries.
The Mahavamsa does not refer to any "Sinhalese kings", as such sending an embassy to Egypt. Buddhism, however, was popular among the Tamils of South India and North Ceylon, during the early centuries of the Christian era, as is evidenced by the Tamil Buddhist Epic, "The Manimehkalai".
Notes and References
1. There was a time when the Gulf of Mannar did not exist and the southern most part of the Indian Continent i.e. Tambraparni or Tamraparuni took its name from the river crossing it, i.e., Tamraparuni. Just facing Ceylon, on the South Indian shore, runs the river.
2. KAMBAN (X C) in his Tamil Ramayanam wrote
"பொன் திணிந்த புனல் பெருகும் பொருநை யெனும் திருநதி.
"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 Gulf of Mannar, are the famous Pearl Fisheries.......
SINHAPURA
4. "The legend recorded by HIUEN TSANG mentions South India as the scene of action of the lion. Presumably behind the legend was the history of SINHAPURA on the Southern portion of Kalinga". (B. C. Law, "On the Chronicles of Ceylon", page 46).

The Vijayan Legend and The Aryan Myth 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", p. 49).
TAMBAPANN
6. In the appendix the origin of the word TAMBAPANNI has already been discussed. The explanations of the names SIHALA and TAMBAPANN as already suggested by me were probably later interpolations. The word SEHALA appears only once in the MAHAVIAMSA 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 Mahavansa fron which TURNOUR nade 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 Ceylon", Appendix I)
APPENDIX IV
MAHINDA
According to Dr. G. C. Mendis, 'no independent record of any kind outside of Ceylon supports the view that Mahinda was the son of Asoka, and he believes it to be a pure invention'.
(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 Devana rapiya Tissa .
"The Indian tradition is that Buddhist Missionaries led by Mahendra, a brother of Asoka, penetrated as far as Tamraparni river in the Pandyan kingdom of South India, the Tambapanni of the Mahavamsa." W (Prof. L. Mukherjee, "History of India', Hindu Period, p. 106)

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APPENDIX V
NAGAS OR SERES :
This Island in ancient times was known as Nagadipa or Serentivu. It has already been shown that the Seres or Nagas were an old Dravidian tribe.
In an inscription dated Eleventh Century A.D., at Mamalai-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 MamallaiPuram is found. It was signed by the following Nagas amongst the high officers of the Chola Tamil King......
Olinagan Madaiyan Alagiya Chola,
Amurnaddu Muvenda Velan,
Olinagan Chandra Sekaran,
Olinagan Narayanan,
Indupuravan Sanga-Nagan,
Uchan-Klawan 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 intermarried4.
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 Ceylon 'kings'.......
Khalla tanaga ..... 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)

The Wijayan Legend and The Aryan Myth 73
Mahallaka Naga 136 A.D. (grandson of Vasabha, a Lambakanna)
Kuhunna Naga OD O Oga 186 A.D. (brother of Batiya Tissa
Kudda or Kunca Naga . 188 A.D.
Siri Naga I an Oss 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 Ceylon belonged to the Naga tribe, Note the Tamil names KUDDA, (KUTT–'small') KUNCHA (KUNCHU–'small") in KUDDA or KUNCA NAGA).
Again, the Parathars, (Paravas), the ancestors of some of the older inhabitants of the maritime coast of Ceylon were a sea-faring people and belonged to the Naga tribe.
They were famous pear 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 ThenPandi-Nad (South Pandyan Tamil country). They were well fed on fish and flesh, and armed with bows they terrified their enemies by their dashing valouré.
The Nagas were skilled in many arts one of which was the art of weaving. The Nagas of the Eastern Coast of the Pandyan country during this early period produced, for export by the Tamil merchants, large quantities of cloths and muslins. The fine muslins manufactured by them fetched fabulous prices in foreign countries'.
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.
"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 South Ceylon, had not allowed his imagination to run riot in his Silalihini Sandesa (XV

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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 Vibushana Temple at Kelaniya.
1. V. Kanagasabhai-Tamils Eighteen Hundred Years Ago", p.44.
Mathurai-Kanchi. 140-144 (A Tamil Sangam work).
Mc. Crindles Ptolemy, p. 185; Kamagasabhai, ibid., p. 44.
Kanagasabhal, ibid. p. 44.
ibid. p. 44.
65 e
Mathurai-Kanchi, 140-144.
7. Kanagasabhai, ibid. p. 45.
8. Chiru-Parnartu-Padai, (96-99) (A Tamil Sangan work).
THE NAGASTAM AND ELU
The Nagas who lived in Ceylon before the "Vijayan invasion' of Southern Ceylon seem to have spoken the Tamil language. This old Tamil mixed with the speech of the YAKKAS and with the Prakrits of the Buddhist Monks of later centuries developed into the dialect known as Elu, spoken by the people of Ilam (IZHAM), the ancient name by which the Island was called by Tamils. In the CEYLON HISTORICAL QUARTERLY, Vol. I, No. 3, pp. 172-173, we are told the "Nagas for certain, living along a belt of country extending from Kelaniya as far as Nagadipa near Mannar must have migrated from South India long before the Vijaya invasion'.
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 NARRINA, KURUNTHOKAI, and AHA NANURU we come across the composition of Ilathu Poothanar ("ILATHU'-means "belonging" to Izham or Ceylon).
There were other early Ceylon poets such as Mudagagayar, Ila Nagar, Nilakanthaer referred as having had associations with the Tamil Sangam poets. ("TAMILAN ANTIQUARY", Vol. II, No. 1, p. 93).

MANMEKALA
S. J. GUNASEGARAM
Manimekalai is the heroine of the Buddhist Classic in Tamil entitled "Manimekalai' - the only epic of the type in the whole range of Buddhist literature. It is the composition of a Tamil Buddhist merchant known as Sattanar. The consensus of opinion among Tamil scholars is that the work belongs to the second century, the period following the Sangam classics.
The author was a friend of Ilanko (the young Prince), a younger brother of Senguttuvan, the king associated with the dedication of the temple to Pattini, or Kannakai (Kannaki)-the chaste. Ilanko was the illustrious author of Silappathikaram (The Epic of the Anklet), and these two Tamil classics have often been referred to as "Twin Epics'.
C. R. Reddy in his foreward to 'Dravidian India', by T. R. Sesha Iyengar, calls Manimekalai a "supreme pearl of Dravidian poesy'. 'The investigation and enquiry into Tamil literary tradition' says Krishnaswamy Iyangar, "leads to the conclusion that it is a work of classic excellence in Tamil literature and may be regarded as a Sangam work in that sense'. 2
The same scholar refers to it as a "Tamil Treatise on Buddhist Logic". Prof. S. Vaiyapuri Pillai refers to it as 'this great classic". M. D. Raghavan ("Times of Ceylon', 1.5.58), writing on the contribution of Tamils to religious system of the Island (Ceylon) says, "It will always remain a sense of pride to us that the greatest if not the only classical epic of Theravada Buddhism exists in the Tamil language. The poetry of Manimekalai (2nd century A.D.) remains one of the finest jewels of Tamil poetry."
In contrast Sinhalese writers of recent times, either because their knowledge of Tamil literature is scanty or because they have failed to note the opinions of scholars who rank it high among the Tamil classics, refer to it merely as a 'poem'. Dr. Malalasekera alludes to the conflict between the Naga kings found in the "Tamil poem Manimekalai', mentioned in the Mahavamsa (6th century).
While the Mahavamsa places the scene of the battle at Nagadipa, the earlier chronicle, "The Dipavamsa" (4th C.), says, that the battle was fought in Tambapanni,6 i.e., the North of Ceylon. The Manimekalai gives the name of the scene as Manipallavam, identified by Rajanayagam Mudaliar as North Ceylon. 7

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Dr. Paranavitane refers to Manimekalai as 'a Tamil poem, a work attributed to the second century of the Christian era', and adds that the goddess Manimekalai after whom the heroine of the work is named seems to have been a patron saint of the sea faring people of the Tamil land who professed the Buddhist faith. The same writer refers to a non-canonical Pali work which "contains a very old legend of South Indian origin. The work states that one of the six stupas had been built by Tamil merchants."
Dr. Paranavitane quotes Rajavalia (which he calls "a Sinhalese historical work of the 17th century) where we are told that she would be mother of Duttugemunu ("Vihara-Devi' now 'Vihara Maha-Devi'), who had been offered by her father as a sacrifice to appease the sea-gods. She is said to have been brought by the goddess Manimekalai across the sea to Magama, where she found her future husband. What Dr. Paranavitane describes as 'a Sinhalese historical work", Prof. Vaiyapuri Pillai says, "is not of any historical value and cannot be relied upon'. Dr. Mendis in his Early History of Ceylon has expressed a similar opinion.
Two facts, however, emerge from these references. The tradition accepted in Ceylon that the goddess Manimekalai was the patron saint of early Tamil merchants, points to a very early period in the history of Ceylon during which Tamil Buddhist influence had reached the Island.
The Dipavamsa (4th C.) and the Mahavamsa (6th C.), the Pali Buddhist Chronicles of Ceylon, refer to the conflict between two Naga Princes of North Ceylon for the ownership of the Island. The quarrel is said to have been settled by Buddha himself. The two references, though there are differences in detail, are found in the Manimekalai. It is unlikely that the Tamil author of Manimekalai could have had access to the Pali Chronicles of Ceylon composed and preserved in some remote Vihara in the Island. Unless and until an earlier common source for the story could be cited, the Manimekalai should be assigned to a date earlier than that of the Mahavamsa and the Dipavamsa.
The consensus of opinion among students of Tamil literature has been that the classic Manimekalai belongs to the 2nd century A.D., though mot a Sangam work. Prof. Waiyapuri Pillal, a fellow worker with K. A. Nilakanta Sastri, (a distinguished historian and South Indian Sanskritist who has striven to establish the priority and supremacy of Sanskrit literary influences in the South), has challenged the date attributed to Manimekalai and post dates it. He adduces a number of arguments to show

Manimekalai 77
that the Manimekalai and the connected classic Silappathikaram are assignable to the 8th century, but accepts that the former was an earlier composition.
As already indicated below, Prof. Vaiyapuri Pillai rejects the tradition recorded in the Sinhalese Chronicle Rajavalia. Although unreliable and comparitively recent, the Rajavali records a persistent tradition in Ceylon regarding the introduction of Pattini (Kannaki) worship to Ceylon by Gajabahu I, in the 2nd century A.D. There is clear mention in the Silappathikaram that Gajabahu was present at the dedication of the temple to Pattini by Cheran Senguttuvan.' That Cheran Senguttuvan was an eminent king of the Sangam age is well known.
Prof. Vaiyapuri Pillai holds that the most important statement from a historical standpoint that Gajabahu of Ceylon was present at Senguttuvan's court stands singularly uncorroborated. He admits however that Manimekalai corroborates the statement in the Silappathikaram that it was at Senguttuvan's capital, the consecration of Kannaki's temple took place; but doubts that Gajabahu was present at the ceremony because the Manimekalai does not mention Gajabahu.
Neither Manimekalai nor Silappathikaram is a historical work. The poet chooses incidents that are relevent to his thesis. That the author of the Manimekalai has failed to corroborate its 'twin epic" about the presence of Gajabahu I of Ceylon at Senguttuvan's Court does not prove Prof. Vaiyapuri Pillai's case, although such corroboration would have been helpful. But it has been pointed out that both the works agree that the consecration was at the capital of Cheran Senguttuvan who is known to have ruled in the 2nd century A.D.
Again that Paranar, one of the illustrious poets of the Tamil Sangarn age, has failed to mention in his poem on Senguttuvan anything about the installation of Kannaki as deity or about Ilanko being Senguttuvan's brother or about Gajabahushould not be taken as a serious argument to support the Professor's case. Not all the works of Paranar and of the Sangan age have come down to us. It depends, moreover, what religious views Paranar held for him to consider the dedication of the temple of Kannaki as an important event. Ilanko (which merely means the young Prince) himself might have been too young to have merited notice by Paranar. It is admitted that both Manimekalai and Ilanko's works are post Sangam classics.
The Professor's most unconvincing of all arguments from silence is his emphasis on the fact that the Mahavamsa has

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failed to state anything about Gajabahu's attendance at the consecration ceremony, at the Chola capital or of the introduction of Pattini (Kannaki) worship to Ceylon.
Of the Mahavamsa it has been pointed out that "not what is said but what is unsaid is its besetting difficulty". One does not expect a monkish chroniclar bent on "the edification of the pious' Buddhists to refer to an illustrious king of Anuradhapura introducing a Hindu Cult. It is well known that Gajabahu I, if not a Hindu, was without doubt a king with Hindu leanings. This probably accounts for the scant attention paid to the reign of this king in the pious Buddhist romance.
The fact appears to be that Prof. Vaiyapuri Pillai finds support in the statement made by Prof. Jacobi to the effect the logic of Manimekalai is more or less a copy of Nyayapravesa of Dignaga attributed to the 4th century A.D.
Prof. Vaiyapuri Pillai in a note to his appendix in the History of Tamil language and literature, p. 189, says:
"It is well known that the author of the Manimekalal is indebted for this section to Dignaga's Nyayapravesa..... Professor Jacobi renders it very probable that Dignaga, perhaps even Dharmakirti, was known to this classic in Tamil."
Prof. Vaiyapuri Pillai seems to have ignored the fact that long ago Dr. S. Krishnaswamy yangar, a recognised authority on the Manimekalai, had convincingly rebutted Prof. Jacobi's assumption that the Buddhist logic of Manimekalai is derived from that of Dignaga's Nyayapravesa. He has stated in clear terms that, "We have good reason for regarding Manimekalai as a work anterior to Dignaga'.13
Discussing the "clear cut, succint statement, found in the Manimekalai of the main Buddhist theory of the "The four truths", "The twelve Nidanas', and the means of getting to the correct knowledge, which ultimately would put an end to "Being". Dr. S. Krishnaswamy Iyangar says, "There is nothing that may be regarded as referring to any form of Mahayana Buddhism, particularly the Sunyavada as formulated by Nagarjuna. One way of interpreting this silence would be that Nagarjuna's teaching as such of the Sunyavada had not yet travelled to the Tamil country to be mentioned in connection with the orthodox teaching of Buddhism or to be condemned as orthodox"14
Again lyangar points out that in Chapter XXX of Manimekalai 'the soul referred seems clearly to be to the

Manimekalai 79
individual soul and not to the universal soul". He adds, "These points support the view to that which we were led in our study of the previous book, and thus make the work clear one of a date anterior to Dignaga and not posterior."o
Dr. S. Krishnaswamy Iyangar clinches his argument by reference to the Chola rule at Kanchi. "Kanchi is referred to as under the rule of the Cholas yet, and the person actually mentioned as holding rule at the time was the younger brother of the Chola ruler for the time being. Against this Viceroyalty an invasion was undertaken by the united armies of the Cheras and the Pandyas which left the Chera capital Wanji impelled by earth hunger and nothing else, and attacked the Viceroyalty. The united armies were defeated by the princely viceroy of the Cholas who presented to the elder brother, the monarch, as spoils of war, the umbrellas that he captured on the field of battle. This specific historical incident which is described with all the precision of a historical statement in the work must decide the question along with the other historical matter, to which we have already adverted. No princely viceroy of the Chola was possible in Kanchi after A.D. 300, from which period we have a continuous succession of Pallava rulers holding Sway in the region. Once the Pallavas had established their position in Kanchi, their neighbours in the west and the north had become others than the Cheras. From comparatively early times, certainly during the 5th century, the immediate neighbours to the west were the Gangas, and little farther to the west by north were the Kadambas, over both of whom the Pallavas claimed suzerainty readily recognized by the other parties. This position is not reflected in the Manimekalai or Silappathikaram. Whereas that which we find actually and definitely stated is very much more a reflection of what is derivable from purely Sangam literature so called. This general position together with the specific datum of the contemporaneity of the authors to Senguttuvan Chera must have the decisive force. Other grounds leading to a similar conclusion will be found in our other works, "The Augustan Age of Tamil Literature' (Ancient India, chapter xiv), The Beginnings of South Indian History', and, "The Contributions of South India to Indian Culture'. The age of the Sangam must be anterior to that of the Pallavas and the age of the Manimekalai and Silappathikaram, if not actually referable as the works of the Sangam as such, certainly is referable to the period in the course of the activity of the Sangam."
The Manimekalai is an exposition of Hinayana Buddhism. Hinayana as distinct from Mahayana, is a Southern school an earlier school of Buddhism than Mahayana.

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The Ceylon tradition that Buddhaghosa, in the 5th century, had to come over to the Island from the Tamil country in South India to write the commentaries on the earlier Pali texts on Hinayana into pure Magadhi is an indication that in the 5th century itself Mahayana had become dominant in South India. This tendency finds further support in the introduction of a form of Mahayanist teaching into Ceylon (the doctrine referred as the Vaituliyan heresy) in the previous century, by the Chola monkSanghamitta, the friend of Mahasena, king of Anuradhapura.
Moreover the reference in Manimekalai to the popularity of Buddhism in Javakam indicates that Manimekalai had been written long before Mahayanism became the dominant form of Buddhism under the Sailendra Empire, in islands such as Java and Sumatra.
Sir R. Winstedt attests to the fact that the Buddhist story of Manimekalai left by the Tamil merchants' Sumatran folklore had been retold in the Malay Peninsula and written down in modern times.
Again it has been shown that the earlier Sangam works as well as Manimekalai and Silappathikaram make no references to the Pallavas who ruled at Kanchi from 325 A.D.19 But all the references in the Manimekalai are to the earlier Chola kings such as Nalankilli and Ilankilli. Prof. Vaiyapuri Pillai apparently ignores these evidences.
NOTE
For a full discussion of the question of the date of Manimekalai, reference to Prof. Vaiyapuri Pillai's "History of Tamil literature', p. 142, may be made. His arguments to give it a comparatively late date had been met by Dr. S. Krishnaswamy Iyangar in his introduction to his "Manimekalai in its Historical Setting', published by the South India Saiva Siddhanta Publishing Society, Madras.
The Influence of Manimekalai and Silappathikaram on Sinhalese Literature:
Reference may be made to Dr. Godakumbura's 'Sinhalese Literature', pages 279-288, to form some idea of the Tamil literary and religious sources which had inspired Sinhalese literature after the dethronement of Pali as the vehicle of expression of foreign Buddhist monks.

Manimekalai 81
Dr. Godakumbura remarks that "after the 16th century, when few could read the Dharma in its original Pali or even comprehend the compendiums written in Sinhalese", Vanijasuriya wrote the Devadath Kathaya in Sinhalese verse.
Commenting on the very great popularity of the story of Pattini in Sinhalese villages, Dr. Godakumbura writes:
"Literature, dealing with Pattini and the origin of the worship, is very large, and most of it has come from Tamil sources. The Silappathikaram and Manimekalai are the two main classics dealing with the story of Kannaki and Kovalan......
"It is quite possible that some popular poems existed in Tamil and these and not the classics were the sources of the numerous ballads about the Goddess."
Dr. Godakumbura also tells us that Wyanthamala by Tisimahla, "gives a brief description of the Chola king in the classical style and that the author's description of the dancing of Madavi (the mother of Manimekalai), "is one of the finest in the whole field of Sinhalese poetry".
(Pattini-Kannaki-the heroine of Silappathikaram was the wife of Kovalan and Madavi was Kovalan's lover. Manimekalai, the heroine of "Manianekalai', was the daughter of Madavi by Kovalan).
Dr. Godakumbura then gives a fairly comprehensive list of Sinhalese writings based on the story of Slappathikaram and of deities popular among the Tamils deities such as the God of Kataragama (Murugan), Ganesha, the brother of Murugan, and Vishnu-all attributed to stories from Tamil sources.

