| Mahāvaṃsa | |
|---|---|
| Type | Post-canonical text;Chronicle |
| Composition | 5th Century CE |
| Attribution | Mahānāma |
| Commentary | Mahavamsa-tika |
| Abbreviation | Bv |
| Pāli literature | |
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Mahāvaṃsa (Sinhala: මහාවංශ (Mahāvansha),Pali:මහාවංස (Mahāvaṃsa)) is the meticulously kept historical chronicle ofSri Lanka until the period ofMahasena of Anuradhapura. It was written in the style of an epic poem written in thePali language.[1] It relates the history of Sri Lanka from its legendary beginnings up to the reign ofMahasena of Anuradhapura covering the period between the arrival ofPrince Vijaya from India in 543 BCE to his reign and later updated by different writers. It was first composed by aBuddhist monk named Mahanama at theMahavihara temple in Anuradhapura in the 5th or 6th-century CE.[2]
The Mahavamsa first came to the attention of Western researchers around 1809 CE, whenSir Alexander Johnston, Chief Justice of theBritish Ceylon, sent manuscripts of it and other Sri Lankan chronicles (written in mainly Sinhala language being the main language of Sri Lanka) toEurope for translation and publication.[3]Eugène Burnouf produced a Romanized transliteration and translation into Latin in 1826, but these garnered relatively little attention.[4]: 86 Working from Johnston's manuscripts,Edward Upham published an English translation in 1833, but it was marked by several errors in translation and interpretation, among them suggesting that the Buddha was born in Sri Lanka and built a monastery atopAdam's Peak.[4]: 86 The first printed edition and widely read English translation was published in 1837 byGeorge Turnour, a historian and officer of theCeylon Civil Service who translated 38 chapters.[4]: 86 Mudaliyar L. C. Wijesinghe completed the remaining 62 chapters and reviewed Turnour's work, publishing in 1889.[5] AGerman translation ofMahavamsa was completed byWilhelm Geiger in 1912. This was then translated intoEnglish by Mabel Haynes Bode, and revised by Geiger.[6]
In 2023, the Mahavamsa was listed an item of globally important documentary heritage on UNESCO’sMemory of the World International Register.[7][8]
The Buddhist monks of theAnuradhapura Maha Viharaya maintained chronicles of the island's history starting from the 3rd century BCE.[9] These annals were then combined and compiled into a single document in the 5th century whileKing Dhatusena was ruling theAnuradhapura Kingdom. It was written based on prior ancient compilations known as theAtthakatha (sometimesSinhalaatthakatha), which were commentaries written in Sinhala.[10][page needed] An earlier document known as theDipavamsa (4th century CE) "Chronicles of the Island" is much simpler and contains less information than theMahavamsa and was probably compiled using theAtthakatha on theMahavamsa as well.
Authorship of theMahavamsa is attributed to an otherwise unknown monk called Mahānāma by theMahavamsa-tika. Mahānāma is described as residing in a monastery belonging to generalDighasanda and affiliated with the Mahavihara, but no other reliable biographical information is known.[11] Mahānāma introduces theMahavamsa with a passage that claims that he intends to correct repetitions and shortcomings that afflicted the chronicle compiled by the ancients- this may refer either to theDipavamsa or to the Sinhala Atthakatha.[11]
The contents of theMahavamsa can be broadly divided into four categories:[11]
While much of the contents of theMahavamsa is derived from expansions of the material found in theDipavamsa, several passages specifically dealing with theAbhayagiri vihara are omitted, suggesting that theMahavamsa was more specifically associated with theMahavihara.[11]
A companion volume, theCulavamsa "Lesser Chronicle", compiled bySinhala monks, covers the period from the 4th century to theBritishtakeover of Sri Lanka in 1815. TheCulavamsa was compiled by several authors of different periods.
The combined work sometimes referred to collectively as theMahavamsa, provides a continuous historical record of over two millennia, and is considered one of the world's longest unbroken historical accounts.[12] It is one of the few documents containing material relating to theNāga andYakkha peoples, indigenous inhabitants ofLanka before the legendary arrival of Prince Vijaya from Singha Pura of Kalinga. As it often refers to the royaldynasties ofIndia, theMahavamsa is also valuable for historians who wish to date and relate contemporary royal dynasties in theIndian subcontinent. It is very important in dating theconsecration of theMaurya EmperorAshoka, which is related to thesynchronicity with theSeleucid Empire andAlexander the Great. Indian excavations inSanchi and other locations, confirm theMahavamsa account of the empire of Ashoka. The accounts given in theMahavamsa are also amply supported by the numerous stone inscriptions, mostly in Sinhala, found in Sri Lanka.[13]K. Indrapala[14] has also upheld the historical value of theMahavamsa. If not for theMahavamsa, the story behind the largestupas in Anuradhapura, Sri Lanka, such asRuwanwelisaya,Jetavanaramaya,Abhayagiri vihāra and other works of ancient engineering would never have been known.
