Part 65 (1/2)
PART III.
THE SINGHALESE CHRONICLES.
CHAPTER I.
SOURCES OF SINGHALESE HISTORY.--THE MAHAWANSO AND OTHER NATIVE ANNALS.
It was long affirmed by Europeans that the Singhalese annals, like those of the Hindus, were devoid of interest or value as historical material; that, as religious disquisitions, they were the ravings of fanaticism, and that myths and romances had been reduced to the semblance of national chronicles. Such was the opinion of the Portuguese writers DE BARROS and DE COUTO; and VALENTYN, who, about the year 1725, published his great work on the Dutch possessions in India, states his conviction that no reliance can be placed on such of the Singhalese books as profess to record the ancient condition of the country. These he held to be even of less authority than the traditions of the same events which had descended from father to son. On the information of learned Singhalese, drawn apparently from the _Rajavali_, he inserted an account of the native sovereigns, from the earliest times to the arrival of the Portuguese; but, wearied by the monotonous inanity of the story, he omitted every reign between the fifth and fifteenth centuries of the Christian era.[1]
[Footnote 1: VALENTYN, _Oud en Nieuw Oost-Indien, &c., Landbeschryving van t' Eyland Ceylon_, ch iv. p. 60.]
A writer, who, under the signature of PHILALETHES, published, in 1816, _A History of Ceylon from the earliest period_, adopted the dictum of Valentyn, and contented himself with still further condensing the ”account,” which the latter had given ”of the ancient Emperors and Kings” of the island. Dr. DAVY compiled that portion of his excellent narrative which has reference to the early history of Kandy, chiefly from the recitals of the most intelligent natives, borrowed, as in the case of the informants of Valentyn, from the perusal of the popular legends; and he and every other author unacquainted with the native language, who wrote on Ceylon previous to 1833, a.s.sumed without inquiry the nonexistence of historic data.[1]
[Footnote 1: DAVY's _Ceylon_, ch. x. p. 293. See also PERCIVAL'S _Ceylon_, p. 4.]
It was not till about the year 1826 that the discovery was made and communicated to Europe, that whilst the history of India was only to be conjectured from myths and elaborated from the dates on copper grants, or fading inscriptions on rocks and columns[1], Ceylon was in possession of continuous written chronicles, rich in authentic facts, and not only presenting a connected history of the island itself, but also yielding valuable materials for elucidating that of India. At the moment when Prinsep was deciphering the mysterious Buddhist inscriptions, which are scattered over Hindustan and Western India, and when Csoma de Koros was unrolling the Buddhist records of Thibet, and Hodgson those of Nepaul, a fellow labourer of kindred genius was successfully exploring the Pali ma.n.u.scripts of Ceylon, and developing results not less remarkable nor less conducive to the ill.u.s.tration of the early history of Southern Asia. Mr. Turnour, a civil officer of the Ceylon service[2], was then administering the government of the district of Saffragam, and being resident at Ratnapoora near the foot of Adam's Peak, he was enabled to pursue his studies under the guidance of Galle, a learned priest, through whose instrumentality he obtained from the Wihara, at Mulgiri-galla, near Tangalle (a temple founded about 130 years before the Christian era), some rare and important ma.n.u.scripts, the perusal of which gave an impulse and direction to the investigations which occupied the rest of his life.
[Footnote 1: REINAUD, _Memoire sur l' Inde_, p. 3.]
[Footnote 2: GEORGE TURNOUR was the eldest son of the Hon. George Turnour, son of the first Earl of Winterton; his mother being Emilie, niece to the Cardinal Due de Beausset. He was born in Ceylon in 1799 and having been educated in England under the guardians.h.i.+p of the Right Hon.
Sir Thomas Maitland, then governor of the island, he entered the Civil Service in 1818, in which he rose to the highest rank. He was distinguished equally by his abilities and his modest display of them.