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11.
12.
13.
14.
15.
16.
7.
8.
19.
REFERENCES
"Dravidian India', by Sesha Iyengar, Luzac & Co., London.
'Manimekalai in its Historical Setting', by Dr. S. Krishnaswamy Iyangar, Preface p. VIII.
'History of Tamil Language and Literature', by S. Waiyapuri Pillai, p. 155.
"Wamsattha Pakkasini " , Commentary on the Mahavansa, by Dr. G. P. Malallasekera, Wol. i. Int. p. LXXVI.
Mahavannsa, Ch. l, V. 47.
Dipavamsa. Ch. ii. W. 3.
"Ancient Jaffna', p. 26.
C. L. R. , Wol. l, No. l. Jan 1931 .
Waiyapuri Pillai, ibid, n. p. 144.
'The Early History of Ceylon, Dr. G. C. Mendis, 1954 Edition, p. 25.
Waiyapuri Pillai, ibid., pp. 139-155.
Culevansa I, Int., p. W.
Krishnaswamy Iyangar, ibid. Int. p. XXVIII.
Ibid. Int. pp. XXVIII-XXIX.
Ibid. Int., pp. XXVIII-XXIX.
Ibid. Int. pp. XXVIII-XXIX.
MHV. Ch. XXXVII, vv. 2-5.
"Malaya - A Cultural History”, by Sir Richard
Winstedt, p. 39.
"Buddhisa and Tagil', ibid. p. 200.

ELARA (EILALAN) AND THE CHRONICLES OF CEYLON
There are two sets of Chronicles on which the historians of Ceylon have placed their reliance for the study of the Island's story. The Dipavamsa (IV A.D.) the Mahavamsa (VI A.D.) and the Cullavamsa (XIII A.D.) were written in Pali, while the later chronicles the Pujavali (XIII A.D.) the Rajaratnakara (XVI A.D.) and the Rajavali (XVIII A.D.), generally considered to be less reliable as historical documents than even the earlier Pali chronicles-were written in a language that might be described as Sinhalese-Prakrit.
These are really a collection of legends and traditions embellished by the prejudices of their priestly compilers. The Mahavamsa itself was an elaboration of the earlier Dipavamsa and assumes the form of a romance enlarged by poetic fancies of the author and the addition of miracles and military campaigns unknown to the Dipavamsa; while, of the Dipavamsa, the verdict has been that "in the absence of any sources, the last named work (i.e. the Dipavamsa) must be considered as standing unsupported on its own faltering feet". The CULAVAMSA (KULAWAMSA) a continuation of the Mahavamsa commenced in the XIII century, and was probably written by a Chola (Tamil) monk called Dharmakirti.
The Pali, in which the older chronicles were written, is not likely to have been understood by the monks of a later day, and the text itself consisted of a single copy belonging to a period not earlier than two centuries ago. It had remained a closed book to the Sinhalese. The Sinhalese Prakrit of the later Chronicles itself appears to have been something mysterious to the Sinhalese of the period in which they were compiled. It was left to an Englishman (TURNOUR) to study Pali in the absence of any Pali Dictionary being available, and to present to the Sinhalese and to the world the existence of such a record of the island from the stand-point of the early Buddhist priesthood. It was after Turnour's translation of the Mahavamsa that the first Sinhalese translation of the Mahavamsa appeared.
From the nature of the accounts given in the Pali Chronicles about Elara, the great Tamil ruler of the second century B.C., we could gauge the degree of reliance that could be placed on them and the part played by the personal bias of the compilers. V

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莺 The Dipavamsa, the earliest Pali Chronicle on which the later Mahavamsa written in Pali was based gives the following account of Elara, his predecessors and of Duttugemunu, who becomes the hero of the Mahavamsa.
Ch. XVIII: 47. The Damilas Sena and Guttaka, capturing Sura Tissa ruled righteously for twentytwo years.
48. Prince Asela, the son of Mutasiva, killing Sena and Guttaka, ruled for ten years.
49. The Prince named Elara killing Asela by name ruled righteously for forty-four years.
50. Avoiding the paths of desire, hatred, fear, and delusion he ruled righteously being incomparable.
51. There was no rainfall during winter, summer and rainy seasons; cloud always rained there was rainfall for seven weeks.
52. There were three cases (which) the king decided cloud rained during the night and there was no rainfall during the day.
53. & 54. The Prince named Abhaya was the son of Kakavanna, who was surrounded by ten warriors. Kandula was his elephant there. Killing 32 kings alone, continuing the family, the Prince ruled for twenty years. Here Abhaya (vv. 53,54) was no other than Duttugemunu.
It will be noted that nothing is said here of a war between Elara and Duttugemunu, mor is it stated that Duttugemunu killed Elara, although other killers and killings are specified.
Now let us turn to the account in the Mahavamsa composed in the sixth century, two centuries later than the Dipavamsa. The only known source from which the author of the Mahavamsa could have obtained his material was the Dipavamsa. Although the Mahavamsa is in fact a mere elaboration of the Dipavamsa, the priestly author of Mahavamsa appears to have used his imagination to make Duttugemunu the Saviour of Buddhism in the island, realising that the greatest

Elara (Elalan), and The Chronicles of Ceylon 85
threat to a Buddhist Priesthood which had entrenched itself in the central kingdom of the island came from the Saiva Tamil kings and their people.
Of Elara, the Mahavamsa gives the following picture:-
"A Danila of noble descent, named Elara, who came hither from the Cola country to seize on the kingdom, ruled when he had overpowered king Asela, forty-four years, with even justice towards friend and foe, on occasions of disputes at law.” (MHV. Ch XXI vv. 13-14).
It then relates the story of the bell and the cow, the snake and the bird, the old woman and her rain-drenched rice to illustrate the Tamil king's sense of justice not only towards his subjects but to animals and birds alike, and his deep, piety and love of the poor. Elara is mentioned as having sacrificed his own son in meting out justice to the cow that was deprived of its calf. These were in fact the elaboration of the three cases the earlier chronicle states Elara had decided. The Mahavamsa emphasises Elara's tolerence and the great respect he showed towards Buddhism, its places of worship and its priesthood by describing the action taken by the king, when accidentally the yoke of the wagon in which he was travelling had caused some minor damage to a Thupa. He is said to have alighted from his wagon and flung himself on the road with the words, "Sever my head also (from the trunk) with the wheel". When his ministers told him that it was not necessary to undergo such penance, he is said to have given fifteen hundred kahapanas to compensate for the fifteen stones damaged. The Mahavamsa concludes its account of the character and rule of Elara in the following words:-
"Only because he freed himself from the guilt of walking in the path of evil did this (nonarch), though he had not put aside false beliefs, gain such marvellous power."
The Dipavamsa makes no mention whatever of a war between Duttugen unu and Elara mor does it state that the latter was killed by Duttugemunu in single combat (an elaboration which appears to have been added by the author of the Mahavamsa for the edification of the pious). In the delineation of the character and greatness of Elara, however, both the Chronicles, agree
Now let us turn to the 'Sinhalese" chronicles, Pujavali (XIII C) and the Rajaratnakara (XVII C) and the Rajavali (XVIII C). It is not likely that these writers had read either the Dipavamsa or the Mahavamsa for the simple reason that they

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were written in Pali and no translations of them were available in Sinhalese till the XX century and that it was only after an Englishman had translated the Mahavamsa into English that the English educated Sinhalese came to read about its contents. The names of the kings of Ceylon, the order and the details of their activities in later Sinhalese Chronicles do not always agree with those found in the earlier Pali Chronicles.
The writers of the Sinhalese chronicles had probably heard by word of mouth of a war between the Tamil Saivite king Elara and Duttugemunu whom the Buddhist priesthood had traditionally held to be an early champion of Buddhism. These Sinhalese chroniclers, themselves priests, give a totally different picture of Elara. They represent him as a desecrator of Buddhist monuments and a destroyer of Buddhist temples.
The author of the Mahavamsa, without doing any violence to the character of Elara as represented in the earlier Chronicle, the Dipavamsa, guilds his hero, Duttugemunu with a fabulous account of a long and glorious campaign against the Tamil king-a campaign about which the Dipavamsa was unaware. When it is remembered that the Dipavamsa was a pious work which the king, Dhatusena caused to be annually read out in an assembly of the Priesthood before the Mahavamsa came to be composed, it is understandable how an account of such a glorious religious war of liberation attributed to Duttugemunu by the later chronicle could have been omitted. The inference is inescapable that already in the days of Mahanama there had arisen a growing fear among the Buddhist priesthood that Saivaism represented by the Tamil kings might once again become triumphant. A prophylactic against such a contingency was necessary, and this could be most effectively achieved by making a priest-sponsored supporter of the Buddhist cause a hero.
It has been pointed out that in the early inscriptions available no reference whatever is made either to Duttugem unu or to Devanampiya Tissa the two heroes of the Mahavamsa.
"None of the names by which the early kings are introduced in the inscriptions is identical with that which occurs in the chronicles. The identifications so far suggested are tentative" and "The two heroes-Devanampiya Tissa and Duttugemunu are still missed in them" says B. C. Law, the greatest living authority on the Pali Chronicles of Ceylon.
In fact the names of the kings of Ceylon have been so twisted by the various monks who used either Pall or other forms of the Prakrit in their works. The same king is alluded

Elara (Elalan) and The Chronicles of Ceylon 87
to by different names, and accepted Dravidian names in particular have become completely distorted. This fact may be checked by a reference either to the alternative names found in the list of kings given by Dr. G. C. Mendis in his "Early History of Ceylon' or to the earlier Pali chronicles rather than to the more recent Sinhalese traditional histories such as the Pujavali or Rajaratnakara.
The latter Sinhalese chronicles which are written in Prakritised Sinhalese were composed at a time when, with the advent of the Europeans, a sense of incipient nationalism took an anti-Tamil orientation. The authors of these chronicles, without any foundation for their views, have ascribed to the Tamil Elalan (Elara) deliberate acts of sacrilage insinuating that the decay of Buddhism as well as that of the Sinhalese race, language, and literature was brought about by the Tamilsa consolation for the bankruptcy of the two thousand years of culture to which frequent allusion is made by them.
In order to assess correctly the causes which led to the decay of the early culture of Ceylon the student has to take the following facts into consideration:-
1. The culture of Ceylon was at all times one that might be termed an 'official culture', a culture that was brought along with the kings and their followers who ruled at Andhradhapura. When the flow of artists and skilled workers from South India ceased, there were no indigenous group of trained men who could fill the breach.
2. Parakramabahu the Great (a Pandyan himself) for the first time (XII century) made a conscious effort to build up a Ceylonese Nation. But even he found it necessary to bring in Tamil artificers to construct the buildings in Polonnaruwa and to repair those at Andhradhapura.
3. The ascertained ineptitude of the Sinhalese to bear arms obliged the kings to depend on mercenaries from South India. These were for the most part from the three organised Tamil States—the Pandyas, Cholas and Cheras (Keralas) and were no doubt provided by the rulers of these states who took the side of one or the other of the contending sub-kings of the island.
4. The lack of interest taken by the native Sinhalese in matters pertaining to the sea and in sea-faring and naval activities made the country at all times dependent on South Indian seamen for the protection of the coasts of Ceylon.
ん

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88 S. J. Gunasegara - Selected Writings
5. The multitudes of those who were attracted to a life of indolent devotion by joining the ranks of a decadent priesthood, became so excessive that the country became impoverished. Time and money which should have been directed towards the development of the country had to be devoted to the building of innumerable numbers of viharas and dagobas and to feed a large section of a non productive population.
6. The tanks and fields, which were the main suport of the kings and their armies and a large body of priests and monks, were damaged frequently either by wars between rival kings of the island supported by their sponsors in the Chola or the Pandyan country or through natural forces as well as sheer neglect. Repairs to these tanks and the maintenance of irrigation and cultivation could not be effected without the aid of Indian engineers and specially trained men from the Tamil country. Tennent tells us in 1850 that during his time the services of Tamils had to be obtained for repairing tanks in the North Central Province.
7. Hinayana Buddhism was at all times opposed to Art and Music together with every other embellishment of worldly life.
8. It was during the period of the BAHUS beginning from about the time of Parakramabahu I, the Pandyan, in the twelfth century, that an attempt was made to develop an indigenous literature. This began at first in the form of translations from Pali religious works. The result was the growth of a new language which might be termed Sinhalese-Prakrit as removed from the original Elu, as Telugu was, for instance, from Tamil. This literature had to look for themes to Hindu lore and Tamil literature for its inspiration.

l4.
15.
16.
17.
8.
9.
20.
21.
NOTES
Journal of the Pali Text Society, 1908, p. 1.
B. C. Law, "On the Chronicles of Ceylon', p. 3.
"Annals of the Ceylon Civil Service", J. R. Toussaint, pp. 69-70
Mahavansa, Ch. XXIII, vv. 5-18,
ibid., vv. 19-20. ibid. v. 33–37.
ibid. v.v. 21-26.
ibid. v. 34.
Tennent "Ceylon', p. 353.
B. C. Law, ibid. p. 15.
ibid. p. 65.
ibid. p. 65.
Dr. G. C. Mendis, "Early History of Ceylon', 1954 Ed. vide List of Kings.
There was for instance a special class of skilled workmen the OTTAR who attended to the repairs and digging of tanks.
Tennent, vol. 1, p. 408, p. 468.
ibid. p. 498.
ibid., p. 498, vol. II, p. l52.
ibid. vol. I, p. 348.
ibid., vol. II, p. 543.
"The Art of Indian Asia", p. 232, Edited by Heinrich Zimmer.
Godakumbura ”Sinhalese Literature”, pp. 281 -287.

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TAM, KINGS IN EARLY CEYLON
A Sinhalese correspondent in the "Daily Mirror' of 7.5.62, takes the following quotation from the Dipavamsa, a IV century Pali Chronicle of Ceylon, to prove that the early kings of Ceylon who were not Tamils were Sinhalese.
"The Damitas (Tamils) Sena and Guttaka capturing Sura Tissa (Singalese) ruled righteously for 22 years." 1
(Note: Sura Tissa is said to have been a king in the 3rd century B.C. He was the brother of Devanampiya Tissa and the son of Mutasiva. Mutasiva in turn was the son of Pandukhabhaya who was a descendant of Panduvasa. The last name appears in an altered form as Panduvasudeva in the Mahavamsa, the later Pali Chronicle.)2
The original Pali text as well as its translation by B. C. Law may be consulted. The word Damilas is not indicated within brackets as "Tamils". Nor is Sura Tissa stated to be a 'Sinhalese" within brackets, as this Sinhalese correspondent has done in his quotation of the text.
Of course every one knows that Damilas is the Pali form of the word "Tamils', but Sura Tissa is the name of a person and he is not described as a 'Sinhalese'. He was in fact, as already indicated, the son of Mutasiva and a brother of Mahasiva, both descendants of Panduvasa and Pandukabhaya. Panduvasa (a dweller of Pandya, the Tamil kingdom in South India) had succeeded Vijaya, after a brief interregnum, following Vijaya's death: Pandukabhaya, a local Naga who formed an illicit marriage with Chitta, the younger daughter of Panduvasa in the teeth of opposition from her uncle came to power with the help of Yakka chiefs in Kerala 5 and so did Mutasiva, his son, who became the father of Devanampiya Tissa, Uttiya, Mahasiva and Sura Tissa.
As the names Panduvasa, Abhaya (Apaian or Appiah)6 Mutasiva and Mahasiva suggest, these kings were Hindus (Saivites) and Tamils. It is significant, as pointed out by B. C. Law, that the names of Devanampiya Tissa and Duttugemunu, the two alleged Buddhist heroes of the later Mahavamsa, are not found in the early inscriptions so far discovered in Ceylon. 7
Sura Tissa was followed by Sena and Guttaka, (Tamils who came directly from the Tamil country in South India). ASELA,

Tamil Kings in Early Ceylon 91
another son of Mahasiva succeeded them, and the great Elara followed. The difference between the earlier kings ending with ASELA, on the one hand, and Sena, Guttaka and Elara on the other was that the former were Pandyan Tamils who had founded a dynasty in Ceylon, and the latter were Chola Tamils.
The Dipavamsa, a priestly Chronicle written in "atrocious Pali', was discovered in Burma. The Mahavamsa, the other Pali. Chronicle, described as an "Epic Poem "9 was found by Turnour, an English Civil Servant in about 1826, in a Vihara near Tangalle and the Tika, a Pali commentary ascribed to the xiifc.lib, was discovered by him in a remote Vihara in Sabaragamuwa. These ola manuscripts un-understood even by the priests of the time, had to be unravelled, and the Mahavamsa translated into English, after much research and study, by the young English Civil Servant. Dr. G. C. Mendis states that the age of the Mahavansa Manuscript, written on ola leaves, is perhaps not more than two hundred years. It was through the English translation of the Mahavamsa executed through the labours and scholarship of an Englishman that the English educated Sinhalese laymen of the XIX C, first came to know the contents of the Chronicle. A Sinhalese translation followed later.
Much has been made of the word Sihala used in a single instance both in the Dipavamsa and the Mahavamsa, in an effort to associate the Island with the alleged lion race to which Vijaya is said to have belonged. How did this strained explanation arise, when elsewhere in these texts the Island is referred to as either Lanka, Tambapanni or Nagadipa and never as Shala.
This is what B. C. Law says referring to the authors of these Chronicles
"They offer a cheap fantastic explanation for the origin of the name of the Island-Sinhala because of Vijaya's father Sihabahu since he had slain the lion.....". The probability is that this 'fantastic explanation' is the result of an interpolation crudely effected during the period the Tika was composed (circa XIII C).' Besides this single ola manuscript "not more than 200 years old") we have no other copies to check the authenticity of its contents.
Tamil Kings - Usurpers
The same Sinhalese correspondents tell us
"The usurpers as Damilas (Tamils) referred to by the authors obviously make one infer that the other kings", (meaning

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92 S. J. Gunasegara - Selected Writings
kings such as Asela, Sura Tissa etc., as distinct from Sena, Guttaka), "were Sinhalese kings."
The word usurper means "one who assumes a throne wrongfully". A usurper need not necessarily be a member of a particular race Subbha, the porter, Dharmasena, an ex-Andhrite Kasyappa, a Kanarese, and several other kings of the Island, were usurpers. In fact, we know that of the fifty-one kings of the Mahavamsa period, nineteen were put to death by other aspirants to the throne.lo
And still, nowhere in the Dipavamsa, for instance, is it stated, as this Sinhalese "historian" suggests, that Sena, Guttaka and Elara (particularised as Damias), were usurpers.
Here is what we read in the Dipavamsa about themCh. XVIII, vv. 47-50.
v. 47. "The Damilas, Sena and Guttaka, capturing Sura Tissa, ruled righteously for twenty-two years."
v. 48. "Prince Asela, son of Mutasiva, killing Sena and Guttaka ruled for ten years."
v. 49. "The Prince named Elara killing Asela ruled righteously for forty-four years."
v. 50. "Avoiding the paths of desire, hatred, fear and delusion, he ruled righteously being incomparable."
Curiously enough the Dipavamsa, the earlier of the two old Pali Chronicles, makes no mention of a war between Elara and Duttugemunu, (a tale apparently fabricated to counteract the Saiva revival that was fast spreading through the Tamil country during this period). The graphically and romantically described campaigns occupying a large section of the Mahavamsa were written two centuries later than the Dipavamsa, and about 900 years after the time of Elara. It was evidently invented for the edification of the pious in Ceylon and to strengthen and confirm the common people in their new faith. The hero of these apparently fictitious campaigns, is depicted, at the same time, as the slave of the Buddhist priesthood in the Island.6
There are more reasons to infer that Mutasiva, Mahasiva, Asela and Sura Tissa (and incidentally Devanampiya Tissa) were of Tamil descent and were Hindus (Saivites). That is why Tennent holds that "the rule of the Tamils, although averse to Buddhism, was characterised by justice and impartiality and that