Historiographical sources are rare in much of South Asia. As a result of theMahavamsa, comparatively more is known about the history of the island of Ceylon and neighboring regions than that of most of the subcontinent. Its contents have aided in the identification and corroboration of archaeological sites and inscriptions associated with early Buddhism, the empire ofAshoka, and even the Tamil kingdoms of southern India.[11]
TheMahamvasa covers the early history of Buddhism in Sri Lanka, beginning with the time ofSiddhartha Gautama, the founder of Buddhism. It also briefly recounts the history ofBuddhism inIndia, from the date of the Buddha's death to the3rd Buddhist council where theDharma was reviewed. Every chapter of theMahavamsa ends by stating that it is written for the "serene joy of the pious". From the emphasis of its point-of-view, and being compiled to record the good deeds of the kings who were patrons of theAnuradhapura Maha Viharaya,[15] it has been said to supportSinhalese nationalism.[16][17]
Besides being an important historical source, theMahavamsa is the most important epic poem in thePali language. Its stories of battles and invasions, court intrigue, and great constructions of stupas and water reservoirs, written in elegant verse suitable for memorization, caught the imagination of the Buddhist world of the time. Unlike many texts written in antiquity, it also discusses various aspects of the lives of ordinary people, and how they joined the King's army or farmed. Thus theMahavamsa was taken along theSilk Road to many Buddhist lands.[18] Parts of it were translated, retold, and absorbed into other languages. An extended version of theMahavamsa, which gives many more details, has also been found in Southeast Asia.[11][19] TheMahavamsa gave rise to many other Pali chronicles, making Sri Lanka of that period probably the world's leading center in Pali literature.
TheMahavamsa has, especially in modern Sri Lanka, acquired significance as a document with a political message.[20] The Sinhalese majority often use Mahavamsa as proof of their claim that Sri Lanka is a Sinhalese nation since historical time.
The British historian Jane Russell[21] has recounted how a process of "Mahavamsa bashing" began in the 1930s, from within theTamil Nationalist movement. TheMahavamsa, being a history of the Sinhala Buddhists, presented itself to the Tamil Nationalists and the Sinhala Nationalists as the hegemonic epic of the Sinhala people. This view was attacked by G. G. Ponnambalam, a representative of the Nationalist Tamils in the 1930s. He claimed that most of the Sinhala kings, including Vijaya, Kasyapa, and Parakramabahu, were Tamils. Ponnambalam's 1939 speech in Nawalapitiya, attacking the claim that Sri Lanka is a Sinhalese, Buddhist nation was seen as an act against the notion of creating a Sinhalese-Buddhist only nation. The Sinhala majority responded with a mob riot, which engulfed Nawalapitiya, Passara, Maskeliya, and even in TamilJaffna.[21]: 148 [22]
Early Western scholars likeOtto Franke dismissed the possibility that theMahavamsa contained reliable historical content, but subsequent evidence from inscriptions and archaeological finds have confirmed that there is a factual basis for many of the stories recorded in theMahavamsa, including Ashoka's missionary work and the kings associated with founding various monasteries and stupas.[4] The contents of theMahavamsa beginning from the KingDevanampiyatissa is considered mostly historically, apart from some bias by the writers.[23]
Wilhelm Geiger was one of the first Western scholars to suggest that it was possible to separate useful historical information from the mythic and poetic elaborations of the chronicle. While other scholars had assumed that theMahavamsa had been assembled from borrowed material from Indian Pali sources, Geiger hypothesized that theMahavamsa had been based on earlier Sinhala sources that originated on the island of Ceylon. While Geiger did not believe that the details provided with every story and name were reliable, he broke from earlier scholars in believing that theMahavamsa faithfully reflected an earlier tradition that had preserved the names and deeds of various royal and religious leaders, rather than being a pure work of heroic literary fiction. He regarded the early chapters of theCulavamsa as the most accurate, with the early chapters of theMahavamsa being too remote historically and the later sections of theCulavamsa marked by excessive elaboration.[4]: 90–92
