THE SRI LANKAN TAMILS

Origin of Tamils in Lanka:
Tamils were in Lanka about 300 to 500 years before the Gangetic Immigration symbolized by Vijaya. Excavations in near Mattota, the ancient sea port in the North, have established that the South Indian population first settled in the North of the Island as early as 700 to 1000 BC. The 8000 Urn burials found at Pomparripu cemetery, dating back to 700 to 1000 BC, indicate the presence of significantly large population from South India. The artefacts and Urn Burials found at this site are almost identical to those excavated by Robert Bruce Foot (1834-1912) in South India at Adichanallur and Tirunelvely districts; the seat of old Pandiyan kingdom, from where Vijaya obtained his bride. Foot, a young English geologist, joined the Geological Survey of India in 1858, and through his outstanding contributions, came to be regarded as the father of Indian geology. About twelve miles from Tirunelvely on the banks of Tambarappani river lies the world’s largest ancient burial ground covering over 114 acres with thousands of Urn burials consisting of ritual objects made of bronze, gold and pottery. It is here that R.B. Foot unknowingly found the archaeological link to Ceylon. The advanced state of culture that prevailed at Pomparippu, similar to Tirunelvely, is revealed by the copper and iron implements, beads and Black-and-Red-Ware, dated to before 900 BC. The excavations at Pomparippu in Lanka were carried out by Department of Archaeology, Colombo (1956), Institute of Archaeology, London (1965) and University of Pennsylvania (1970). These excavations, including those at Kantharodai were discontinued by Sri Lankan government as truth began to emerge. No conclusive archaeological findings are there yet to link Lanka with North India to justify the claim that Aryans were in Lanka before the arrival of Vijaya. Of Mullaitivu: In 1885 several ancient coins were discovered in Mullaitivu. A man with a small coconut garden in the village started clearing and levelling his land. In the process he discovered an ancient shallow well with fresh water. There he found silver Purana coins 51 in number and 16 copper plaques. The date of issue of these coins of Indian origin was initially estimated to be phenomenally old at 2000 BC or the latest 1100 BC. Sir Alexander Cunningham (1814-1893), first Director General of the Archaeological Survey of India, who studied around 5000 such coins held a view that the Puranas, also called, Kārshāpana, Dharanas or Salakas were issued by 1000 BC. Of Kantharodai and Jaffna: It is true that Buddhist monuments were found in Kanthadarodai, so were Buddhist Dagobas found in the Indus Valley: two thousand years before Buddha was born! Most places of historic settlements have layers of cultural and biological debris, and on the top is the most recent. In the proper archaeological world, we have learnt from the excavations at Mohenjadaro that the depth of debris from previous occupations, can amount to as much as 70 feet below the ground surface. Also a great number of ancient Tamils were Buddhists. A Chinese traveller who spent his time in both Lanka and Tamil Nadu describes one hundred monasteries in Kanchipuram, in the Chola Kingdom, where nearly 10,000 Buddhist monks resided. Interestingly dating of evidence found in Kantharodai sites coincides with early historic period at Kanchipuram and Paiyampalli in Tamil Nadu. Study of this piece of pottery has shown that the letters were written before firing the vessel, which excludes the possibility that the vessel was brought to the spot from another area. The Brahimi-inscribed seal found in Anaikottai near Jaffna town is at least 250 BC to 100 AD if not earlier. It is interesting to note that many letters in the Brahimi alphabet are almost identical to that of some Tamil alphabets. Tamils did not write their history: It is true that the Tamils did not write their history. Their history is seen through their poetry. The oldest extant Tamil works, Tolkapium, dating back to 250 BC, gives a complete picture of ancient Tamils, including romance, customs, habits beliefs and the conduct of their kings. The contemporary king of Lanka around this period would have been King Devanambiyatissa. The extant 3rd Sangam literature,a round 100 AD (Mahavamsa was written 400 years later) describes the Tamil kings in the form of poetry. The Nagas in Lanka: Mahavamsa says that Nagas were inhabitants of Lanka at the time of Buddha’s first visit to Lanka: The Naga kings sat on gem thrones and lived at Nagadipa (North of Lanka). The chronicle also states that Buddha preached to eighty kotis of Nagas on his second visit to Lanka: ‘Beautiful Nagas of brilliantly blue colour, holding flags, praised the most excellent Bodhi (tree) which was being established in the island of Lanka’ (Mahavamsa). These Nagas are from South India and were inhabiting Lanka, long before Vijaya. The South Indian history is abound with Naga kings. Puranas describe seven Nagas who ruled at Mathurai, the Tamil Pandyan kingdom. We learn from the same sources that nine Naga kings ruled at Padmavathi. One of them was Bhavanaga who is well documented in history though his coins. Well respected historian Henry Parker in his Ancient Ceylon, 1909 uses the term Naga