Tamil Kings in Early Ceylon 93.
the people recognised their relationship to the legitimate sovereigns of the Island". (Tennent's 'Ceylon", Vol. I, p. 296).
Why abuse the good old Tamil Kings when our Sinhalese brethren, who lay exclusive claim to this Island, have a feeble case to support their make-belief?
Early Dravidians
The same Sinhalese correspondent, a budding local "historian', gives us a summary of what he alleges to be stated in the 1922 Edition of the "Cambridge History of India'. He refrains from quoting from his source. Although this Edition was published 40 years ago, and much water has flowed under the bridge of History, Archaeology and Philology, his summary does not appear to reflect the views of the Cambridge Historians of India who say
(a) "The oldest stratum of pre-Dravidian blood probably belonged to Savages, termed by ancient (Tamil) poets Villavar (bowmen) and Minas (fishes)", ibid. p. 539. This has been interpreted by the Sinhala 'historian' to mean that "the present Dravidians are the results of pre-Dravidians, a race of low culture mixing with the proto-Dravidians-a race of high culture ......". He is apparently not aware that "pre-Dravidians' means, an earlier race other than Dravidians, and that proto-Dravidians means, 'original', 'chief", "primitive' Dravidians or "Dravidians of the first period of formation of growth".
It is this kind of knowledge that passes for history in Ceylon and is dished out as the authentic story of the peoples and the culture of Ceylon. The Cambridge History continues -
(b) "The Tamils...... formed the three kingdoms of the Pandya, Chola, Chera, where the ruling element was the land tilling classes, the Vellalas." (ibid. p. 539).
(c) "The Pandyans claimed descent from a tribe styled Marar....." (ibid. p. 539). (i.e. Not from the 'Pandavas' or 'the Aryans').
(d) "Even in the fifth century A.D. of the Christian era, the South seems to have felt little influence of Aryan culture." (p. 540).
(e) "Dravidian Society was still free from the yoke of Brahmin caste system", (p. 540).
S. J. Gunasegaram

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3.
NOTES
Dipavamsa (Ch. XVIII, v. 47), wrongly quoted by a correspondent in the Daily Mirror (7.562), to show that the kings of the period were 'Sinhalese".
B. C. Law, "On the Chronicles of Ceylon", p. 50. "Did the author of the Mahavamsa purposely change the name to Panduvasudeva King of Wanga and Kalinga mentioned in the Mahabharata. . . . . . ?".
Panduvassa. "It may as well be a Pali or Prakrit equivalent of Pandya vasa meaning one from the Pandyan country i.e., A Pandya by his nationality". (B. C. Law, ibid. p. 52).
Vijaya paid an annual tribute to the Pandyan king. (MHV. Ch. VII, v. 73). It is likely that his successors too did so. North Ceylon (Nagadipa or Serentivu), it may be presumed, was under Pandyan control.
(a) vide, Dr. G. C. Mendis "Early History of Ceylon”, (1954), "Map of ancient Ceylon", p. 23, Northern Ceylon is indicated as Nagadi pa which corresponds to Serentivu in Tamil, the Island of the Chera Tamils. "The Chera or Sera is the Dravidian equivalent of the Nagas. Chera Mandala has the same meaning as Naga Mandala of Naga country". "Anthropology in India" (1961). (Bharati ya Widiya Bhavan Publication).
(b) MHW. Ch. IX. Citta and DIGHA GAMANII are referred to as PANDUKABHAYA's parents. GAMANI was apparently the son of a local Naga Chieftain (referred to as a Dhiga). Still Pandukabhaya retains the PANDYAN title. In the list of kings he is referred to as the nephew of ABHAYA. CITTA, a horseman, is said to have assisted the parents of Pandukabhaya in their clandestine love affair and was apparently made a Chieftain who had his abode below Basuvakulam. It is likely that as a mark of gratitude Pandukabhaya had made him a sub-king. CITTA is not a Sanskrit term as Dr. S. Paranavitane holds (JRAS/CB. Vol. XXXI, p. 304) but a Tamil wordCITTA Small and ARASU IRASA = King. cf. CITTAPPA in Tamil (Figl unt) father's younger or 'smaller' brother. (vide D. E.T. Sect. 167 for Aracan Aracu = king Prince). RAJAN is probably derived from Tamil Aracan. (Cittu, Citta, small, young - vide D. E.T. 2073).

ll.
12.
Y 13.
14.
15.
16.
Tamil Kings in Early Ceylon 95
Abhaya is the Prakritised form of the Dravidian Appiah or Appayan. Apayan ( - Utuar ) in Tamil means "he who averts fear', 'a warrior', 'a hero', 'a king, particularly of the Chola dynasty'.
"The two main heroes, Devanampiya Tissa and Duthagamini are still missed in them", i.e., in the Inscriptions found in early Ceylon. (B. C. Law, ibid. p. 65). Law adds, "unfortunately, however none of the names by which the early kings of Ceylon are introduced in the inscriptions is identical with that which occurs in the Chronicles. The identifications so far suggested are tentative" (p. 65). This apparently has been the result of the early Buddhist monks attempting to Pali-ise Hindu Tamil names of the rulers and chieftains of this Island.
Rhy Davids, 'Buddhist India', p. 157.
ibid. p. 158.
Geiger considers the Tika to have been written between A.D. 1000 and 1250.
Dr. G. C. Mendis, ibid. Appendix II, "Sources”. vide, also Introduction to Turnour" s "Mahawansa ”.
B. C. Law, ibid. p. 49.
B. C. Law, ibid. p. 22.
The Pallavas were not foreigners but were themselves Dravidians. The Rev. A. H. Popley says, "It is clear that they came from the Deccan probably from what is now Kannada" ("Indo-Asian Culture', Oct., 1956). The term Pallava is the Sanskrit form of the Tamil "Tondayar'. To begin with, their rulers were Jains and Buddhists but many of them became Saivites through the influence of the Tamil Saiva saints.
Tennent "Ceylon ", Wol. I, pp. 314-315.
Duttugemunu's dying avowal was that he lived "a slave to the Priesthood" according to the Mahavamsa. Geiger translates the words as 'the servant of the brotherhood”. (MHV. Ch. XXXII, V. 58).

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TAPROBANE
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 (IV C. 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 the Tambarapand 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 communicaton 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, ಙ್ಗರಾ? Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, Special Number, 1959).
But what historical evidence is there to speak of IndoAryan 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

Taprobane 97
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. 143-14-4).
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....... Tbere 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 Asok an Edict and its reference to Tambarapani (Taprobane).
The famous Asokan Edicts (3rd century B.C.) were inscribed nearly a century after Alexander the Great's campaign in North-West India (4th century B.C.).
Prof. Mukherjee in his "HINDU INDIA" p. 106 (23rd 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 Tambapanl 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 Missionarles) 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.

Taprobane 99
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 Tambaraparmi 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-lised 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 (3rd century B.C.) are in the South Indian Brahmi script, and the language of these is "the earliest form of Tamil known to Epigraphy", 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 Mahanana 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 (VIII 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 Ramayanan frequently speaks of Ceylon as "Southern Ilankai". Sugrivan, the Dravidian ally of Rana, 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 (Tamraporunal) 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).

3. (a)
(b)
(c)
NOTES
"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 DRAWIDA 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).
"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 Tanabapanni. It is apparently the country of TAMRAPARNI, modern Tinnevely district" (ibid. p. 62).
The old name for the river was PORUNAI. KAMBAN (tenth century) refers to this river when he writes,
* பொன் திணிந்த புனல் பெருகும் பொருநை யெனும் திருநதி."
"The gold-laden sacred river called PORUNAI." Tamra in Tamil is red (of the red lotus); hence TAMRAPORUNAI, became Tamra parni (Tamil) ; Taprobane (Greek); Tambapani (Pali).
"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 travellers from other countries." (N. A. K. "History of South India", pp. 41,43,44).
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 rive Tamrapani or TAMIRAPORUNI." (From the un published work of T. C. Closset, intended to be the second part of his 'Dravidian Origin, and Philosophy of Human Speech", pointed by Times of Ceylon Co. Ltd. 1941).

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(d)
S. J. Gunasegaram - Selected Writings
Derivation of Tambapani, Tamraparni Tamil- Than or Chen a red, reddish, copper coloured,
Chern
golden, beautiful etc.
Thus CHEMPU is (T) a coper vessel "Chembuva" (Sinhalese). Hence also Chen-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 Chen-eli is formed KUMBILI, (Tamil) blanket made out of sheep's skin.
Thana or Tan 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 Chevillanir becomes THAM-PILI in Sinhalese for the "red young coconut'. Similarly the Tamil "PILLAI" "young" or "child" becomes "palle" in Sinhalese. TAMARAI or THAMARAI 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' cf. "Pani", "Pannir".

TAPROBANE AND EGYPT
In an otherwise instructive Article "GLEANER" (C.D.N. 15. 1.63), under the heading "Leaves from the Past", has apparently made a slip in his historical excursion relating to Ceylon and ancient Egypt.
1. 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 India, and wrote a fabulous account of the south from heresay reports of the Dravidian merchants of the eastern coasts of India who had visited Pataliputra.
By "TAPROBANE", he was actually referring to Tambraparni in the extreme south of the Indian peninsula, a portion of the Pandyan Tamil kingdom; Ceylon too, owing to its proximity to the southern tip of India, was considered to be an extension of Tambraparni or Taprobane. It has been pointed out that the Tambapani of the Asokan Edict probably, referred to the extreme south of India, watered by the Tambaraparni river. (B. C. Law, on "The Chronicles of Ceylon", p. 60).
Hence the alternative use of the names Tambapani and Lanka to indicate Ceylon, found in the early Pali Chronicles of the Island.
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".
2. Dravidian Commerce
Early trade of the historic Tamil Kingdoms with Egypt is a well established fact. Reference to the "Cambridge History of India", will show that the words for rice, ginger, cinnamon, sandalwood and peacock known to the Egyptians, Hebrews and Greeks were all of Tamil origin.
Dr. Barnott (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 western Asia, Egypt-and later

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with the Greek and Roman Empire". In his "History of South India" (p. 76) Nilakanta Sastri writes -"It has been pointed out rightly that rice, peacock, sandalwood, every unknown article which was imported by sea to Babylon, before the 5th century B.C. brought with it a Dravidian and not a Sanskrit designation". Reference also may be made to B. Lal's discoveries establishing "a significant link between the ancient Nubians of upper Egypt and the early Dravidians of South India". (vide, report in the "Ceylon Observer", 26.5.62).
3. Pearls and Cleopatra
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 Tamblegan 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 Ceylon (according to Warmington, ibid. p. 120) were largely due to rivalry between the Pandyan and Chola Tamil Kings for the control of the Ceylon Pearl Fisheries.
4. Buddhism
The Mahavamsa does not refer to any "Sinhalese King" as such sending an embassy to Egypt. Buddhism, however, was popular among the Tamils of South India and North Ceylon, during the early centuries of the Christian era, as it is evidenced by the Tamil Buddhist Epic, "The Manimekalai".
S. J. Gunasegaram

"MOORS - "CHONAKAR'
The Turks and their converts to Islam in South India use the Fez. The Turks, as distinct from the "Chonakar' were known in South India as 'Thulukar' ( 5.lal idii ). The fact is that Islam had come to South India direct from the country of the Prophet in the 7th century, while it reached the North only a century later! The earlier converts to Islam in South India were called 'Chonakar'. The Fez was a later fashion copied from the Turks by the South Indian Muslims and made popular in Ceylon after Arabi Pasha, who was an exile here.
The bulk of the "Moors' in Ceylon, as it has been amply demonstrated again and again, came from the Malabar and Coromandal coasts. This has been testified to by Marco Polo in the 13th century and by Barbosa in his account of the Island in 1519. (Tennent Vol. I, p. 608, p. 619). Both these agree that large numbers of "Moors' from the Indian coasts resorted constantly to Ceylon. Barbosa speaks of their heads covered with handkerchiefs and of their earrings so heavy that they hang down to their shoulders. A handkerchief was necessary to cover their shaven crowns, while the earrings indicated most emphatically their South Indian origins.
The word 'Chonakar' is another form of the term "Yavan" (vide, Tamill-English Dictionary, Madras School Book and Literature Society). The name was used earlier by the Tamils to signify the Ionians (Greeks) who traded with them.
According to Wilson it is applied to Muhammedan and European invaders of India and is often used for any barbaric race. Later it was extended to refer to others who followed the Greeks from the West including the Arabs. Those who adopted the religion of the Arabs in the Tamil country cane to be referred to as "Chonakar', irrespective of their racial origins. "Chonagan" is described in Tamil dictionaries as (a) one of the fifty-six countries, (b) one of the eighteen languages. (Tamil-English Dictionary, ibid.).
Every "Moor' village along the coast from BERUWELA (PERUVELI) in the South-West coast to Peruveli in the NorthEast coast down to Sam mantural, carries with it a Tamil name a pointer to the fact that the original Moor occupants had hailed from the Tamil country in South India and spoke, from the beginning, the Tamil language, whatever their present 'nationality' and 'race" might be

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Writers such as Annandale and Humayun Kabir 2 have pointed out that the majority of the Muslims of South India are converts to Islam. Even the Islam of Indonesia and Malaya was taught and spread by Tamil Muslims and Lebbes from the Coromandal Coast. From the works of Winstedt and of G. D. Hall, two authorities on the history of Indonesia and of Malaya, we learn that some of the early Sultans of Malaya were Tamil Muslims. The Muslim dignitary who addressed large gatherings in Ceylon on the Prophet's Birthday this year (1958) declared unequivocally that the language of the South Indian Muslim and the Ceylon Moor was none other than Tanil.
When the Portuguese arrived in Ceylon it was the 'Moor who first organised resistance against them to safeguard the trade of the Moors along the Western sea-board. They encouraged and urged Bhuvanaike Bahu, the Tamil King of Kotte, and also Mayadunne and Vijayabahu (the brothers of Bhuvanaike Bahu), in turn, to oppose the Portuguese. It was the Hindu ruler, the Zamorin of Calicut (the majority of whose subjects were Kerala and Tamil Muslims) who assisted then by sending troops and ships to fight the Portuguese.
Professor Courtnay in his "History of Ceylon", (pp. 13-14) assures us that had not the Portuguese come to Ceylon the entire Island would have come under the control of the 'Moors', while local historians have lent support to the fear that Tamil would have become the dominant language of the whole of Ceylon had it not been for the arrival of the Portuguese.
Notes
1. The name Yavana was derived from the term 'Ionians', the early Greeks with whom the Indians became acquainted; and in the ancient Tamil and Sanskrit periods the term denoted the Greeks in general. In subsequent times the Arabs who succeeded the Greeks were also referred to by this name. The name 'Sonagan' is derived from the word 'Yavannar', a term by which the Tamils designated the Mohammedan converts to Islan.
2. "Sind may have been the first Muslim principality of India but the first outposts in the country had been established almost a hundred years earlier in the far South". ("Indian Heritage', p. 14, Humayun Kabir.)
"Again in many cases the alternatives for Indian prisoners of war were permanent slavery or acceptance of Islam. The facts combined with active proselytisation led to the growth of a sizable Muslim population, in the course of a few centuries.

'Moors" - "Chonakar" 107
Those who were low in the social scale found in Islam an opportunity to assert their dignity. The more sensitive among the socially privileged were often attracted by its democratic appeal. Besides, Hindu Society looked askance at released prisoners of war and they often had no option but to join the Muslim fold." (ibid. p. 19).
3. "The affairs of Ceylon were at that time in a most critical condition. All the trade in the Island was in the hands of the Moors. The wealth which this had brought then rendered them powerful and gave them a great ascendancy over the native rulers. They took advantage of their quarrels and sustained by the Zamorin of Calicut whose subjects they were, their aim at that time was to become the absolute rulers of Ceylon. The arrival of the Portuguese saved the Sinhalese from the slavery of the Moors."
"The Sinhalese owe to the Portuguese their national existence. Had not the Portuguese landed in Ceylon there would be no Sinhalese today, they would have all become Moormen". (Professor Courtnay "History of Ceylon", pp. 13-14).
"If the Sinhalese nationality still survives, if they had not been forcibly transformed into Moormen, they owe it to the Portuguese". (ibid. p. 60).
The above appears to be an exaggerated analysis of the situation (by the Catholic historian) when the Portuguese arrived in Ceylon. In any case the same accusation may be levelled against the Portuguese. Had not the Dutch and later the English arrived, the greater part of Ceylon would have become Catholic.
It is however true that Islam gave the death blow to Buddhism in North India between the years 1175 and 1340, and that Sumatra, Java, Malaya where once Buddhism and Hinduism had existed side by side, became completely Islamised. But the Portuguese too did the same in Goa and in the Philippines.
Notes on "Ceylon Moors' and "Coast Moors'
The 'Ceylon Moors' represent the earlier Muslim settlers in Ceylon from South India. The "Coast Moors' consist of those who came later to Ceylon from South India for purposes of trade and had intended to return to their homes, but were prevented from free movement by the Portuguese and the Dutch who had taken command of the maritime regions of Ceylon. Both the Portuguese and the Dutch treated them harshly because (1) they refused to become converts to Christianity (2) they were their rivals in trade.

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The 'Ceylon Moor' calls himseslf "Chonakan' and his co-religionist from South India Cham mankaran. The Sinhalese however, call both the classes indiscriminately "Marakalaha' or , 'Marakala Minisu', terms derived from the two Tamil words "maram' s "wood' and "kalam' as "vessel'.
The word 'Sampankaran' (T) or 'Sambankaraya' (S) is not, as is generally supposed, derived from 'Sampan' meaning 'a boat' but rather from the Tamil 'Saman', a word familiar to the Sinhalese as well. Saman ("Chaman" - Fimrud nr 6 år) in Tamil means, 'things', 'wares', hence 'Samankaran' is "one who deals in wares'. In South India too the word 'Sampan' is used to denote a particular species of boats, but the Muslims there are not called 'Sampankarans'.
(cf. Chammankodu - Bankshall Street in Colombo; Sammanturai in the Eastern Province in the Kalmunai district is exclusively occupied by Moors.)
The Malays were referred to by the Tamils as "Chavakar" (Yavanese) and not as 'Champankarar'. cf. Chavakachcheri. Cheri ( Grif) in Tamil means 'a street', 'a group of houses generally occupied by people of the same caste". The term Chavakachcheri or (Javakacheri) refers to a small group of 'Javakar' or "Malays' (as referred to by European writers) who had been quartered there by the Dutch during their regime in the Northern Province. It is not as Dr. Paranavitane and Codrington suppose, 'a colony' of Malay soldiers who are supposed to have been brought by Chandrabhanu.
Hambantota and Hanbankaraya
1. Though the Moors had introduced the basic elements of civilised life to the Sinhalese occupying the South Western region of the Island - clothing such as the men's 'sarongs' and the women's "cambayam", and ornaments made out of silver and chank such as ear-studs and bangles, in the later centuries, after the arrival of the Europeans, their services were forgotten and they came to be treated with a degree of contempt by the Sinhalese as revealed in the term "Hanbayas', and in derivations given to the term 'Marakalaya', in Sinhalese works of the recent date such as the Jinawamsa. The Jinawamsa derives the word 'Marakalaya' from the two Tamil words "Ma" (Maha) and "Kallan', rogue, because they have much trickishness. This is a fanciful and malicious derivation as will be shown below.
2. As already indicated, the distinction drawn between "Ceylon Moors' and "Coast Moors' is absolutely unwarranted. All Moor citizens of Ceylon were and are Ceylon Moors who had come over from South India and settled down as either traders

'Moors" - 'Chonakar" 09
or skilled workers. Some of the earlier settlers had married among the Persian families who were obliged to remain in towns like Galle and Matara after the Portuguese occupation of the coastal regions. Others intermarried with the Muslim Javanese settlers who were brought later by the Dutch. Their home language, however, continues to be Tamil, as originally the majority of these Moors were South Indian Tamil converts to Islan. The town in the Southern Province known as Hambantota is obviously from the two words "Sampan" a Chinese word for a special type of boat used by them and adopted by the Javanese, and "Thotti" (T) ( G5mt "L4- ). "Sampan' ( Fubuntar ) meaning 'a boat', has found a place in Tamil dictionaries. The word "Thotti' is a Tamil word meaning 'a town' on the sea shore surrounded by salt marshes'.
It is known that for about fifty years from 1409, after the Chinese Admiral Cheng-Ho captured Alagakkonara, South Ceylon became a tributory of China. For many centuries earlier Chinese merchants had visited the "Emporium' at Galle ('Kalai' in Tamil), to exchange wares with South Indian, Axumite and Persian traders who visited it.
Hanbantota was in all probability a Chinese port of call which was later occupied by the Javanese and the Tamil speaking Moors. 'Saman' as distinguished from 'Sampan', is a Tamil word meaning 'things' or 'goods'. The word 'Sampan' and 'Saman' would seem to have become identified later by the Sinhalese who began to call the Moors Hambankarayas (i.e. the Tamil 'Saman-Karar") a term which became in course of time converted into "Hambayas'.
The terms such as "Marakalaya' and "Hambankaraya' used to signify the Moors in Sinhalese, are derived from the Tamil 'Maram" wood and "Kalam' vessel, boat. Al-'man', person in Tamil-Marakalay-'Al', again became 'Marakala Minisu' in Sinhalese. Similarly the Tamil 'Saman' (things, goods) became Hambankaraya and was further corrupted into Hambayas. (Generally (S) became (H) in Pali-ised Sinhalese.)