Interpreting in its largest sense the duty enjoined on him, as a public officer, of acquiring a knowledge of the native languages, he extended his studies, from the vernacular and written Singhalese to Pali, the great root and original of both, known only to the Buddhist priesthood, and imperfectly and even rarely amongst them. No dictionaries then existed to a.s.sist in defining the meaning of Pali terms which no teacher could be found capable of rendering into English, so that Mr. Turnour was entirely dependent on his knowledge of Singhalese as a medium for translating them. To an ordinary mind such obstructions would have proved insurmountable, aggravated as they were by discouragements arising from the a.s.sumed barrenness of the field, and the absence of all sympathy with his pursuits, on the part of those around him, who reserved their applause and encouragement till success had rendered him indifferent to either. To this apathy of the government officers, Major Forbes, who was then the resident at Matelle, formed an honourable exception; and his narrative of _Eleven Years in Ceylon_ shows with what ardour and success he shared the tastes and cultivated the studies to which he had been directed by the genius and example of Turnour. So zealous and un.o.btrusive were the pursuits of the latter, that even his immediate connexions and relatives were unaware of the value and extent of his acquirements till apprised of their importance and profundity by the acclamation with which his discoveries and translations from the Pali were received by the savans of Europe. Major Forbes, in a private letter, which I have been permitted to see, speaking of the difficulty of doing justice to the literary character of Turnour, and the ability, energy, and perseverance which he exhibited in his historical investigations, says, ”his _Epitome of the History of Ceylon_ was from the first _correct;_ I saw it seven years before it was published, and it scarcely required an alteration afterwards.” Whilst engaged in his translation of the _Mahawanso_, TURNOUR, amongst other able papers on _Buddist History_ and _Indian Chronology_ in the _Journal of the Bengal Asiatic Society_, v. 521, vi. 299, 790, 1049, contributed a series of essays _on the Pali-Buddhistical Annals_, which were published in 1836, 1837, 1838.--_Journ. Asiatic Soc. Bengal_, vi. 501, 714, vii. 686, 789, 919. At various times he published in the same journal an account of the _Tooth Relic of Ceylon, Ib._ vi. 856, and notes on the inscriptions on the columns of Delhi, Allahabad, and Betiah, &c. &c.; and frequent notices of Ceylon coins and inscriptions. He had likewise planned another undertaking of signal importance, the translation into English of a Pali version of the Buddhist scriptures, an ancient copy of which he had discovered, unenc.u.mbered by the ignorant commentaries of later writers, and the fables with which they have defaced the plain and simple doctrines of the early faith. He announced his intention in the _Introduction to the Mahawanso_ to expedite the publication, as ”the least tardy means of effecting a comparison of the Pali with the Sanskrit version” (p. cx.). His correspondence with Prinsep, which I have been permitted by his family to inspect, abounds with the evidence of inchoate inquiries in which their congenial spirits had a common interest, but which were abruptly ended by the premature decease of both. Turnour, with shattered health, returned to Europe in 1842, and died at Naples on the 10th of April in the following year, The first volume of his translation of the _Mahawanso_, which contains thirty-eight chapters out of the hundred which form the original work, was published at Colombo in 1837; and apprehensive that scepticism might a.s.sail the authenticity of a discovery so important, he accompanied his English version with a reprint of the original Pali in Roman characters with diacritical points.
He did not live to conclude the task he had so n.o.bly begun; he died while engaged on the second volume of his translation, and only a few chapters, executed with his characteristic accuracy, remain in ma.n.u.script in the possession of his surviving relatives. It diminishes, though in a slight degree, our regret for the interruption of his literary labours to know that the section of the _Mahawanso_ which he left unfinished is inferior both in authority and value to the earlier portion of the work, and that being composed at a period when literature was at its lowest ebb in Ceylon, it differs little if at all from other chronicles written during the decline of the native dynasty.]
It is necessary to premise, that the most renowned of the Singhalese books is the _Mahawanso_, a metrical chronicle, containing a dynastic history of the island for twenty-three centuries from B.C. 543 to A.D.