synonymously with Tamils. Most Mahavamsa kings were Nagas, as we gather from their name, and other historical evidence. Also in this book, Parker reveals his discovery of many ancient Tamil cities, quite unknown to Mahavamsa. Being an irrigation engineer, Parker, identified several reservoirs, built by Tamil kings, before the Christian era. Vijaya and his Tamil Queen: King Vijaya, in order to consecrate himself as King, drove out Kunevi and married a Pandyan princess from Madurai, so says Mahavamsa. The Pandyan princess arrived at the northern port of Mantotta dressed with every possible form of gold jewellery. With her came hundred maidens on elephants, horses and wagons according to their rank and craftsman and a thousand families of eighteen guilds. Vijaya held a pompous and lavish ceremony in making the Pandiya princess his consort. Mathurai, was the seat of ancient Tamil literature, where the three Sangams existed. The second wave of Tamil immigration had begun in 500 BC. Of Tamil Kings in Ancient Lanka and Mahavamsa: According to Mahavamsa, 32 Tamil kings ruled in the North of Lanka in 2nd century BC and Dutta Gamunu had to fight all of them, not just Elara, to achieve a unitary Lanka, for the first time. R.A.H.L. Gunawardana in his Prelude to the State, (Reflections on Heritage, Central Cultural Fund, Ministry of Cultural and Religios Affairs, Sri Lanka, 2000) demolishes the Mahavamsa theory that the Sinhalese kings before Duttu Gamunu ruled entire Lanka. According to him “It is even possible to suggest that there was probably conscious attempt on the part of the chronicler (author of Mahavamsa), as in the case of imperial historiography in China, to withhold information that was available to him on the conditions that prevailed before the emergence of a unified polity (reign of Duttu Gamini) in Sri Lanka”. He presents evidence for kings in Lanka, other than those mentioned in Mahavamsa. The historian Adikaram in his Early History of Buddhism in Ceylon (1953) says “The only explanation possible (for not mentioning earlier religions including Buddhism in Lanka, by Mahavamsa ) for, is silence was observed with regard to their existence in order to create a dark background on the canvas on which the enthusiastic narrator of the Buddhist history might successfully paint his glowing picture of Mahinda’s miraculous conversion of the island”. Although a great chronicle (Mahavamsa), its author has withheld the truth in several instances. How did the Singhalese become a majority? The most probable theory is that the original Gangetic immigrants, symbolised by Vijaya, got assimilated with the large number of local Yakka race. As we see in Mahavamsa, during the first visit of Buddha to Lanka, there was a great gathering of the Yakkas, dwelling in the island. The currently the language of Vaddas is a Singhala dialect which lends to this theory. Of the Nagas and Yakkas who existed in Lanka before Vijaya, the latter were the majority going by references to them in Mahavamsa which talks of relatively lesser Nagas but large numbers of Yakkas on various occasions. The Yakkas in many instances stood by the kings in times of conflict and sat on equal throne as the king. As John M Senaveratne states in his Story of the Singhalese ‘In process of time they (Yakkas) and the settlers were merged in to one people, professing the same religion and speaking the same tongue, the people who were thenceforth to be known in history as the Singhalese’. He continues to explain the existence of Vaddas: ‘Such of the Yakkas, however, as held themselves aloof from the strangers settled in the land, refusing to make common cause with them, found themselves gradually compelled to take up their abodes in the mountain fastnesses or in the remote and dense forests of the interior’. This view was accepted in the 1930’s as Senaveratne’s book was approved by the Director of Education for use in Ceylon schools. During the process of time the Singhalese population growth was augmented by inflow of Tamils from South India, since Vijaya’s times, and these Tamils genetically merged with the Singhalese race and became socially and philologically identical to them. Thus the race became a mixture of Gangetic immigrants, Yakkas, and to a lesser extent Tamils and other minority immigrants from Burma and Nepal. We see the remnants of Tamil Dravidian names amongst the Singhalese. The Dravidian Tamil term for God is Ko and the name for the king is Kon. The Tamil names of of non-Aryan are seen in Tennakone (Tamil: Thennai, south, kon, king), Alahakone (Tamil: alagu, beautiful, kon, King), Weerakone(Tamil: veera, brave), Illangakone (Tamil: Ilankai, ancient name for Lanka in Sangam literature), Alahapperuma (Tamil: Peruma, prince), Illangasinghe (Tamil: Ilankai, Singham is common for Sinhalese and Tamil root). Henry Parker states that the birth of Singhalese nation, in the absence of mass migration from north India, was a coalescence of Vaddas and the Singhalese. In the census of 1901 the total number of Vaddas in Ceylon were 3971, where as they formed a greater portion of population in the 12th century. Parakramabahu I, according to Mahavamsa trained and armed several thousands of Vaddas for his military campaign. Compared to the number of original Aryan