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THE MOORS OF CEYLON
The Times of Ceylon of 13.11.59, gives its readers the interesting news that the Government has deputed two. Sinhalese scholars to go into the history of Beruwela, because of a dispute "with regard to the origin of the name "Beruwela'. The Sinhalese are said to hold that the earliest name of the town was Beruwela, and have objected to the claim of the Muslims to change the name to Barberyn, which the latter seem to think was derived from the Arab name Berber.
In a series of articles in the "Times of Ceylon' on Chinese Sea-faring, I have already given the opinions of authorities such as Warmington, Wheeler, George Faldo Hourani, Panikkar, etc., to show that the maritime trade in the South-Western ports of Ceylon, particularly at Galle, was entirely in the hands of the Chinese, Persians and the Tamils and that the Arabs ventured out to the East as a sea-faring people only after the time of the Prophet. It is strange that Tamil opinion on this question seems to have been totally ignored Even as late as 1409, the languages used in the Trilingual Inscription of Cheng-Ho, in Galle, were confined to Tamil, Chinese and Persian. It was also shown that Tamil traders, sailors, tailors, weavers, and cinnamon peelers had settled down along the Western sea-board from the early centuries of the Christian era. Evidence from the Tamil names of the ports in this area and the existence of time honoured shrines such as "Kataragama' and "Dondra' was also discussed.
The Sinhalese in recent times seem to have attempted to derive the name Beruwela from BE, a part of the name from BEWA meaning "to lower', and RUWELA 'to sail". This strained derivation has been arrived at, not realising that RU in RUWELLA is nearer URU the Tamil name for a "long boat' and Valai, the Tamil name for a "net". I venture to suggest that the derivation from 'Sinhalese" given above is extremely strained, and that a more natural and probable derivation should be sought elsewhere.
With regard to BARBERYN AND BERBER, I would refer your readers to a small book on 'Sonahar" written in 1925, by Mr. J. C. Van Sanden, who, in page 2 of the book, admits that he had written it as a result of "persuasions of his Moorish friends' and that "nearly all the information' which he has been

The Moors of Ceylon 1
able to glean from the educated Moors, is purely legendary" Mr. Van Sanden's own "history" itself is full of anachronisms. Nevertheless even in 1925, he does not appear to have heard from his 'Moorish Friends' any such tradition connecting BERUWELA with BERBER
The fact is that the Muslims who settled down in the South-Western and North-Eastern Coasts of Ceylon as petty traders, were all Tamil speaking Muslims from the Malabar and Coromandal coasts of South India. Even during the time of the arrival of the Portuguese, they relied on the support of the Tamil speaking Kings of Ceylon, and that of the Zamorin of Calicut, the Hindu Malabar ruler of South India.
Now, BERUWELA in the South-West coast of Ceylon is the counterpart of PERUVELI, a Muslim settlement in the Trincomalee district. There are other similar Muslim settlements in the North-Eastern sea-board, viz. KUCHAVELI, NILAVELI, UPPUVELI, etc.
PERU in Tamil means "large" and VELI an "open space'. Some of the early South Indian Tamil speaking Muslim traders who came over to the Western coast of Ceylon and occupied a 'large open space" near the sea-coast, similarly called it PERUVELI. The name in course of time took the Pali-ised Sinhala form, Beruwela. It is customary for the Tamil P to be pronounced as B in Sinhalese. Veli was similarly transformed into Wella, the W becoming W and the e in Well being pronounced a as in 'alert", by the Sinhalese, although there is no u in Elu. BERUWELA is thus the corruption of Peruveli, a name given by the Tamil-speaking Muslims who settled in the area.
If Mr. Wadwood wants your readers to believe that the names BERBER and BERBERYN indicate that the original MUSLIM settlers in BERUWELA, were Arabs ("Times of Ceylon" 8.12.59), he should first convince us that BERBER was an Arab town, and that the BERBERS themselves were Arabs. But were they?
(1) The New Standard Dictionary describes a BERBER as "A member of a primitive race of Northern Africa, any Moor or native of BARBARY".
(2) The same dictionary defines BARBARY as "the Mohammedian countries in the North Coast of Africa, not including Egypt, peopled by BERBERS".

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(3) The Oxford Dictionary defines a BERBER as "a member of the North African Stock including the aboriginal races of BARBARY (from Arab barbara, to talk confusedly of, perhaps from Greek barbaros, Barbarians)".
It is clear that Berber was neither in Arabia nor were the people 'Arabs'. How then did PERUVELI (Tamil) and "BERUWELA' (Sinhalese) become associated by the Portuguese historian DE QUEYROZ with BERBERIM or BARBARY?
I give a fuller extract from DE QUEYROZ which was only partly quoted by Mr. Wadwood:-
"One league before Alica there was the large village of BERBERIM, which deserves to be called BARBARY, for it was altogether peopled by them" (the MOORS)............ "And as a certain prelate of St. Francis was passing through it on a visit an old Chingala came to see him to be pleased to buy a garden which he had there to build a church, before the Moors by dint of bribes took it from him, and turned him out". ("Conquest of Ceylon", Vol. II, Book IV, Ch. 19, p. 743).
Now, from the first portion of the quotation above, it is obvious that the PORTUGUESE who had carried with them the contempt with which they held the Moors of North Africa and of Spain, mainly on religious grounds, had "bodily' transferred the epithet 'Moor' to the Muslims they unexpectedly met with in South India and Ceylon. The Muslims settled down along the Western Coast of Ceylon were their greatest competitors in their trade with Ceylon. De Queyroz who had never visited Ceylon obtained his information from Portuguese records and tales of Priests and soldiers who had been in Ceylon. He uses the term "BERBERIM' to denote BERUWELA, and BARBARY to describe the people, in unfair contempt of the Muslim traders concentrated at Beruwela. It was thus, obviously a name not given by the Muslim settlers themselves at Peruveli or Beruwela but a contemptuous reference to the Muslims found there.
The second portion of the quotation from DE QUEYROZ is very likely, an equally malicious description of the "MOORS'- meant to make the world and the Sinhalese understand that they (the Portuguese) were more reasonable in their dealings with the Sinhalese than the Muslims.
I agree with Mr. Wadwood that Emerson. Tennent was one of the most brilliant historians of Ceylon -a great pioneer. But his work was published in 1859, a hundred years ago. Since the days of Tennent and Alexander Johnston, two Ceylon officials of the colonial days, considerable research has been done

The Moors of Ceylon 3
researches which have shown that several of their conclusions are completely out of date or that they require to be considerably modified.
Tennent's view quoted by Mr. Reimers, a retired Government Archivist, and referred to by Mr. Wadwood may be found in Volume I, of Tennent's history, pages 555 and 556. In his footnotes he admits that his conjecture about early Arab settlers in Ceylon was based on an obscure passage in Pliny, and his authority to suggest that the Arabs were here in the fourth and fifth centuries was Gildmister, a still earlier European writer than Tennent himself.
I have shown in my earlier comment on the origin of the name "BERUWELA' that WARMINGTON whose work on "The Commerce between the Roman Empire and India', 1928, a classic on the subject, speaks of Arabs as middlemen who took over the articles of trade taken by South Indians to the Arabian Coast and sold them in the countries of the Middle-East. The Sabeans who had settled down in Yemen (South Arabia), the Axumites (Abyssinians) and the Persians had often been confused with 'Arabs'. Sir Mortimer Wheeler in his "Rome beyond the Imperial Frontiers', (1955), devotes part III to commerce with South India (including Ceylon) but makes no specific reference to Arab merchants in Ceylon or to Arab Sea-faring.
George Faldo Hourani (Princeton University, 1951), writing on Arab Sea-faring tells us (a) "Of Arab Sea-faring of the Ancient East we have met no evidence", (page 1 l); (b) "There is no evidence in the Periplus of Arabs further south than Barygaza", (p. 33); (c) "Thus when we come to the ninth century Arabic records of sea-trade with the Far-East we find mention of Moslems and Arabs far more than Persians. This change must have come gradually" (page 65).
Hourani also points out (1) that the medieval Arabs borrowed many nautical terms from the Persians (page 65), (2) that during the Prophet's time the wood of foreign ships wrecked on the shore was taken for use on the roof of the Ka'bah.........(page 45), (3) that South Indian teak and other timber had to be imported for the construction of boats, and the methods of construction were similar (page 91), and (4) that pre-Islamic poetry of the desert Arabs seldom contained references to the sea (page 45).
Thus BERBERIM and BARBARY were not the original names by which Peruveli or Beruwela and her Muslim settlers were called but a contemptuous reference to its 'Moor' inhabitants by the Portuguese.

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The Quran and Arab Navigation
Your readers should be grateful to Mr. S. A. Rahman for pointing out references in the Holy Quran to "ships and the sea". My contention, in my letter of 27.1.59, on "Kandyan Moors", was that there is no indication in the Quran to Arab "ships and navigation as such". I was careful, however, to add, "there is however, a vivid awareness of the sea and its wealth".
I quote below relevant references to ships and the sea found in the Quran from "The Meaning of the Glorious Quran" a translation of the Quran by Marmaduke Pickthall (3rd edition, 1952). (Mr. S. A. Rahman's quotations are likely to be misunderstood by the uninitiated as the Capital "W" not indicated by him in "We", definitely refers to God (Allah) and "You" in the quotations refer to mankind in general, and not to the Arabs in particular as all God's revelation should be).
Ch. XVI, v. 14: "And thou seest the ships ploughing it, that Ye (mankind) may seek His bounty, and haply may give thanks".
Ch. XVII, v. 66, v. 70: "(O, Mankind), Your Lord is He who driveth for you the ship upon the sea" "Verily We have honoured the children of Adam. We carry them on land and sea". (We = God (Allah), You s Mankind).
Ch. XXXV, v. 12: "And the two seas are not alike.....And from then You hear, and derive the ornament that you wear..... and thou seest the ship cleaving them". (You a Mankind) ("The two seas" i.e. two kinds of water in the earth).
Ch. XXXVI, v. 41: "And a token of them is that We bear their offspring in the laden ship". (We = God) (Their = Mankind).
Ch. XLV., v. 2: "Allah it is who hath made the sea of service unto You". (You = Mankind).
Ch. XLVII, v. 32: "And of His portents are the ships like banners of the sea".
IV
The new derivation that Mr. A. C. Weerasinghe suggests (Times - 8.1.60) for Beruwela - from Beru: "a plant which is the bane of the paddy cultivation' and Wala; "Hallow', bog, marsh is interesting for two reasons.

The Moors of Ceylon 5
It sets aside the earlier attempts to derive it from BEWA and RUWELA, a derivation, the strained nature of which I have already pointed out. In his turn Mr. Weerasinghe uses two new Sinhala words BERU and WALA which have practically the same meaning as two similar words in Tamil; Peru - in Tamil is used also as a prefix to a number of plants, herbs and shrubs with fleshy thick leaves, a fact which could be tested by reference to, e.g. Visuwanathan Pillai's Tamil-English Dictionary, and Wala, Valai (retroflexive L) in Tamil meaning something circular, a tank, etc.
But no man with a knowledge of Tamil will derive Peruveli from Peru and Valai. This derivation of Mr. Weerasinghe would mean that the Muslim traders, who it must be admitted, performed also a civilising mission in the SouthWestern coastal regions of Ceylon thought it fit to occupy "pits' 'bogs and marshes'. Mr. Weerasinghe goes on to speak of 'thousands' of other 'walas' as though a greater part of Ceylon consisted of boggy marshes and the plant which was an enemy of paddy. It is a moot point, again, whether this plant which Mr. Weerasinghe calls the enemy of the paddy plant thrives along the sea coast as well Verunkulama, to which Mr. Weerasinghe refers is of course the Sinhalese variation of the Tamil 'Perumkulam", the large pond or tank.
These "velis" occupied by the Muslims were all settlements along the sea coast, while the cultivable lands they occupied they called in Tamil Ur e.g. Eravur, Nindavur, Muthur, Puthur SetC
Most of the confusion in derivations of names of places as well as of persons in the case of Sinhala arises from the fact that the names spelt in English today had been Pali-ised first by the Buddhist Priests from India, and later mutilated further by the Portuguese, Dutch and then English in turn, almost beyond recognition. The task of arriving at the truth would be easier if the original names could be written and spelt in the Sinhalese and Tamil Alphabets. There are several letters in Tamil for instance whose sounds are alien to the English Alphabets.
It might help Mr. Weerasinghe to refer to a recent publication by Mr. C. W. Nicholas entitled "Historical Topography of Ancient and Medieval Ceylon'. I am not sure about his scholarship in Tamil and Sinhalese and in the knowledge of the varieties of the Brahmi script, but he tells us:-
"The Chronicles of the early historical period (3 B.C. to 3 A.D.) contained no reference to Kalutara Galle and Matara

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Districts, nor are there any Brahmi Inscriptions or early ruins in those cities. It can therefore, be assumed that this SouthWestern area was not then populated" (page 1 l).
He does not however, inform us whether more modern "Chronicles' like the Culavamsa, Rajavali and Pujavali make references to these towns including Beruwela. As for Brahmi inscriptions, it is well known that the Brahmi script was developed early and widely used by South Indian rulers and merchants in all regions in South-East Asia and Ceylon. The Kalingas, Pandyas, Cheras, Pallavas and Cholas (some Hindu and some Buddhist) were all here in this Island. The absence of Brahmi inscriptions in the South-Western regions of Ceylon is, therefore, no proof that the Sinhalese were not in occupation of these parts.
Peruveli or "Beruwela' is a comparitively recent coastal town like Colombo, developed mainly by the Muslims, some time before the arrival of the Portuguese who strove their utmost to expel them from these coastal settlements.
Notes
(a) In 1350, JOHN MARIGNOLLI was wrecked on the coast of Ceylon at "PERIVILIS' which is supposed to be BERUWELA. (Yule's "Cathay", p. 357).
(b) "Here a certain tyrant by name Coya Joan, an eunuch, had the mastery of an opposition to the lawful king. He was an accursed Saracen", i.e. Mohammedan. We are also told that by means of his great treasures he had gained possession of this part of the country. He robbed DE MARIGNOLLI of the valuable gifts he was carrying home to the Pope. (ibid. p. 357).
Iba Batuta visited the Island six years earlier (in 1344), but makes no mention of Beruwela though it lay directly on his
route from Galle to Colombo....... He refers to BATTALAN
(PUTALAM) as the capital of a Tamil king Aryachakravarti..... (J.R.A.S. (C.B.), Vol. VII, p. 56, of the extra Number).
(c) "The settlement at Beruwala, which the Ceylon Mohammedans generally admit to be the first of all their settlements, took place not earlier than the XIV century-say A.D. 1350. We may also safely conclude that this colony was an offshoot of KAYAL PADANAM, and that the emigrants consisted largely of a rough and ready set of bold Tamil Converts...... " (J.R.A.S. (C.B.), Vol. X, No. 36, "The Moor of Ceylon', p. 255).

THE MALAYS
"Brown in complexion, medium in stature and maritime in habits, these people left their cradle land somewhere in Asia, Malay Peninsula, Sumatra or India. The true origin of the Malay race cannot be definitely ascertained today". ("Early Philippine History', Zaide).
The Hon. W. Marsden in his "History of Sumatra', London, 18 1 1, expressed the view that they originated from Sumatra.
"Who is the civilised Malay, or as he is also termed, the Deutro-Malay or Coast Malay, of Malaya, Sumatra, Java, Male, Borneo, Celebes,..... and other islands?
This broad headed individual with more or less Mongolian features - is the proto Malay with many foreign strains... many of the aborigines were proto-Malay maritime folk." (Malays-"Cultural History" by Sir Richard Winstedt, p. 15).
I
THE MALAYS IN CEYLON
The Malays in Ceylon are known by the Tamil appellation. CHAVAKAR ('JAVAVAR" THE PEOPLE OF JAVA), and are descendants of soldiers brought to this country by the Dutch during their occupation of Ceylon. The Dutch had also deported to Ceylon some members of the Javanese nobility many of whom are said to have returned to their home country later.
When the Dutch withdrew from the island handing over Ceylon to the British, many of the Malay families continued to live here and some of them have married among the Tamil Muslims of Ceylon. The Dutch referred to the Malays as "Ambiones', and the German Diarists of the seventeenth century state that they were fond of cock-fighting; and as guardians of the state, they were more feared by the Sinhalese than the latter were of the Dutch themselves.
The German Diarists refer to the inhabitants of Ceylon as "SINGUALESE (ZYNGALESE) MALABARLANS, AMBIONES and other natives called the CINGOLESES". (vide, "Germans in Dutch Ceylon', Vol. I, p. 28, translated with notes by Raven Hart).