1758. But being written in Pali verse its existence in modern times was only known to the priests, and owing to the obscurity of its diction it had ceased to be studied by even the learned amongst them.
To relieve the obscurity of their writings, and supply the omissions, occasioned by the fetters of rhythm and the necessity of permutations and elisions, required to accommodate their phraseology to the obligations of verse; the Pali authors of antiquity were accustomed to accompany their metrical compositions with a _tika_ or running commentary, which contained a literal version of the mystical text, and supplied ill.u.s.trations of its more abstruse pa.s.sages. Such a _tika_ on the _Mahawanso_ was generally known to have been written; but so utter was the neglect into which both it and the original text had been permitted to fall, that Turnour till 1826 had never met with an individual who had critically read the one, or more than casually heard of the existence of the other.[1] At length, amongst the books which, were procured for him by the high, priest of Saffragam, was one which proved to be this neglected commentary on the mystic and otherwise unintelligible _Mahawanso_; and by the a.s.sistance of this precious doc.u.ment he undertook, with confidence, a translation into English of the long lost chronicle, and thus vindicated the claim of Ceylon to the possession of an authentic and unrivalled record of its national history.
[Footnote 1: TURNOUR's _Mahawanso_, introduction, vol. i. p. ii.]
The t.i.tle ”Mahawanso,” which means literally the ”_Genealogy of the Great_,” properly belongs only to the first section of the work, extending from B.C. 543 to A.D. 301,[1] and containing the history of the early kings, from Wijayo to Maha Sen, with whom the Singhalese consider the ”Great Dynasty” to end. The author of this portion was Mahanamo, uncle of the king Dhatu Sena, in whose reign it was compiled, between the years A.D. 459 and 477, from annals in the vernacular language then existing at Anaraj.a.poora.[2]
[Footnote 1: Although the _Mahawanso_ must be regarded as containing the earliest _historical_ notices of Ceylon, the island, under its Sanskrit name of Lanka, occupies a prominent place in the mythical poems of the Hindus, and its conquest by Rama is the theme of the _Ramayana_, one of the oldest epics in existence. In the _Raja-Tarangini_ also, an historical chronicle which may be regarded as the _Mahawanso_ of Kashmir, very early accounts of Ceylon are contained, and the historian records that the King Megavahana, who, according to the chronology of Troyer, reigned A.D. 24, made an expedition to Ceylon for the purpose of extending Buddhism, and visited Adam's Peak, where he had an interview with the native sovereign.--_Raja-Tarangini_, Book iii. sl. 71-79. _Ib._ vol. ii. p. 364.]
[Footnote 2: _Mahawanso_, ch. i. The Arabian travellers in Ceylon mention the official historiographers employed by order of the kings.
See Vol. I Pt. III. ch. viii. p. 387, note.]
The sovereigns who succeeded Maha Sen are distinguished as the ”Sulu-wanse,” the ”lower race,” and the story of their line occupies the continuation of this extraordinary chronicle, the second portion of which was written by order of the ill.u.s.trious king Prakrama Bahu, about the year A.D. 1266, and the narrative was carried on, under subsequent sovereigns, down to the year A.D. 1758, the latest chapters having been compiled by command of the King of Kandy, Kirti-Sri, partly from Singhalese works brought back to the island from Siam (whither they had been carried at former periods by priests dispatched upon missions), and partly from native histories, which had escaped the general destruction of such records in the reign of Raja Singha I., an apostate from Buddhism, who, about the year A.D. 1590, during the period when the Portuguese were in occupation of the low country, exterminated the priests of Buddha, and transferred the care of the shrine on Adam's Peak to Hindu Fakirs.
But the _Mahawanso_, although the most authentic, and probably the most ancient, is by no means the only existing Singhalese chronicle. Between the 14th and 18th centuries several historians recorded pa.s.sing events; and as these corroborate and supplement the narrative of the greater work, they present an uninterrupted Historical Record of the highest authenticity, comprising the events of nearly twenty-four centuries.[1]