migration to Lanka today’s number of Singhalese is greatly high to maintain that the present Sinhalese race is exclusively Aryan. On the basis of study of the skulls of both the Singhalese and the Vaddas, the German pathologist and anthropologist Rudolph Virchow (1821–1902) states ‘The Vaddas would appear rather as a representative of aboriginal race; the Singhalese on the other hand, as hybrids produced by union of immigrant Indians with Vaddas’. Henry Parker on the subject concludes ‘That manifold resemblance exist between the Vaddas and the Singhalese, and that of the origin of the Singhalese race from a mixture of Vaddas and immigrants from India possess great probability, as well as on historical as also on anthropological grounds’. Of the Kandyan Convention: The Kandyan Convention signed on the 2nd March 1815 in the Audience-Hall of the Palace of Kandy, between the Governor Brownrigg, representing His Majesty George III, and the Kandyan chiefs, had no bearing on the rest of the country. The twelve clauses applied to Kandyan administration and over non-Kandyans, the position was to remain according to British law. The British View: The first British Colonial Secretary, Sir Hugh Cleghorn in his letter in June 1799 wrote to the British Government: "Two different nations from a very ancient period have divided between them the possession of the Island. First the Sinhalese, inhabiting the interior of the country in its Southern and Western parts, and secondly the Malabars (Tamils) who possess the Northern and Eastern Districts. These two nations differ entirely in their religion, language and manners." Of Ancient Irrigation Schemes and the Tamils: The Pavatkulam, a reservoir in the vicinity of Nagadipa in the north bears no previous or other names. Not mentioned in Mahavamsa or other Singhalese chronicles, this great tank was constructed in the 3rd century BC on the basis of the type of bricks used, according to irrigation engineer and archaeologist Henry Parker. This reservoir draws water from two streams in south of Vavuniya. Study of its layout proves that the site in the valley was well explored and surveyed before its construction commenced. The devices used are sophisticated princliples of irrigation engineering. This tank held a depth of 18 feet of water with an area of 2020 acres holding 779 million cubic feet of water. Another reservoir in the north, Vavunik-kulam also matches up to the scale of Pavatkulam. This tank is formed by raising the embankment across the valley of Pali-aru, another Tamil name for a river, hence its former name Peli-vavi. Irrigation was a priority in Tamilaham in South India and it is very conceivable that the South Indians brought this skill to northern Lanka in the pre-Chriatian era. When another engineer C. F. S. Barker surveyed the northern embankment of the Vavunikulam tank, he came across some ruins which indicated that there was an ancient city at this site. H Neville at this site discovered several images of Hindu deities including Vishnu. This city, Pali Nagara (Tamil: palai, dessert, nagaram, city) is found in the inscription of king Wasabha (66-110 AD) at Periyamiyan Kulam. It states that the king gave Pali Nagara tank to the Buddhist monks. A single reference to Pali-vavi in the Mahavamsa shows that it was in existence before Dutta Gamini, carrying its origin back to the time of Ellala from 205 BC to 161 BC. Parker suggests that it was constructed during Ellala’s regime but the ancient Lankan chronicles failed to record the fact. According to Parker’s study Pavatkulam engineered before the Christian era could have served as a model to later tanks. An ancient highway from Anuradhapura to the Nagadipa, now the Northern Province, passes immediately below the banks of Pavatkulam. The fact that such large and cleverly constructed tanks in the north are not mentioned in the Singhalese chronicles, especially Mahavamsa can only mean that they were not related to the Buddhist kings. These tanks up to now have retained their Tamil names including Periya-Kattu Kulam (big forest lake) near Marichi Katti (block and build), a village near ancient Kuthira Malai (Horse-hill). The name kudirai for horse is a Dravidian pedigree name for horse. The Sanskrit term for horse is ghota. An ancient Hindu temple near this place was discovered by J Haffner, an officer of the Dutch East India Company who walked from Jaffna to Colombo. This temple was important enough for the priests who officiated here were given a share of the pearl-fishing. Ancient Tamil classics, refer to two chieftains Ellini and Korran who ruled at Kuthiramalai. The port where the Roman Annius Plocamus, landed after losing course on his voyage has been identified as Kuthiramalai by Christian Lassen (1800-1876). This event occurred around 44 AD during the reign of king Candamukha Siva. Of Tamil Mercenaries: Yes time and again the Sinhalese kings sought the help of Tamil mercenaries. After the death of Vijaya Bahu I, there was disunity amongst the Singhalese royalty and the country plunged in to civil war, and the chief Buddhist monk himself had to call upon the Vellaikaras to protect the Tooth relic temple and the villages endowed to it. Sunil Liyanage sunilpl@btconnect.com Isabella Liyanage isabellal@btconnect.com