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MALAYS-SOUTH INDLA AND SUMATRA
One of the early kingdoms KAN-To-Li referred to in Chinese annals is said to have been "located somewhere in Sumatra by the best modern opinion; the rulers were in communication with China during the period A.D. 456 to 563".
The names of these rulers were typically Hindu, and the manners and customs are said to have been similar to those of Champa and Kambuja, two countries which came early under South Indian influence.
"The presence of certain names of tribal sub-divisions which are unmistakably South Indian, among the SIMBIRING, a brand of the Karo-Batah race points to early Tamil influence in Sumatra. These names are, Coliya, Pandiya, MELIYALA, and also PELAVI (CHOLA, PANDYA, MALAYALA, PALLAVA, all historic Tamil rulers) as well as Tekang (Takkanam-Deccan). "The social organisation of the Karo-Dataks seem to date from very remote part and it is quite probable that these names were taken over when they were still powerful realities in South India".
These influences appear to have reached Sumatra at a time when South Indians still built their temples of wood or other perishable material. The preservation and worship offered to large kettledrums in later Javanese temples show that a connection has been maintained between the older Indonesian religion and the later Hindu Javanese temples, as the drums are ಟ್ಲಿ೦ have belonged to an earlier phase of Indonesian religious life.
Thus Sumatra seems to have come in contact with South Indian Hindu culture very early and this contact "never wholly ceased and was kept up through changing fortunes for well over a thousand years"............ What happened in Sumatra is typical of the history of almost every one of these colonies. Sumatra was again invaded by the Cholas in the eleventh centụury. A Tamil inscription, of Luba Tua in A.D. 1088, and the Dravidian tribal names are evidences of the continuity of this influence.
Thus the earliest people to bring their culture from India were the Tamil Pandyan, Chola and Chera peoples. This was followed in the 6th century by another South Indian dynasty, the Pallavas. The downfall of the Pallava power was brought about by the Chalukyas and the Cholas.

The Malays 119
The ultramarine colonies of South India in Indonesia were now able to coalesce with the Hindu Malay Empire of Sri Vijaya which flourished from the eighth to the twelfth century and gave way to the Madjapahit Empire which succeeded it. The fail of Sri Vijaya was partly due to the deadly attack launched by the Cholas in 1025; the Cholas did not follow up their conquest, however, and re-appeared in 1068 as the friends of the Sri Vijayan Empire.
Madjapahit, Hindu in culture, and Saivite in religion reached its zenith in the 14th century. In 1478 it was replaced by the Islamic Malay Empire of Malacca and was in turn broken up in the 16th century by the Portuguese.
Islam itself was preached and spread in Sumatra, Java and Malaya by the South Indian Tamil Muslim converts who flocked in numbers to Malaysia as traders. "Java dealt the death blow to the old Empire of the Maharajahs, and Islam deprived Siva and Buddha and their spiritual ascendancy in the Malay world". 4
Roland Braddell tells us that the South Indian Tamils were the most famous of Indian pilots in ancient times and it was the Tamil seamen who brought civilisation first to Malaysia. Swami SATYANANDA in his 'History of Malaya" p. 22, tells us that MALAIYU, the capital of Sumatra, is the corruption of the Tamil name Malai-Ur given to it by the early Tamil colonists, as this new country was full of mountain ranges. "MALAI' (mountain) "Ur" (country).
"Throughout the period of Hindu dominance' says Ginsburg Roberts Jr., in "MALAYA", "there was no truly independent Malaya. The primary influences during this period were of Hindu origin stemming from Southern India either directly or in the case of Madjapahit through Java'.
Klings and Tamil Muslims
By local usage all South Indians, Tamils, Telugus and Malayalees are called Klings..... but though the use of the term is a tribute to the greatness of his past, the Southern Indian now regards it as derogatory. The Malay for his part has borrowed the Lebai as a form of respect from the Labbae Muslims of the Madras Coast. TAMIL MUSLIMS occasionally won places and honour in old Malacca and in eighteenth century Perak, where the Sultan gave one a title for going to India and returning with a trader who brought elephants.
South Indians have played a great part in the Malay's literature of translation, introducing him to Indian folklore, romance and mysticism. There are Sanskrit words in Tamil form

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20 S. J. Gunasegaraa - Selected Writings
and later Persian and Arabic words that Tamil Muslims from India had introduced
Though South Indian traders had ships that could carry 600 passengers or more, they did not affect the physical appearance of the local people as Muslim Tamils in the nineteenth century affected the Malays of Penang. 6
With the change to Islam "the Malay would become flooded by romances from the Deccan..... still full of Hindu mythology. Such a hotch-potch of Hindu Epics, Javanese rules and Tamil folklore was to be expected from a cosmopolitan port like Malacca in the 15th century'.7
The medieval Malacca chiefs as well as Sultans were traders. The Malay annals say that BENDA HIRA or PrimeMinister to the last Sultan never failed in his ventures and was richer than the richest Tamil in the port.
For a thousand years the Malay was under the influence of Hinduised courts, that were centres of Buddhism and Saivaism, Hindu magical science, Hindu Art and Hindu literature. During this time he borrowed the Indian Scripts-the Pallava from which Java as early as the eighth century A.D. evolved its Kaivi alphabet. A guild of Tamil traders in the same century left scraps of their Buddhist story of Manimekalai in Sumatran folklore that have been retold in the Malay Peninsula and written down in modern time Epics.
Java and Tamils
We have clear evidence of a settled Hinduised society flourishing in West Java in the fourth and fifth centuries. Puranavarman ruled for over twenty years. This king is compared to Vishnu and was doubtless a Hindu colonist from South India of Hinduised Indonesia. That Hinduism was the prevalent faith at that time is borne out by FA-HIEN who came to Java from India via Ceylon in 414 A.D.
In the Hindu period Indian Epics were popularised in Java and in the Madjapahit colonies of Malays more by shadow plays than by written translations. The spirit of delight that animates such passages came from Hindu South India and with it sculpture and art was doomed to fall before Islam.
The Sailendras were doubtless a race of Hindu-Javanese rulers and not without South Indian affiliations of their Own. In the organisation of rural economy and village administration Java presents the same unmistakable blend between pre-Hindu Indonesian institutions and ideas and those borrowed from South

The Malays 121
India. The proceedings at village meetings in Java even today strongly remind one of the courthouse of village administration in South India in ancient days as it is vividly potrayed in numberless inscriptions of the Chola monarchs.
There has been continuous contact maintained by Java with South India even in later times. The Nagarakretagama mentions that Buddariya sang slokas in praise of the Javanese ruler HAYAM WARUK in the fourteenth century. Jaganagara adopted the characteristic Pandyan title Sundara Pandya at his coronation early in the fourteenth century and adopted the Pandyan emblem of two carps (fishes) for his seal. There is
literary evidence of an embassy from Malaya to Vijayanagar in the days of the great KRISHNA DEVA RAYA.
REFERENCES
l. KROM, HJG, p. 84, quoted by K. A. Nilakanta Sastri 'South Indian Influences. In The Far East', p. 112.
2. K.A.N., ibid. p. ll3.
3. K.A.N., ibid. p. 114.
4. "Malaya and its History", Sir Richard Winstedt, p. 31 .
5. Ginsberg and Roberts Jr. "Malaya", p. 121.
6. Sir Richard Winstedt, ibid., p. 25.
7. Sir Richard Winstedt, "The Malays-A Cu1 tural History',
p. 141.
8. Sir Richard Winstedt, "Malaya and Its History", p. 104.
9. Sir Richard Winstedt, "The Malays-A Cultural History",
p. 139.
10. Sir Richard Winstedt, ibid. p. 140.
ll. K.A.N., ibid. p. 134.
12. K.A.N., ibid. p. 135.

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TRNCOMALEE (THE HOLY HILL OF SIVA)
Trincomalee is known to the modern world as one of the finest harbours in the world; but the origin of its name and its fame from pre-historic times is associated with the sacred and ancient shrine dedicated by the early Tamils to Siva.
The antiquity of the worship of Siva has been amply attested to by scholars and archaeologists "Among the many revelations that Mohenjo-Daro and Harappa have had in store for us", says Sir John Marshall, "none perhaps is more remarkable tham the discovery that Saivaism has a history going back to the paleolithic age or even further still, and it thus takes its place as the most ancient faith in the world".
In "The History of Philosophy EASTERN AND WESTERN' (published by the MINISTRY OF EDUCATION, GOVERNMENT OF INDIA) we read,
"Nearly all the SAIVITE gods of Hinduism are non-vedic
and are recognised as DRAVIDIAN".
"TRINCOMALEE" is the Europeanised form of the Tamil TIRU-KONA-MA-MALAI or TIRU-KONA-MALA, "the Holy Hill of LORD SIVA'. The hill and the shrine are known by several Tamil names.
TIRU-KONA-MA-MALAI TRU-KONA-MALA TRU-KUNRU-MALA TRU-MALA KONESWARAM , KONESAR-KOVL. SWAMY-MALA
There are other similar shrines dedicated to Siva in Ceylon and in Dravidian India. Some of the most famous are TRUKETHISWARAM in the Mannar district and MUNISWARAM in Chilaw - all in Ceylon and TIRUVANNAMALAI, THIRUKADAIYUR, TIRUMALAI, TIRUMIYLAI, KOKANNAM or KOKARNAM, KOKALI - all in South India.
TAMIL tradition has it that the wife of the mythical king of LANKA, RAVANA who, was a devotee of Siva, worshipped at the Koneswaram shrine.

Trincomalee (The Holy Hill of Siva) 123
The earliest reference in the Pali Chronicles of Ceylon to the SAIVA SHRINE at TRINCOMALEE is found in the MAHAWAMSA (Ch. XXXVII, vv. 40-44). It states that MAHASEN 'built also the Manivihara and founded three viharas destroying the temple of the gods the Gokanna, Erukavilla, and another in the village of the Brahman Kalanda'. In a note below Geiger the official translator of the Mahavamsa, states, "according to the Tika, the Gokanna Vihara is situated on the coast of the Eastern sea, the two other Viharas in Ruhuna..... the Tika aso adds everywhere in the Island of Lanka he established the doctrine of the Buddha having destroyed the temples of the unbelievers, i.e. having abolished the Phallic symbols of Siva and so forth".
If vhat the Tika says is to be accepted, Ruhuna and the Eastern coast would appear to have been early homes of Saivalsm, the Tamil religion par excellence. The authors of the Pali Chronicles and the monk author of the later XIII century Tika were Buddhist priests at that time, the bitterest opponents of Saivaism and those who supported it in Ceylon. The truth and accuracy of the statements made by the commentator cannot be verified. It has however been pointed out that the unknown writer of the Tika had used his piety and his imagination rather than verify facts to explain the allusions found in the Mahavamsa.
What appears to be the truth is that Mahasen, the one time heretic, in his new formed zeal for Buddhism had ordered the destruction of all the temples of the earlier religion (Saivaism), including that at Trincomalee and those in Ruhuna. Ruhuna, from this and other evidences, appears to have been the stronghold of Pandyan Saivite sub-kings who were the rulers of the district. This is one of the strongest testimonies to Siva worship and its wide-spread influence in early Ceylon. Buddhism took a long time to supplant the earlier religions-Saivaism and Vaishnavalism-which still have an abiding place in the hearts of the indigenous peoples of Ceylon. There is, however, ample evildence in Tamil religious literature to demonstrate the antiquity and the reverence with which this Saiva shrines at Trincomalee in the Eastern coasts and at Tirukethiswaram in the Western coast were held by the Tamils in South India and Ceylon.
Suntharamoorthy Swamy (seventh century A.D.) and Tirugnanasambanthar, (eighth century A.D.) two Tamil Saiva saints have left a number of THEVARAMS ('garlands of verses to god') of imperishable beauty celebrating these shrines. For a full text of these poems and commentaries the reader is referred to Mr. V. K. P. Nathan's 'THEVARATH-THIRUPATHIKAM', 1954. That the Cholas and the Pandyans, two of the

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ancient hsitoric Tamil kingdoms, had colonised the Northern, Eastern and South-Eastern districts of Ceylon, and from there Anuradhapura and Polonnaruwa beginning from pre-Vijayan times has been attested to by historians.
In the Journal of the R.A.S. (Ceylon Branch), Vol. XXX, We are told,
"According to the KALVETTU ( a Tamil stone inscription referred to by Codrington), the temple of KONESAR is said to have been founded by KULAKOTTAN son of Manuwentan in the KALIYUGA year 512 (B.C. 2591). It was destroyed by Constantine de Sa in 1624, and the material used for the construction of the Fort."
De Queyroz, the Portuguese author of the "Conquest of Ceylon' gives the name of the king as MANU-RAJAH. 'VENTHAN' in Tamil is another word for KING or RAJAH.
VOGEL says,
"POLONNARUWA may have been an earlier Dravidian settlement. For it is only natural that the Dravidians entered Ceylon by the excellent port of the East Coast-Trincomalee, which as the name TIRU-KUNRU-MALAI indicates, is an early Tamil settlement. From there their ships could have reached the interior of Mahavaliganga" (Vogel's letter "Journal of Science", Vol. II, Part 1, pp. 231-232, quoted by Dr. Paranavitane).
"KUN RU" in Tamil means a "rock" or "hillo. MAHAVALI in Tamil is MA-VALI (LDrth A) i.e. 'the great pathway'. Its branch the 'VERUGAL" is the Tamil 'PERUKAL" (Glucosai ) "flood', or "that which overflows'.
I give below extracts from "The Reefs of Taprobane' by ARTHUR C. CLARKE, (HARPER AND BROS, NEW YORK, 1956),
"Swamy Rock is one of the most historic spots on the East coast of Ceylon. For at least three thousand years, with one brief interruption of a mere century or so, the rock has been the site of a Hindu temple. The interruption was caused by the arrival of the Portuguese, who looked with great disfavour on any religion except Roman Catholicism and who were men of violent action where matters of faith were concerned.
"........We soon became aware that there was something peculiar about the sea bed over which we were swimming. Huge blocks of stone were scattered in every direction, and though

Trincoaalee (The Holy Hill of Siva) 125
all were over-grown with weeds and barnacles many had a
curiously artificial appearance. At first we decided that this
must be an illusion; the action of the sea can sometimes carve rocks into surprisingly symmetrical patterns. But presently we had unmistakable evidence that beneath us was the work of
man, not of nature."
"The capital of a stone doorway, badly eroded but perfectly recognizable (plate 21), lay in the jumbled chaos of rocks. Beside it was a broken column, its square ends bearing on each face a lotus petal design not unlike the Tudor Rose (plates 22 and 23). As our eyes grew more skilled in interpreting what we saw, other regularities began to make themselves apparent. The ruins of some great building had been scattered along the sea-bed, where they lay in hopeless confusion. The water at the foot of the headland was quite shallow; where we were diving it was nowhere more than fifteen feet deep, and most of the broken masonry lay only about five feet below the surface. We continued our swim, often pausing to argue whether some curiously shaped stone was natural or artificial. The fragments were distributed along some two hundred feet of the shore line, and we had covered about half this distance when we came upon debris of a later civilisation."
The Temple of a Thousand Columns
"Even before Buddhism came to Ceylon around 300 B.C. the rock was sacred to the Hindus, who built at least three temples on or around it. The largest of these was a colossal edifice known as the Temple of a Thousand Columns; it stood until 1624, when it was destroyed by the fanatically religious Portuguese, during their blood-stained occupation of the country."
率
"Just below the highest point of the headland stands a new Hindu Temple. Inside the temple ranged against the far wall, is a display of five bronze gods including Siva, his consort, and the elephant god Ganesa."
"On the very highest tip of Swamy Rock there stands a single colunr, said to be one of the pillars of the original temple. The view from this point, four hundred feet above the sea, is both magnificent and vertiginous. One can look for miles along the coast, and see far down into the water washing at the foot of the rock."

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"As soon as we had located a temple attendant who spoke good English, Mike and I described our under-water discoveries and tried to obtain some information about the origin of the ruins. It was not until then that we had any idea of the antiquity of the place. There is evidence that a temple had stood on Swamy Rock for thirty-five hundred years; so it must be one of the oldest sites of continuous worship in the world.
"The priests..... in particular were anxious to locate the Lingam-the phallic symbol which is the emblem of Siva Worship which one might reasonably suppose to have been one of the first things the Portuguese iconoclasts threw into the sea....... However, the immense jumble of stone, natural and artificial, covering so many thousands of square feet of the sea bed made any systematic search hopeless. The best that we could do was to photograph the most clearly defined pieces of architecture so that those concerned would know just what was lying in the sea at the foot of the rock.
"The battered stone work at the foot of Swamy Rock was probably the most photographed under-water ruins in the world. (Plate 20).
"The destruction of the temple began on the Hindu New Year's Day 1624, when the Portuguese soldiers disguised as Priests mingles with the worshippers and so entered the sacred precincts. They waited until the temple was deserted by the New Year's Day crowds, who followed the procession down the hill and left only a few Priests on Swamy Rock. Then plundering started; probably all those left in the temple were killed, and in a few hours the accumulated treasure of about two thousand (three) years was looted. The KONESAR TEMPLE to give its proper name was one of the richest in Asia.
"It must have contained a fortune in gold, pearls and precious stones, and though the Portuguese must have captured most of this wealth, they did not get it all as was demonstrated three hundred years later.
"In 1950 some workmen were digging a well in Trincomalee when they came across metal about a yard below the surface. Further excavation revealed the statues of three Hindu Gods which were handed over to the authorities...... they comprised more than a hundred pounds weight of gold and copper alloy.
"The five statues which now stand in the new temple are among the finest examples of Hindu bronze sculpture known to exist. In particular, the seated figure of Siva, which dates

Trincomalee (The Holy Hii 11 of Siva) 127
from about the tenth century A.D., is regarded as a masterpiece...... these were found about 500 yards from the temple.... it would be most interesting to go over the rest of the Swamy Rock with a metal detector.
"After the looting of the temple, the building was des
troyed and the masonry either thrown into the sea or used to construct the fort which still guards the foot of the hill. Some of the temple's original stonework can still be identified in the European building, and by the entrance to the fort is a stone slab containing a curious inscription, which has been translated as follows:-
"O King ! The franks shall later break down the holy edifice built by Kulakoddan in ancient times; and it shall not be rebuilt nor will future kings think of doing so."
"Constantine de Sa records the existence of the prophecy and was sufficiently impressed to send a translation to Lisbon. (The prophecy is certainly remarkable as it was apparently carved centuries before the Portuguese arrived).
"In any event, the men who looted the temple did not long enjoy their gains. Six years later de Sa and his army of three thousand men were enticed into the jungle in the hope of finally conquering the reigning monarch. With the Portuguese were troops of local militia, who had learnt the lesson from the fifth column tactics the Europeans had used to enter and over-throw the temple. The Ceylonese recruits turned on the interlopers and slaughtered them to the last man.
"Siva the god of destruction, had worked his revenge. Today, more than hundred years later, he is still worshipped on Swamy Rock, while the men who smashed his temple are forgotten and their empire destroyed."
Dr. Paranavitane, the first Sinhalese Archaeological Commissioner of Ceylon, in Vol. 1, section C, "ARCHAEOLOGY AND ETHNOLOGY", JOURNAL OF SCIENCE, p. 172, refers to an inscription on the fragment of a door jamb where it is said that a prince named Codaganga came to Ceylon in 1223 A.D., and had something to do... As Dr. Paranavitane was unable to identify Codaganga of the inscription with any Prince of that name from other historical records of Ceylon or of India, he guesses that he was a scion of the EASTERN GANGA DYNASTY. It did not strike him that "Coda" may be a misreading of "Cola' (Chola) particularly as the Chola Tamils at this time were at the height of their naval supremacy in the Indian Ocean, and had had continuous contact with Ceylon in

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previous centuries. It is not known whether he had consulted any Indian archaeologist on the text of this inscription.
He, however, goes on to assume that the shrine referred to is Gokcarna, as a place of that name corresponds to the 'Sinhalese Gona, in which form it must have been in use among the Sinhalese of the area', before the Tamils displaced them and adopted the 'old Sinhalese' name and pronounced it in their way.
Dr. Paranavitane is probably not aware that a famous Siva shrine by the same name KOKANNAM or KOKARNAM exists in South India. It has been shown that the Prakrit not 'Sinhalese' 'GONA", is a prakritised form of the Tamil 'KO' or "KON'. Dr. Paranavitane, true to the tradition of the early Buddhist writers in Ceylon who had twisted Tamil words sometimes out of recognition in transforming Dravidian names into Pali or Prakrit forms wants us to believe that there were 'Sinhalese" in the Eastern Province as well in early times who built these shrines.
Gokanna is a Pali-ised Tamil word. The Dipavamsa (Ch. XXV, v. 45) tells us that it was a Gokanna which led Tissa to Mahinda. "Gokanna' was no other than Siva in the form of a bull who is alleged to have led one of his devotees to the father of the alleged apostle of Buddhism of Ceylon.
The Deva who assumed the form of an animal in order to lead Devanampiya Tissa to Mahinda's presence was a Gokanna. (VAMSATHA PAKKASINI, Introduction LXVII). It is not a strange coincidence that Panduvasudeva, and later Bhadaccaccana, a daughter of king Pandu landed at Gonagamaka, a village so called probably after the shrine of Siva at Tirukethiswaram in the Mannar district.
Dr. Paranavitane and other Sinhalese patriots of our day have a fertile field in Sanskrit and Pali to derive alleged 'Sinhalese' words and place names.

Trincomalee (The Holy Hill of Siva) 129
ETYMOLOGY OF THE WORD "KO" (SANSKRIT & PALI "GO")
TAMIL DICTIONARIES give the following meaning to 'KO'' and "KON".
(1) KO - (a) KING (b) a man in his prime (c) bull (d) cow
(e) hill or mountain.
KOVIL = KO + IL s where the "king" or "god" lives.
KOKANNAM a KO + KANNAM
s 'KO" bull (here the emblem of Siva) +
KANNAM 'ear', 'cheeks', also 'face'.
(The Sanskritised form of KOKANNAM, KOKANNA is GOKANNA, GOKARNA).
(2) (a) KON = 'King', 'master', 'lord', 'god'.
KONESAR - The God of the MOUNTAIN, 'Siva'. KONESWARAM - The temple of Siva. KONA-MA-MALAI - The great hill of Siva.
(b) KON - "a shepherd', 'a chief".
KONAN - One who belongs to the shepherd community. KONAR - 'a shepherd', 'a chief'.
There are a large number names with "KON" as prefix or suffix — KONAR, ALAGAKONAR, WERAKONE, ILANGAIKONE, SINNAKONE etc.
HIERAS - (INDO-PROTO-MEDITERRANEAN CULTURE) states that the old Pre-ARYAN name for HIMALAYAS was VEN-KO. VEN s white; KO s ("Mountain').

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THE GOD OF ADAM'S PEAK by Dr. S. PARANAWITANE Ex-Commissioner of Archaeology and presently Professor of Archaeology in the Ceylon Universi ty. Book published in 1958 by Artibus Asiae Publishers, Aseona, Switzerland.
In the preface of the book the author says that this is a further instalment of the results of his investigation into the religion of the ancient Sinhalese people. He adds: "Should any devotee of the God of Adam's Peak be perturbed at this being identified with Yama, let me remind them that this deity, the King of Righteousness (Dharma Raja) is good to the good".
The author says that the mountain has been venerated and written about throughout the centuries not because of its scenic grandeur but due to the reason that an indentation on its summit has been venerated as the footprint of the Buddha by the Buddhists, of Adam's by the Muslims and of Siva by the Hindus. He recalls the account given in the first chapter of the Mahavamsa of the three legendary visits of the Buddha to Ceylon and narrates how during His first visit, the Mahasu mana, the God of the Samankuta mountain (Adam's Peak) became the first convert of the Buddha. During the third visit to Ceylon undertaken by the Buddha on the invitation of Maniakkhika Naga the King of Kalyani, the Buddha is believed to have left his footprint on the Adam's Peak for his followers to worship. In 1055-11 10 A.D., Vijayabahu is said to have paid homage to the footprint. Nissanka Malla is reported to have made a pilgrimage to the peak in 1187 A.D. A learned Thera named Vedeha in the twelfth century had composed a poem containing 802 stanzas on the Footprint entitled "Samantakuta-Vannama", a major part of which deals with the career of the Buddha and his three legendary visits to Ceylon. Parakramabahu II, his son Vijayabahu, Viravikrama or Vikramabahu, Rajasinha I, Vimala Dharmasuriya (1707) had all undertaken journeys to the Peak. Rajasimha I (1581-1593) is stated to have handed over the Peak temple to the Saivites and it was returned to the Buddhists during the reign of Kirti Sri Rajasinha (1747-1780).
Adam's Peak is named as Rohuna in ancient Sanskrit works. The name Sivan-oli-padam, according to him, should be of recent origin and no evidence of Saivite worship is there before Rajasinha I who handed the worship of the footprint to the Hindus.

The God of da: " s Peak 3.
Mahavamsa named the mountain as Samanakuta, the origin of the name being the abode of the God Samana. The author says that there was reason to believe that Uppalavanna and Samana were Gods worshipped by the Sinhalese when they came from North India to colonise Ceylon in the fifth century BC. Mention of these Gods is made in the Mahavamsa to reconcile the local belief with the tenets of Buddhism. Samana in Pali, according to him, is Yama in Sanskrit.
The Sabaragamuwa Saman Devale inscription of the 39th year of Parakramabahu VI (1410-1467) refers to the God of Adam's Peak as Lakshmana, brother of Rama. The Jinakalamalini, a historical work written in Sian in Pali during the sixteenth century has also indicated that a God named Lakkhana (Lakshmana) is one of the Gods protecting Ceylon. Paranavitane explains that the term Footprint is expressed in Sinhalese as Pada-lasa which it is probable was often pronounced in the abbreviated form of lasa or las. As the God of the Footprint, Saman would have been referred to as Las-Saman-a name which the Brahmins who were placed in charge of the temple during the reign of Parakramabahu VI must have taken as identical with Rama's brother Lakshmana. The prevalence in Ceylon of the Vibiishana cult should have lent colour to it.
Then why the name SRIPADA? Paranavitane justifies it as follows: Sripati is a well-known name for Vishnu in Hindu puranas because he was the husband of Sri or Lakshmi. In the Rajadarma section in the Santhi-parva (Mahabaratha book XII) occurs, according to the author, the following sloka:
Visnor Lelatat Kamalam Suwarnam abbawat tadi Sri sam mbutta Yato devi patni darmasya dhimahi Sriyat sahalad Arthai ca jata darmena pandava Artha dar, as sathairvarthath siris ca rejyas prathristatha
The author interprets it as "At that time, a golden lotus came into being from the forehead of Vishnu wherefrom was born the Goddess Sri, the consort of wise Dharma. From Sri, by union with Dharrna, O Pandava, was born the Artha. Therefore in kinship are established Dharma as well as Artha and Sri".
Dharma being the name of Yama, he presumes that at one stage the Goddess Sri should have been the consort of Yanna. The Sinhalese Jataka of the fourteenth century identifies Sanan with Yama; thus the God of Adam's Peak is entitled to the epithet "Sripati". He cites Hopkins for the view that in an earlier strata of the Sanskrit epics, Sri was not the exclusive wife of Vishnu. He says that an earlier union of Sri with Dharma has persisted in Ceylon while it had been forgotten in India.

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132 S. J. Gunasegaram - Selected Writings
Who are the worshippers of the Footprint?
Footprint is known to have existed on the peak from times immemorial. Since it is agreed among the historians that the Buddha had never left the shores of India and had not even visited South of Vindhyas, it is established that it is not the Footprint of the Buddha. Before the arrival of Vijaya, the Vibiishana cult was in vogue in Ceylon. Vibiishana, according to Hindu mythology, was a devotee of Vishnu's avatar, Sri Rama. It is probable that the Footprint would have been considered as that of Vishnu from the time of Vibiishana or by the ancients who believed in the Godly qualities of Vibiishana.
Among the great religions of the world, adherents of no other religion except Vaishnavites-that is the followers of Vishnu attach inportance to Footprint Worship. In every Vishnu temple small or large in any part of the world, the Footprint impression of the presiding deity will be found immediately at the foot of the God and it is placed on the head of the devotee during worship. This sacred object with the Footprint of the God is called Satagopam. There will be no Vishnu temple without it.
Pada puja is an all-important element in all religious ceremonies of the Vaishnavites. Water is sprinkled on the footprint of the sages and the drops held in great esteem swallowed by the pious. This water is called "Sripada Theertham". Pada Worship had been an exclusive form of worship in vogue among the followers of Vishnu from a very early stage of Hinduism.
If one is to believe that the term Sripati has come from the so-called union of Sri with Yama and that Yama was identified with Saman, the argument that Saman was the God of the Footprint and therefore the Peak obtained the name Sripati was wrong. For, Saman had never been held as the God of the Footprint but one who worshipped the Footprint, himself believing that it was the Footprint of the Buddha. Therefore the name Sripati could not have come from this argument. Again the Peak is not called Sripati but Sripadam. Sripadam is very different from Sripati. The whole argument appears to be intended to confuse the reader rather than enlightening him.
- Nowhere in Hinduism had Sri been considered as the consort of Yama. Neither was she credited to have been born from the forehead of Vishnu.
Vibiishana's surrender to Rama is pregnant with meaningsurrender at the feet of righteousness. Ramayana relates in detail how Vibiishana fell at the foot of Rama and this should have induced him to worship the foot of the Lord rather than his entire self. For it was his act of surrender at the foot of

The God of Ada's Peak 33
Rama that drove evil from Ceylon and gave him the Kingdom. Worship of the Footprint at Adam's Peak might have begun to symbolise the "Surrender theory" of which the Vaishnavite was the staunch believer more than any other religionists.
Yama was of course a Vedic God but he was never worshipped as such by the Hindus at any time in their long history. Neither Yama nor Indra, Agni, Varuna and Soma had any temple anywhere in India at any time in her history. Modern researches by great thinkers and archaeologists of India did not show the existence of any temple to any of these Gods who were looked upon more as Dik Palakas than Gods. They had the right to receive the offerings, which were in the nature of wages paid for their service of waiting upon the Gods in various directions at ceremonial sacrifices. Apart from this they had no temples of their own for habitation.
The theory that Sri was once the consort of Yama and that this fickle woman married Vishnu at a later stage will be ridiculed by the Hindu thinkers in India. The obvious attempt to portray that the Sinhalese who migrated to Ceylon were those who practised the Vedic religion and not Hinduism and that they were pure and unmixed Aryans and therefore the practice of worshipping the Vedic Gods persisted among them will hold no water, as it is well known that the Sinhalese of the pre-Christian era were an admixture of the so-called pure-blooded Aryans and the Dravidians. Vijaya was certainly not a pure-blooded Aryan of Paranavitane's concept as Vijaya was a contemporary of Buddha and therefore a contemporary of Ajathasathru. The period marks the end of a roughly three thousand years of the Puranic period and the beginning of the historic period. Vedic religion, if at all there was one as such in North India, should have died three thousand years before the birth of Vijaya and the Buddha himself. To maintain that the Vedic Aryans migrated to Ceylon some four thousand years ago with the Vedic Gods and their system of religious practices persisted in Ceylon when Buddhism was introduced and that Yama occupied an important place in the Vedic religion could hold good if there was even a semblance of such notion in India at any time in her long history. If the ancient practices could persist in Ceylon in spite of her vicissitudes in the centuries past with the impact of various cultures, surely, some semblance of it should still persist in some part, at least in the place of the origin of the Vedic cult. While we are able to unearth the Mohenjo-Daro civilisation which is much older than the Vedic civilisation, while we are able to gather enough material to assess the extent of the Dravidian Kingdoms during the three Sangam periods which extend beyond eight to nine thousand years back in the history of human existence, it should have

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surely been possible to have some material to establish the supremacy of Yana in the Hindu Pantheon, if at all it were a fact in the land of the origin of the Vedas.
If Buddha believed in the Vedic Gods and held Yama as the Supreme deity, he should have called him instead of the Sakka to protect Ceylon for the next five thousand years as Mahavamsa declares. Buddha was a born Hindu and knows the Gods of his religion more than Paranavitane. To him Vishnu was Supreme and hence he called the God with Chakra (that is Vishnu) to his assistance. If Saivaism was in power in the North at the time of the Buddha, it would be appropriate to interpret Sakka as Sankara, meaning Lord Siva, the Supreme entity of the Brahma, Vishnu, Siva triumvirate.
Paranavitane's concluding paragraph of the book is worth recording. For it exhibits his anxiety to establish the pure-Aryan blood of the Sinhalese of yore. Says Paranavitane: "Yama with when the deity of the Adam's Peak was originally identical possesses names or characteristics in common with the personages to whom the Footprint is attributed by the adherents of different religions today. Yama is Dharmaraja; so is Adam to the Muslims; Yama Kala, the destroyer; so is Mahakala and his function is to destroy the world when necessary. A mountain originally sacred to Yama could thus have become a place sacred to the adherents of Buddhism, Islam or Saivaism, by natural process of assimilation, when Yama came gradually to lose his hold on the religious conciousness of the people." Yama was of course considered as Dharmaraja not one who propagated Dharma but a Judge administering Dharma propagated and propounded by someone else. The epithet Dharmaraja to Yama has always been used in the Puranas as one who administerd Dharma and not Dharma personified. Secondly, Yama had never been considered as the father of the human race and no proof to this effect could be shown in any Sanskrit or other literature. On the other hand the epithet father of the human race or the creator of the human race is applicable only to Brahma. Yama was not the destructor of the world when it suited him. His power had been limited only to kill human beings when the time came for them to depart from the world-and not one second earlier. His function was to snatch the life of the human beings at the predestined time of death and assess the virtues and sins of the departed in the other world according to the set rules he was called upon to administer just like a paid servant of the judicature. From which source Paranavitane gained the impression that Yama was Dharma personified, the father of the human race and the ultimate destroyer of the world, one would like him to enlighten.

DONDRA (TENNAVAN-THURA)
There are few coastal towns in the Island spelt in so many different forms by writers, European as well as Ceylonese, as Dondra, in the extreme South, once famous for its ancient and resplendent Hindu Shrine. Ptolemy (150-160 A.D.) refers to it as Dagona 'sacred to the moon'. In fact in Ptolemy's map the extreme Southern part of Ceylon is itself described as 'sacred to the moon', which is a literal translation of the Tamil name 'SANTHRASEKARAR' by which this shrine appears to have been named by the early Tamils as mentioned in WAIPAVAMALA; (SANTHERA = MOON, + SEKARAR s "The wearer of Moon on his head', i.e. SIVA).
It should be pointed out that Ptolemy the Geographer did not visit Ceylon in person and that the information he obtained about the island was probably from the Tamil merchants with whom the Greek and Roman mariners carried on a flourishing trade in the Tamil country in South India during the first three centuries of the Christian era.
Centuries later Ibn Batuta (XIV C.), the Arab traveller who arrived at the capital of the Tamil king in North Ceylon and visited various towns and places in the South of Ceylon under this king's protection, refers to the shrine as DINAUR (TENAVAR). DE QUEYROZ the Portuguese writer calls the port eneWare. BELL in his KEGALLE REPORT alludes to it as DINEVAR and TENUWARA. The author of the PAL chronicle the CULAVAMSA (XIII C.) names it DEWAPURA and DEVANAGARA. A Sinhalese Mudaliyar writing in the Ceylon Literary Register on the Shrine calls it DEVUNUWARA. Later European writers have used forms such as DONDERY, DONDERA; and finally the name DONDRA has come to stay. The Waipavamalai refers to the port as THEIVANTHURAI.
The nearest approach to the name of the city may be inferred from Ibn Batuta's * DINAUR or TENEVAR, DE QUEYROZ'S Tenevare, and the second part of the name of the city which ends in 'THURAI" (a port). Ibn Batuta was accompanied by Tamil guides; the Portuguese were more familiar with the maritime regions, where Tamil was spoken then, with the Sinhalese in the interior; and Vaipavamalai is a Tamil work.
In their report written in 1700 A.D., Stafforts and Emans state that "among the Sinhalese there was universal ignorance

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about the tradition' connected with the shrine. The only evidence they could find was "an inscription in Cinghalese of a much later date than that of the structure". The main temple had already been razed to the ground by the Portuguese. But Stafforts and Emans state at the same time that there were many similar but smaller Pagodas (Hindu Temples) on the coast. They, however add that it (Dondra) still remains sacred to the votaries of Vishnu as being "the utmost limit which now remains of his conquest".
It was customary for early Tamil merchants who visited other countries of South-East Asia as well, to build Temples in their settlements both for Siva as well as Vishnu, the latter being considered as the patron deity of sea-farers. Dondra too similarly had shrines both for Siva as well as Vishnu. The Worship of Siva, however, seems to have played the more prominent part as the sacred Lingam and the shrines dedicated to MURUGAN (the God of Kataragama, Kumara or Murugan the son of Siva) and temples dedicated to other Hindu (Tamil) dei ties such as Valliam mai, Theivanai, Pathini and Ganesha (Pillayar) were also found there.
With the exception of the Pali twist given in the Cullavamsa and adopted by later Sinhalese writers, the endings of the name of the town in all other forms are obviously a corruption of the Tamil, "Thurai'. Compare the names of other coastal towns such as MATURE (MATARA), KALUTURA (KALUTARA), PANATURE (PANADURA) etc. Since it was "the utmost limit" to which the worship of Siva had extended the original name by which it was called-was in all likelihood TENAN-TURE, TENNAVAN-THURA, "the port of the LORD of the South" i.e. SIVA.
The Temple appears to have been known in ancient times to devotees both as SANTHIRASEKARAR KOVL and as NAGARASA KOVILA, according to a recent Sinhalese writer. The former name in Tamil signifies 'Siva' and the latter is the later Pali-ised form of the older NAGA-RASA-NILA KOVIL, the temple of the blue god of the Nagas which might refer both to Siva as well as to Vishnu. in later times a Buddhist Vihara came to be erected close to the Lingam Shrine.
In Tennent's CEYLON Vol. II, pp. 113-14, we find the following striking description of the temple and its destruction by the Portuguese:-
"Dondra Head, the Sunium of Ceylon, and the southern extremity of the island, is covered with the ruins of a temple, which was once one of the most celebrated in Ceylon. The

Dondra (Tennavan-Thurai) 137
headland itself has been the resort of devotees and pilgrims, from the most remote ages. Ptolemy describes it as Dagama, sacred to the Moon, and the Buddhists constructed there one of their earliest dagobas, the restoration of which was the care of successive sovereigns. But the most important temple was a shrine which in very early times had been erected by the Hindus in honour of Vishnu. It was in the height of its splendour, when, in 1587, the place was devastated in the course of the marauding expedition by which De Souza d'Arronches sought to create a diversion, during the siege of Colombo by Raja Singha II. The historians of the period state that at that time Dondera was the most renowned place of pilgrimage in Ceylon; Adam's Peak scarcely excepted."
"The temple, they say, was so vast, that from the sea it had the appearance of a city. The Pagoda was raised on vaulted arches, richly decorated, and roofed with plates of gilded copper. It was encompassed by a quadrangular cloister, that opened under verandahs, upon a terrace and gardens with odoriferous shrubs and trees, whose flowers were gathered by the priests for processions. De Souza entered the gates without resistance; and his soldiers tore down the statues, which were more than a thousand in number. The temple and its buildings were overthrown, its arches and its colonnades were demolished, and its gates and towers levelled with the ground. The plunder was immense, in ivory, gems, jewels, sandalwood, and ornaments of gold. As the last indignity that could be offered to the sacred place, cows were slaughtered in the courts, and the cars of the idol, with other combustible materials, being fired, the shrine was reduced to ashes. A stone doorway exquisitely carved, and a small building, whose extraordinary strength resisted the violence of the destroyers, are all that now remain standing; but the ground for a considerable distance is strewn with ruins, conspicuous among which are numbers of finely cut columns of granite. The dagoba which stood on the crown of the hill, is a mound of shapeless debris."
Referring to this shrine Mudaliyar H. E. Ameresekara (C.L.R., Vol. I, No. 5) writes, "According to legendary history KUMARAYA, the son of Siva is said to have landed at this place from India. His sacred weapon was the Vel. Cordinar states that near the shrine 'stands a Lingam or altar to MAHADEV (SIVA) in the generative character having a canopy of leaves erected over it apparently still frequented and revered".
In recent centuries as in the case of several other Hindu shrines such as KATARAGAMA, Dondra has become a sacred place of worship to Sinhalese Buddhists as well. At the annual

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festival though the gods worshipped remain the same, very few Tamils are found among the pilgrims.
According to the RAJAVALI (p. 248), a traditional history of ancient Ceylon written in Sinhalese in the XVIII C.; King Dapuloo is said to have repaired it in 650 A.D., and Parakramabahu the Great in 1 180. The Dapuloo of the Rajavali is probably the same Chief of Ruhuna as SAMY DAPPULA who is said to have built "KADIROLI' Vihara (KADIROLI is another form of the Tamil KATHIRKAMAM, a temple dedicated to Siva's son MURUGA).
The Ruhuna Chiefs (called Kings) were obviously Saivites who were liberal in their endowments to the Buddhist Sangha as well. In trying to explain away this fact in note 3, page 94 of Chapter XV, of the Culavamsa, we are told.
"Presumably there was at the spot a local Hindu cult, probably of SKANDA, the God of KAJARAGAMA, a kind of Patron Saint of Ruhuna; and the king did not neglect to reverence the deity'. The Sanskrit term 'SKANDA" and the PALI "KAJ ARAGAMA" are used avoiding the term MURUGA, KUMARA and KATHIRGAMAN, names more familiar to the Tamils as well as Sinhalese. But there is a tacit admission that MURUGA the son of Siva was the Patron Saint of Ruhuna. This corroborates the fact that Ruhuna was known in early times as SANTHIRASEHARAM, "Sacred to Siva".

10.
Dondra (Tenna van-Thurai) 139
NOTES
Ptolemy (A.D. 150) when he compiled his Geography probably learnt about Ceylon from Tamil mariners. (Warmington 'Commerce with the Roman Empire and India", p. 151).
"Even in Ptolemy's time the Greeks were still
content to pass by without paying a visit to Ceylon". (ibid. p. 123).
Ptolemy indicates expressly that even in his time and afterwards the bulk of the produce of Ceylon reached the Greeks by way of Tamil (and especially Malabar) marts in Indian Wessels. (ibid. p. 120).
Tennent "Ceylon " Wol. I, p. 582.
C.L.R., Wol. I, No. 6, p. 279.
C.L. R. , Wo. I, No. 6, p. 279.
C.L.R., ibid.; Cordiner, Ceylon" pp. 185-187.
C.L.R., Wol. I No. 5, p. 199.
C.L.R., Wol. I, No. 7, p. 661; MHW XVI, vv. 49-56.
"Culavansa", XIV, p. 94, n. 3.
Pridham says that the pillars of the temple at Dondra
resemble those of the Hindu temple at Trincomalee. (Pridham's Account of Ceylon", p. 282).

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KALUTARA THE BOUNDARY CTY OF RUHUNA VELAPURA-CITY OF MURUGA
KALUTARA is a comparatively recent commercial town that grew up along the South-Western coast of Ceylon. It is situated at the mouth of the Kaluganga. The name of this town was written by early European writers as Culture. The spelling suggests that it was the corruption of the word Kala-Ture (Tamil). KALAM ( morth ) or "KALU" in Tamil means "black', 'dark", "neck'; and 'Turai' 'a port'. The town was not known to the authors of the Culavamsa.
In his Census Report of 1901, p. 7, Sir P. Arunachalam gives the following account:
"The Southern bank of the Kalutara river near its mouth (Kalutara South Railway Station) is still locally called Velapura the city of the lance-god (the lance being his favourite weapon) and marks the limit of his territory, while the opposite bank of the river is assigned to his enemies and is called Desestra (the enemies of the gods)."
MURUKA (MURUGAN) is Kumara, the son of Siva, and the lance or "Vel' is the weapon associated with him. He is also called in Tamil 'Vela" or "Welan'. That the worship of Siva and his son Welan or Murugan was of long antiquity in South Ceylon, especially in Ruhuna, is historically and by tradition confirmed. Many kings of the Sinhalese are said to have visited and worshipped at Murugan's shrine at Kataragama. (vide, "KATARAGAMA", C. L.R., Vol. L, No. 7, July 1931). Samy Dappula of Ruhuna, for instance, in the seventh century, is said to have built the Kadiroli Vihara. 'KADIROLI' stands for Murugan the god of Kataragama ("Kadir" or "Kathir", "rays" and 'oli', 'light" or 'effulgence").
Father S. G. Perera the Catholic historian of Ceylon in the C.L.R., Vol. I, p. 93, 1931, however, commenting on Sir P. Arunachalam's explanation of the name of the city writes, "I submit that there is no trace of any connection between Kalutara and 'Murugan' to justify this conjecture, but that on the contrary the name Velapura is far better explained from "Vela' "a boundary" as Kalutara would mean the boundary city of Ruhuna, and "Destra", hostile to the King".
Father Perera admits that Velapura is in the boundary of Ruhuna, a district which had from early times held Murugan the

Kalutara - Velapura - City of Muruga 14
god of KATARAGAM in veneration, but at the same time he declares that "there is no trace of any connection between, Kalutara and Murugan'. He has unaccountably ignored the many Hindu temples still found in Kalutara and the settlements of Tamils in the area.
Unless any reference to this city in Sinhalese literature before the arrival of the Portuguese could be produced to show that it was a Buddhist town it should be understood that it was the extreme limit of Ruhuna up to which Siva worship and that of His Son had extended at the time of the arrival of the Portuguese. The worshippers of Muruga had called it Velapura, the city dedicated to Murugan, and the town on the north DESESTRA or the territory in the possession of "ASURAS", the enemies of Murugan. Siva's son is said to have destroyed the mighty and wicked Suran or Padara of the Asuras. It is long anterior to the twelve year war of Rama with Ravana which according to the Rajavaliya took place circa B.C. 2387.
Father S. G. Perera gives the meaning of "Vela" as "boundary". This word "Vela" is of course a corruption of the Tamil word "Veli" (Gove) meaning "custody', 'watch', 'wall', and "Puram" again refers to 'a city' in Tamil (cf. KANCHIPURAM, THOLPURAM etc.). But it is more appropriate to infer that the city was called after VELAN or VELA (MURUGAN). At the time of the naming of the Southern part of the city the Portuguese seem to have extended their influence and religion up to the northern bank of the river KALUGANGA, and this was a symbol of the opposition to the extension of Catholicism beyond the river. The meaning Father S. G. Perera gives to "DESESTRA" "hostile to the king' is equally ingenious. "DESA" would mean country and if "ESTRA" is taken to be a corruption of 'Sathuru" (enemy) then the phrase would mean 'enemies of the country'. On the other hand if "DE" is taken to stand for 'gods' and "ESTRA for 'enemies', then it should mean "enemies of the gods'. It is in one of these two senses that the people of the South bank of the Kalutara river had looked upon the aggressive encroachment of an alien power and all alien religion.

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DESCRIPTION OF THE KANDY PERAHERA
S. J. GUNASEGARAM
A faithful and fascinating description of the Kandy Perahera, as conducted in the Hill Capital during Knox's time, in about the year 1680, is found on pages 125 to 127 of Knox's "Historical Relation of Ceylon" (Glasgow Edition, MCMXI).
According to Knox, there were two annual solemn festivals held in the Kandyan Districts-the one in honour of the "Gods that govern the Earth and all things referring to this life", and the other "belonging to Buddou whose Province is to take care of the soul and future well-being of men".
Knox classes the Perahera under the festivals of 'the former sort' that is to honour the "Gods and procure their aid and assistance". In Knox's time the Perahera appears to have been held "early in the month of June or July, at a New Moon". Though it was a "Solemn Festival and general meeting none were compelled". Some went to one Pagoda and some to another. "The greatest solemnity", he adds, "is performed in the City of Kandy".
The Panted Stick
The most sacred object of worship was the Painted Stick hung with flowers and "wrapped in branched silk, some part covered and some not. The people bowed down and worshipped this and each one presented it with an offering. After receiving the free will offering of the people "the Priest takes the painted stick on his shoulder, having a cloth tied about his mouth to keep his breath from polluting the pure piece of wood, and also upon an elephant all covered with white cloth which he rides with all triumph that King and Kingdom can offer through all the streets of the City. But before him go, first some forty or fifty elephants with brass bells hanging on each side, which tingle as they go".
Giants
Next in order followed men "dressed up" like giants; after these "a great multitude of Drummers, and Trumpeters and Pipers; then followed a company of men dancing. After them came women of such castes and trade as are necessary for the service of the Pagoda". Among the latter were potters and washer-women in different groups by themselves "three and three in a row, holding one other by the hand". Between each of these groups "go Drummers, Pipers and Dancers'.

Description of the Kandy Perahera 143
"Kataraga Dio and Paththini Dio"
Within a yard of the Priest with the Painted Stick on his shoulder, two other Priests, one on the left and the other on the right, followed on mounted elephants. One of them "represented" the Kataragama deity and the other the Goddess Paththini. "These three Gods that ride here in company" says Knox, "are accounted of all other greatest and chiefest, each one having his residence in a several Pagoda".
Ladies
The elephants which carried these Gods were followed by cook women with "things like whisks in their hands to scare away flies dressed in all their finery'. After these "walked thousands of ladies and gentlemen such as of the better sort of the inhabitants of the land arrayed in the bravest manner'. As in our own day, Knox is faithful to add, 'all the beauties of Zeylone in their bravery go to attend their Gods in their progress about the city'.
The streets were decorated gally with flags and pennons adorned with "boughs and branches" of coconut trees "hanging like fringes". The roads along which the procession wended its way were lit with lamps "both day and night".
Commanders and Soldiers
The rear was led by the commanders accompanied by soldiers. They were sent by the King so that the "ceremonies are decently performed". The procession took place "one by day and once at night". The entire festival is said to have lasted "from the New Moon until the Full Moon'.
Significance of the Painted Stick
Knox explains that the "Painted Stick" represented 'Allout Neur Dio', that is "the God and maker of Heaven and Earth'. Most of us are familiar with the antiquity of the worship of Murugan (Kataragama Deo) in Ceylon, and the popularity of the worship of Kannaki (Paththini Deo) in Ceylon since the days of Gajabahu I. To appreciate the significance of the Painted Stick one has to refer to the Silappathikaram, the epic of the Anklet. The Silappathikaran which relates, the story of Kannaki, the chaste wife of Kovalan who was deified as Paththini, the goddess of Chastity, is also a treatise on Dance. The epic shows how religious dances were centred round the worship of Murugan known as the Kathirgaman God in Ceylon, and Mayon (Vishnu) and Korravai (Durga). ܀- m
It will be recalled that Gajabahu I (113-135 A.D.) had been present, very likely at the invitation of the Chera King Senguttuvan, at the dedication of the Paththini Temple. On his

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return to Ceylon he is said to have brought with him Tamil colonists, (most of whom were skilled workers) and settled them in different districts-Alut Kuruwa, Sarasiya Patty, Pansiya Pattu, Thampane, Hewahetta, Yatinuwara, Egoda Tiha, Megoda Tiha (Rajavali).
The colonists were all Tamils. The Perahera, as Knox saw it, was in all probability a festival originated by these colonists who had introduced the Paththini Cult brought by them from their mother country. The worship of Murugan (Kataragama Deo) was probably as ancient as, if not earlier than, the period of Vijaya himself.
The significance of the Painted Stick is described in Silappathikaram. The story goes that during a dance in Indra's heaven, Indra's son Jayantha and Uruvasi behaved in an improper manner; and that Agastiya who was present cursed Jayantha to be born as a bamboo stick in the Vindhyas and Uruvasi to be born as a human dancer. Agastiya eventually modified the curse by declaring that the bamboo stick be used as a Talaikol (the "leading' or "Head Stick") gally painted and decorated and taken in procession as a symbol of the art of dance, and that human dance artists born in the line of Uruvasi should worship the Talaikol and then exhibit their skill in the Art of Dancing.
Perahera
The word Perahera would appear to be the 'Sinhalised' form of the Tamil 'piraharam", meaning the "Veediya" or the pathway round the precincts of a Hindu temple. Thus (Suththu.) piraharam means a sacred procession round the temple precincts held annually in honour of the deity as it is taken round to the accompaniment of dance, music and other forms of rejoicing. In the Silappathikaram as well as in the Epic Manimekalai (a Buddhist Epic in Tamil) the festival held in honour of Indra is described. The Allout Neur Dio corresponds to the Tamil Puthu (new) Neur (Ur) the New City. The new town was probably named by the new colonists and dedicated to Indra the Hindu "God and maker of Heaven and Earth".
I give below more recent accounts of the Perahera from three different sources. The first is a fairly detailed description compiled by an European official in the Ceylon Government in the year MDCCCXXXIV (1834). This account "compiled from material furnished by a Native Chief", is found in fuller detail in the Ceylon Almanac for the year MDCCCXXXIV, page 210.
"The Peraheral commenced with the new moon in Essela (August), and continued to the full moon.

Description of the Kandy Perahera 45
"Until the reign of King Kirti Sree (A.D. 1747-1780) the Perahera was celebrated exclusively in honour of the four Hindu Deities-Natha, Vishnu, Kataragam' and Paththini and was altogether unconnected with Buddhism.
"The Perahera began with the consecration and hewing down of a young jak tree, and cutting the trunk into four legs and placing one before each of the four temples.
(The temples of Natha, Vishnu, Kataragam and Paththini).
"On the fifth day Randolee (or the golden Palanquin belonging to the consorts of the gods Natha, Vishnu, Kataragam Deo and of the goddess Paththini) were brought forth to join the procession; the Patripo (Octagon near the Maligawa temple) was decorated sumptuously with gold cloth and the chiefs, the soldiery and the inhabitants in general, in their best attire assembled; each department proceeded with its appropriate arms and banners.
"The two Adigars and the Gajanaike Nilame (chief of the elephant department) holding an ankusa took their station in the great square on the right-the King in rich dress came into the Patripo, when the curtains were drawn aside. As soon as the King was presented to the public view, the leader of the band of singers recited an invocation in verse-instrumental music followed
"The two Adigars and all the other chiefs presented themselves in view of the King, uttered loud prayers for the prosperity of the monarch and his kingdom, and paid homage by prostration.
"The king then asked the first Adigar about the Dissavanies and districts; the Adigar gave a description of the different classes of people and how they were marshalled. The king expressed his desire that the Chiefs should adjourn to the area opposite to the Devale and then conduct the procession.
"The chiefs proceeded thither and returned headed by their respective banners when they repeated the honours to his Majesty as before.
"The petty headmen were ordered to proceed and lead the procession. The Chiefs remained. The King repaired to the Maligawa and brought with his own hands the Karandoowe which he placed in the "ranhilligey' upon the elephant, and proceeded on foot to the square where he took his stand on the "haridagala' (a stone having the figure of the moon carved upon

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it) with a silver wand in his hand, and followed in the train of the procession in the Randolee."
(The order in which the procession was arranged is described here briefly by the writer).
The Last Night of the Perahera
"On the last night of the Perahera, after the procession had gone round the streets, it separated into two divisions: that part of it attached to the four gods taking a direction towards the ferry Getambe, and the other part belonging to the sacred relics proceeding to the Adahammuluwe," a spot set apart for religious purpose and assemblies of priests the limits of which are marked by carved stones within which the kings of Kandy are said to have had no authority.
"Here the shrine was removed from the elephant and deposited on a platform made for the purpose, where it remained receiving the adoration of the worshippers till 10 o'clock on the following morning.
Water Cutting Ceremony
"Meanwhile the other part of the procession having arrived at the river side, the ceremony of cutting water (Dia Kappanawa)18 took place. The Caporales and other officers of the respective temples were rowed to the middle of the river in decorated canoes, where the Caporales with a golden sword described a circle in the water from the centre of which each filled a golden vase (T. Chembu), and the water which was taken in the preceding year was poured out again. The procession then went to the spot where the relic had been deposited. After which the whole procession made a circuit of the city and halted between Natha and Maha Dewales, from whence the different parties returned to their respective temples."
Here is another account of the Perahera from the work of a well known Sinhalese scholar (the late Mr. E. W. Perera), entitled "Sinhalese Banners and Standards" (Series A, No. 2), and quoted by Dr. H. M. de Silva, another distinguished Sinhalese, in the Times of Ceylon of 14.XII.56, in an article entitled, "The Sinhalese and the Tamils are Related".
"In ancient times, in Lanka, the Hindu King was carried behind the procession with its golden Howdah. And like the former Kings of Lanka he 20 wished to display to the different classes of his subjects the rejoicings that were held in honour of Natha, Vishnu and other gods, regarded by all as conducive to prosperity. With this object preparations were made throughout the city that it resembled the city of the gods.

Description of the Kandy Perahera 147
"He caused the emblems of the gods in the temples to be placed on elephants and commanded them to be taken in procession accompanied before and after by elephants and a host of dancers, by numbers of elephants and horses, by men dressed as Brahmins gorgeously arrayed, by persons holding various umbrellas and chowries 21 (yak-tail fans); by numbers of women, officers of state, sword bearers, shield bearers, spearmen and men at arms; by people carrying scarfs and flags, by men of foreign countries, men skilled in different languages, by crowds of artisans and craftsmen and assemblage of people.
"The King followed in Royal state like the King of Heaven, and when he had traversed the whole city with the procession (Perahera) returned and entered the Palace. While our great King thus celebrated Esala Festival yearly, he thought it proper as his faith and wisdom increased, that it ought to be preceded by a procession in honour of Buddha.
"Until the reign of King Kirti Sree (Rajasingha, A.D. 17471780) the Perahera was celebrated exclusively in honour of the . four deities-Natha, Vishnu, Kataragam, and Paththini and altogether unconnected with Buddhism. The sacred Dalada Relic of Buddha was first carried in procession, together with the insignia of the four gods in A.D. 1775; the circumstances which gave rise to this innovation were as follows:
"The Siamese 22 priests who were invited hither by the King Kirti Sree in the year of . Saka 1675, for the purpose of restoring the Upasanpadawa (the highest degree of ordination in the Buddhist religion) one day hearing the noise Jingalls etc., inquired the cause, and were informed that preparations were being made for celebrating a festival in honour of the Gods; they took umbrage at this and observed that they had been made to believe that Buddhism was the established religion, and that they had never expected to see Hinduism triumphant at Kandy. To appease23 them the King sent emissaries to assure them that this festival was chiefly intended to glorify the memory of Buddha and to convince them of it, the King gave directions that the great relic should be carried foremost in the procession. He at the same time dedicated his own howdah... in which the Karanduwa was placed during the procession to the Maligawa temple, and this howdah has been so used ever since. The King and his successors never after that had a howdah when they rode on elephants.
"Seven or eight years before the accession of the present Government the since deposed king bestowed a Rinhillegey on each of the four Devales 24 in Kandy; they had none before.

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"This clearly proves how Buddhism usurped the Hindu rites and how it adapted these to its own purpose."
I give below, for what it is worth, a brief account of an eye witness of the Perahera in our own day.
"The Perahera (Tamil = 9p 36rtp ub ) (Piraharam) starts from the Paththini (Kannakai Temple) with the hoisting of the flag and the planting of a tree. Round the trunk of the tree is tied a string. This ceremony is called "Kap-Sittaveema", and in Tamil Kapukaddu 25 (Tamil = &5nTü šias LG ) i.e. "tying of the bangle'. The Sinhala term it will be noticed is a literal translation of the Tamil word.
"During the first five days, the Procession (Perahera) is confined to the ul-veethi (alaios). The procession is called "kumba"26 Perahera in Sinhalese.
The Perahera proper (Suthu-Piraharam also known as alsTriavath in Tamil) takes the form of a procession round the streets of the city. On this final day which is a full moon day the procession is headed by the Tooth Relic.
"The water cutting ceremony-(theertham or if Gaul G5) i.e. the Dia Kappanuwa (a literal translation of the Tamil expression in Sinhalese), takes place in the Mahavali Ganga that skirts the city near Katugastota and forms the grand culmination of the Festival. A box that is carried in the procession is dipped in the water of the river, and the water is cut with a sword.
"When the water cutting ceremony is over, the Procession wends its way to the Paththini Devale back again and from there proceeds to the Maligawa temple. A chembu ( Gril) (Chembuva in Sinhalese) which contains the 'water cut', is taken on this journey to the main temple and preserved till the next
year."

REFERENCES AND NOTES
Perahera is the Pali-ised form of the Tamil 5-7 9 (Piraharam, i.e. the "Weediya" or the 'Weethi' round the temple). •
Kirthi Sri Rajasingha(m), a Tamil King and a Hindu who was King of KANDY (A.D. 1747-1780).
NATHA, i.e. Siva, the Supreme Being.
KATARAGAM or KATARAGAMA; Tamil, KATHIRAGAMAM, i.e., the Willage (Kamam) let by the refulgence of Siva, the light of the Sun. (GAMA-PALI); Tamil KIRAMAM (6 Tilb) KAMAM, ( ; LDub Village).
PATHTHINI, the Goddess of Chastity. Paththini is another name for Kannakai, the heroine of SILAPPATHIKARAM, the Tamil Epic of the second century A.D. The worship of Paththini was introduced into Ceylon in the reign of Gajabahu I (A.D. 114-136). Gajabahu, according to the Silappathikaram, was present at the dedication of the temple to Kannakai. On his return to Ceylon he is said to have brought with him a number of skilled workmen and artisans to Ceylon who were settled in different villages in the island.
RANDOLEE is the corruption of the Tamil THANGA(M) = fine or pure gold and oli ( 66f) a covert i.e. the gold covert or casket in which the idol or relic was carried during the procession.
PALLANQUIN (Tamil, Pallakku). Palanquin is the English word derived from the Tamil Pallakku ( Lucie) dig, ) in Malay the carriage is called "PALANKI".
PATRIPO (PATTIRUPPU) means a "Silken Dais". It is the combination of the two Tamil words Pattu ( Lu G ) is silk and Iruppu (gC5L) seat i.e. the Silken Dais in which the King took his seat on festive occasions. "The Patripo" (the octagon near the Maligawa temple) was decorated sumptuously with gold cloth.
ADIGAR Tami 1 Athikar or Athikari ( 939anrif ) aeaning "a chief", "one who exercises authority'- an "Athipathi"
( அதிபதி ).

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10.
11
12.
13.
l4.
5.
l6.
17
18.
S. J. Gunasegara - Selected Writings
GAJANAIKE; Tamil KAYAM (asub ) elephant and NAIKE (NAYAGAM- As studs b ) Lord or chief. "The chief of elephant'. (cf. GAJABAHU (Pali) "KAYAPAHAN', (Tami1), a Pandyan Royal title).
ANKUSA (Tamil Syrši Saruh ANKUSAM), "an elephant's goad".
DISSAWANI; from the two Tamil words THISAI ( SGN F ) a region (larger than a district) and VANNI, 'a chief" i.e. "a region under a WANNIYAR or CHIEF".
MALIGAWA from the Tamil "MALIHAI" ( Direfoods) a palace; "a strong edifice'.
KARANDOOWE or KARANDAWA, from the Tamil KARANDE ( 65 prote soul) an abode of Rishi or Sages. Here the KARANDAWA is the receptacle containing the image of the deity or the tooth relic of the Buddha as the case might be.
RANHILLEGEY (vide, Note 6 above) RAN s Thangam (assisti) in Tamil meaning "pure gold". Here Ranhillegey would mean 'the golden house or canopy under which the KARANDAWA is placed on the back of the elephant. (cf. Rangavadam (S); Rang (T) golden and "Vadam' (T) cloth. The golden cloth worn by the kings' household guards round their heads.
HARIDAGALA: Harida is the Prakrit for 'Moon" and Gala (S) is the Tamil Kal (.sdy ). The King standing on a stone on which the goon was inscribed is meant to invoke the blessing of the gods on the Pandyan dynasty (the lunar or noon dynasty) to which the kings of Ceylon claimed to belong.
ADAHAN MULUWE.; ADAHAN is probably from the Tamil word ADIHAL ( sylglassir ) meaning "MUNIS', RISHIS or PRIESTS, and MULUWE the Tamil MULAI ( epau) "a corner", "a dwelling place set apart' (cf. also the Tamil ADAITHTHAL. 96-5a56 ) 'securing", and ( syan L-dia, with ) (ADAIKKALAM) a "refuge', 'Asylum".
- DIA KAPPANAWA. Sinhalese: "DIA", "WATER" and "KAPPA
NAWA', 'to cut". It is a literal translation of the Hindu ceremony. In Tamil it is also referred to as the "THEPPAM FESTIVAL" because the cutting of the water is done by priests who row out on a Theppam or boat. DIA again is probably derived from the Tamil THIAM (Sub ) or (5th ) meaning "sweet' 'delicious".

19.
20.
21.
22.
23.
24.
25.
26.
Description of the Kandy Perahera 151
CAPORALES (KAPURALAS). Generally a Weddah placed in charge of the Deity in a Kovil in the Sinhalese Districts particularly in the Weddah country.
"he", refers to KIRTI SREE (KIIRTHI SRI) RAJASINGHA (M) mentioned here as emulating the former Hindu Kings of Ceylon.
CHOWRIES, the anglicised form of the Tamil KAVARI ( self ) "KAVARI WAL" in Tamil means the tail of the Yak, used to fan idols in procession. The YAK TAIL hair was also used as a wig by females. KAMBAN in his Tamil RAMAYANAM (10th century) refers to it as one of the articles on sale in the markets of the Tamil country.
“வரப்பறு மணியும் பொன்னு மாரமும் கவரி வாலும் "
(MITHILAI PADALAM, v. 20).
The Siargese Priests were invited by the Hindu Tamil King of Kandy KIRTI SREE for ordaining Buddhist Priests. It may be observed, incidentally that the Siamese were at an earlier period Saivites. Quaritch Wales in his "SIAMESE STATE CEREMONIES" states, "They have also one hymn in Tamil, written in one Indian character, but this language they do not likewise understand - the tests which the Siamese Brahmins now possess are the Sanskrit and Tamil Mantra (hymns) with instruction in Siamese for the preliminary rites intended to be used in daily worship, and as an introduction to the more important ceremonies." Page 55. The Tamil mantra is the 'opening of the Patals of Kailasa', p. 56 •
The Kings of Ceylon had all to appease the Buddhist priests. The numerical strength of the priests and the hold they had on the common people would appear to have been great. Still it was not the clamour of the people but the demand of the Priesthood that obliged the King to introduce the innovation.
DEWALES: The English form, of the Tamil THEVA ALAYAM (Ggain Guth) "the temple of the gods'.
KAPPUKKADDU. Tamil on lily dial-6, 5 IT till (Kappu) in Tamil, "bangle" and (as G.) (Kaddu), "to tie".
KUMBAL possibly from "Kumbal" or "Kuvial" (Tamil) a procession en masse, together (not a methodically arranged one as the procession round the city) and confined to the immediate precincts of the temple.

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THE HISTORICITY OF AGATHIAR
S. J. GUNASEGARAM
There has heen a strong and persistent tradition through many centuries that Agathiar, an Aryan Brahmin, was the founder of the Tamil language and the author of its first grammar. This grammar of Agathiar, however, has not come down to posterity, nor has any subsequent grammarian or scholar used it as an authority or given a single quotation from the supposed work of Agathiar.
Tholkappian, the oldest extant grammar of the Tamil Language, written in or about the fourth century B.C., makes no mention of Agathiar, although the same tradition refers to Tholkappiar, the author of Tholkappiam, as having been Agathiar's disciple. It is curious that even Panamparanar, who wrote the preface to Tholkappiam has made no reference whatever to Agathiar. If the belief in the authorship of a Tamil grammar written by Agathiar had existed in his time, it is very unlikely that Panamparanar too would have failed to record it.
It is equally striking that the Third Sangam works, the earliest extant literature in Tamil, make no mention of Agathiar. A single reference to the name is found in Irayanar's Agapporul which gives the story of the Tamil Sangams but the Agathlar in this instance refers to a constellation and not to a person. (Paripadal 11th poem-ps diffigieus) if ).
P. T. S. Iyengar has pointed out in his History of the Tamils, p. 224, that for nearly one thousand years after Christ there is no mention of Agathiar having learnt Tamil from God nor that he was the founder of Tamil. The stories assigning to Siva the origin of Tamil and to Agathiar, the authorship of the first Tamil grammar, appear to have originated nearly a thousand years after Christ.
Dr. L. D. Barnett was of opinion that the myth of an Aryan Muni called Agathiar who lived at Pothia Hills and composed the earliest Tamil grammar, was cultivated after the North Indian Brahmin had planted his influence firmly in the South ("Cambridge History of India", Vol. 1, p. 596).
The story appears to have originated actually in the 8th or 9th century A.D. Though in Manimekalai (2 A.D.) reference is made to an Agathiar, he is not associated either with the Tamil language or its grammar(p. 6. sjaosunu9aitä:n "2555usi')

The Historicity of Agathiar 153
Srinivasa Iyengar (Tamil Studies, Appendix II) wrote long ago that, Tholkappiar "has not said anywhere in his grammar one word about Agastya, his reputed teacher'. "It has been at least the Tamil custom for an author to begin his work with a salutation for his teacher or Acharya. In this case the teacher was a divine Rishi and the suppositious writer of the first Tamil grammar. Both of them flourished at the same period. It is not understood why Tholkappiar should have taken so much trouble to observe the usages, to study the Tamil authors and to deduce from then the grammatical rules, or why he should have recited his work for the approval and edification of the Academy before a fellow student-Athanagottasan, while Asastya was its president... But all these throw serious doubts as to whether Agastya had really written a Tamil grammar and whether Tholkappiar was ever his disciple... No man has ever seen Agastya's grammar... What I am inclined to believe is that every myth and tradition connected with Agastya with the Tamil language, should have come into existence subsequent to the seventh or eighth century A.D."
The same author has pointed out elsewhere in the same treatise that "in the early centuries of the Christian era the Tamils seem to have held that Tamil was an independent language" and that "it had nothing to do with Sanskrit'. Tholkappiar himself states in his work that he had consulted earlier grannars and poetical works. Tamil at this period obviously had already a written language and a body of literature. besides, as Srinivasa Iyengar has shown 'Sanskrit words in Tamil must have been so few in those days'. Tholkappiar quotes from Tamil works prior to his time and states clearly that special rules were not required to deal with foreign words in Tamil-an indication that at this period the influence of Sanskrit on Tamil was negligible. Srinivasa Iyengar adds, "It was when they (the Tamils) came under Sanskrit culture (that was subsequent to the seventh or eighth century A.D.) the views of Tamil Scholars began to change. Most of them were acquainted with Tamil and Sanskrit. It was because Sanskrit was used as a vehicle of religious thought during this period, a partiality or rather a sentiment connected with religion induced them to trace Tamil fron Sanskrit, just as the early European divines tried to trace the Western languages from Hebrew".
This is no doubt a charitable explanation, but whether or not, it was, at the same time, a planned cultural conspiracy on the part of the Aryanised Brahmins to give priority and supremacy to Sanskrit, the language of the civilising Aryans, and to establish an Aryo-Brahmin dominion over Bharata which they had changed into Aryavarta has to be considered. This interference has not been confined to the domain of religion and to that of

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the courts where Brahmins found places as priests and advisers, but extended even to the Sanskritisation of place names and names of rivers and mountains.
From the early days of the Aryan incursion with India, that there has been a studied attempt on the part of the newcomers to give an Aryan colouring to the indigenous culture, has been noted by many scholars.
"It is an acknowledged fact," says Hewitt in his Notes on the Early History of Northern India, p. 216, "that at times the Aryans when naming Dravidian tribes distorted original Dravidian names so as to give an Aryan meaning".
Marshall in his book A Phrenologist anong the Todas states, "The low state of culture of the Aryans before their incursion into India, might have contributed a great deal to their final acceptance of an easy amalgamation with the culture of the Dravidians. It has been suggested long ago that prior to their immigration into India, the Aryans of that era were probably of a similar stage of culture to the Todas".
Tamil gods like Muruga, Tirumal (Mai) were given Aryan names like Subramania and Vishnu. Dravidian names of rivers, and places had been Aryanised. Even the word "Pandai" (uoi, oni-) "old" in Tamil from which the Pandyans derive their name had been changed into Pandavas. ( 5,57). 556ko abuntu onaia bat,
"அகத்தியர்" )
"That the more brawny but thicker witted Aryan could learn the extraordinarily difficult language of the 'ill spoken man', as the Vedas term the Dravidian was not to be supposed. The Dravidian instead had to learn Sanskrit." (Slater, Dravidian Element in Indian Culture, p. 61).
There appears to be some truth in the contention that Dravidian scholars who had gained proficiency in Sanskrit, had translated a large number of Tamil works into Sanskrit which in course of time came to be regarded as Sanskrit originals. In the book referred to above Slater says, "Indian culture, with its special characteristics of systematic and subtle philosophical thought, must have come from people of originality developing it. That capacity would naturally be exhibited also in the evolution of language, and the purest Dravidian language does exhibit it in the highest degree-in a higher degree than any other Indian language". (ibid. p. 33).
The apostles of this Aryo-Dravidian synthesis were the Brahmins, a priestly caste formed in North India, long after the

The Historicity of Agathiar 155
primitive Indo-Aryans occupied it. These priests in all probability, were of Dravidian origin, who by virtue of their superior knowledge and alleged magical powers attributed to them by the Aryans in the Rig-Veda, became pers o na e - g ra ta e among the Aryan ruling classes and, particularly, in the royal households; and at the same time acted as liaison officers between the new comers and the original inhabitants of India. The Brihadaranyaka Upanishad itself acknowledges that of the Aryan speakers who were white (sukla), brown or tawny (kapila) and dark or black (syama) and who studied the Vedas, the last was the cleverest of the three, knowing all the three Vedas, while others knew one and two.
The vedic Aryans did not know the art of writing, and the alphabet itself was learnt by them from the Dravidians. The Brahmins of this early age who had gradually acquired an Aryan complex could not have suspected that later generations would laugh at the puerile myth of their making that an Aryan Brahmin had to come down to the highly organised and cultivated countries of the Tamils in the South to teach them their language and to compose the first grammar The fact would appear to be that it was the Aryan who borrowed, absorbed and gradually transformed the culture of the Dravidians to suit his purpose, and labelled it Indian culture-Aryan.
The widespread Agathiar cult in the countries of SouthEast Asia is another evidence of this process. These kingdoms were founded, and the countries civilised by immigrants and traders from Southern India. Apart from the prominence given to the Agathiar cult, stories of Brahmins founding dynasties have been created. George A. Walker in his Angkor Empire makes pointed reference to this when he says, "The sphere of Indian cultural influence has been so strongly imbued with the Brahmin complex that it is natural to assume that all those who founded dynasties in the Indian colonies were Brahmins".
In both Funan and Chenla, now known as Cambodia, the founders of the early Indian Dynasties, according to legend, were Brahmins. Of the art of Funan K. A. Nilakanta Sastri himself admits that "The Art of this early Hindu State, judged from the geographical distribution of the monuments and the motifs that satisfy these conditions... are decidedly of South Indian origin". (pp. 32, 33, South Indian Influences in the Far East). The "Aryan' Brahmin was averse to the crossing of the seas, and it was the Aryanised Brahmin of the South who was responsible for accompanying South Indian colonists to SouthEast Asian countries, and spreading the Agathiar cult and creating myths calculated to plant the seeds of Brahminic supremacy in thes regions.

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156 S. J. Gunasegaram - Selected Writings
K. A. Nilakanta Sastri, the well-known champion of Sanskrit culture has made an attempt, in his History of South India to cast doubts on the antiquity of the Tamil language and literature and to support the theory that the civilisation of the Tamils was largely due to their association with the Northern Brahmin. He holds that the Aryanisation of South India must have commenced as early as 1000 B.C. Taking into consideration the fact that scholars today are in general agreement in placing 1500 B.C. as the lower limit of the Aryan incursion into India, and that the Aryans were a barbarous nomadic people (at the time of their entry into India), without either a knowledge of the art of writing or a developed religion, it requires a good deal of credulity either to approve or to accept that within a period of a couple of hundred years they had become so advanced not merely to be able to develop their own language . but to study an admittedly more difficult language like Tamil, and to teach the Tamils their own language and to write its grammar
Sastri himself admits the difficulty of the land-route to the South, at this early period. The Aryans of this period had little or no knowledge of the sea, while the Dravidians -the Kalingas, Andhras and the Tamils were highly advanced seafaring peoples, and had reached considerable fame as navigators and traders. Recent research and scholarship seem to indicate that it must have taken considerable time for the Aryan speaking people to achieve an appreciable degree of culture and refinement and to develop their language. Their cultural progress was assured and promoted mainly by their contact with the more advanced indigenous peoples of India and as a result of the borrowing and absorption of Dravidian culture and ideas.
There is a tradition (Silappathikaram) that even during the Mahabharatha war the Tamil kingdoms flourished in the South, and that the armies at Kurukshetra were fed by the Chera King. The Mahabharatha itself refers to the Cheras and the Pandyas of the South, and in particular to the wealth and power of the latter kingdom. There is reference to an Agathiar in the Ramayana as well, and the later story that Tholkappiar was a disciple of Agathiar cannot be reconciled with the Agathiar of either of these epics, as Agathiar of the Ramayana and Tholkappian belong to two different times.
When and how did this legend take shape? Between the fifth and the seventh centuries of the Christian era, the traditional Tamil kingdoms of the Cheras, Cholas and Pandyas came under the sway of the Pallavas, or the Thondayars. The Pallava kings were originally worshippers of Vishnu, and championed Vaishnavaism as the court religion and Sanskrit as their court

The Historicity of Agathiar 157
language, though in later years the Pallava kings became converted to Saivaism and began to encourage Tamil. It was probably during the early stages of the Pallava ascendancy, in order to reconcile the Tamils to the Northern language, that the court scholars of the period, most of whom were Brahmins, fabricated the Agathiar myths, and began to associate a venerated name like Agathiar in the South with the origin of Tamil and its grannar. It is significant that it was during this period that the Pallavas extended their influence to the Indian colonies in South-East Asia, as the innumerable Pallava inscriptions and Pallava work of Architecture scattered all over these regions would indicate. The Agathiar cult accordingly was carried across and popularised in South-East Asia by Indian colonists as well as by the court Brahmins of this period. w
It is well known that the Tamil poets of the Sangam period were extremely interested in guarding the purity of their language and resisted the incursion of the language of the northerner. Such was their zeal for the preservation of the distinct beauty and composition of their language that the Pallava kings had been more or less ignored by them and very scant reference made to the Pallavas by them in their works. By the time that the Pandyans had regained their power, after the Pallava ascendancy, these stories seem to have taken such a hold that the later Pandyas themselves began to assert that Agathiar was the founder of the Tamil language and the preceptor of the Pandyan kings, the early patrons of the Tamil Sangam.

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