Geiger's Sinhala student G. C. Mendis was more openly skeptical about certain portions of the text, specifically citing the story of the Sinhala ancestorVijaya as being too remote historically from its source and too similar to an epic poem or other literary creation to be seriously regarded as history.[4]: 94 The date of Vijaya's arrival is thought to have been artificially fixed to coincide with the date for the death ofGautama Buddha around 543 BCE.[24][25] The Chinese pilgrimsFa Hsien andHsuan Tsang both recorded myths of the origins of the Sinhala people in their travels that varied significantly from the versions recorded in theMahavamsa- in one version, the Sinhala are descended fromnaga or nature spirits who traded with Indian merchants, and in another, the Sinhala progenitor is a prince exiled for patricide who then slays a wealthy merchant and adopts his 500 children.[4]: 58–59
The story of the Buddha's three visits to Sri Lanka is not recorded in any source outside of theMahavamsa tradition.[4]: 48 Moreover, the genealogy of the Buddha recorded in theMahavamsa describes him as being the product of fourcross cousin marriages. Cross-cousin marriage is associated historically with theDravidian people of southern India- both Sri LankanTamils andSinhala practiced cross-cousin marriage historically- but the exogamous marriage was the norm in the regions of northern India associated with the life of the Buddha.[26] No mention of cross-cousin marriage is found in earlier Buddhist sources, and scholars suspect that this genealogy was created to fit the Buddha into conventional Sri Lankan social structures for noble families.[4]: 48–49 [26]
The historical accuracy of Mahinda converting the Sri Lankan king to Buddhism is also debated.Hermann Oldenberg, a German scholar ofIndology who has published studies on the Buddha and translated many Pali texts, considers this story a "pure invention". V. A. Smith (Author ofAshoka andEarly History of India) also refers to this story as "a tissue of absurdities". V. A. Smith and Professor Hermann came to this conclusion due to Ashoka not mentioning the handing over of his son, Mahinda, to the temple to become a Buddhist missionary and Mahinda's role in converting the Sri Lankan king to Buddhism, in his 13th-year Rock Edicts, particularly Rock-Edict XIII.[23] Sources outside of Sri Lanka and the Mahavamsa tradition do not mention Mahinda as Ashoka's son.[4] There is also an inconsistency with the year in which Ashoka sent Buddhist missionaries to Sri Lanka. According to theMahavamsa, the missionaries arrived in 255 BCE, but according toEdict 13, it was five years earlier in 260 BCE.[23]
TheMahavamsa is believed to have originated from an earlier chronicle known as theDipavamsa (4th century CE;lit. 'Island Chronicles'). TheDipavamsa is much simpler and contains less information than theMahavamsa and probably served as the nucleus of an oral tradition that was eventually incorporated into the writtenMahavamsa. TheDipavamsa is believed to have been the first Pali text composed entirely in Ceylon.[11]
A subsequent work sometimes known asCulavamsa extends theMahavamsa to cover the period from the reign ofMahasena of Anuradhapura (277–304 CE) until 1815, when the entire island was surrendered to the British throne. TheCulavamsa contains three sections composed by five different authors (one anonymous) belonging to successive historical periods.[11]
In 1935, Buddhist monk Yagirala Pannananda publishedMahavamsa Part III, aSinhala language continuation of theMahavamsa that covers the period from the end of theCulavamsa up until 1935.[4]: 95–104 While not authorized or supported by any government or religious organization, this continuation of theMahavamsa was later recognized by the government of the Sri Lankan Prime MinisterJ. R. Jayawardene.
A commentary on theMahavamsa, known as theMahavamsa-tika, is believed to have been composed before the first additions composing theCulavamsa were written, likely sometime between 1000 CE and 1250 CE. This commentary provides explanations of ambiguous Pali terms used in theMahavamsa, and in some cases adds additional details or clarifies differences between different versions of theMahavamsa. Unlike theMahavamsa itself, which is composed almost entirely of material associated with theMahavihara, theMahavamsa-tika makes several references to commentaries and alternate versions of the chronicle associated with theAbhayagiri vihara tradition.[11]
In Southeast Asia, a Pali work referred to as the "ExtendedMahavamsa" includes not only the text of the Sri LankanMahavamsa, but also elements of theThupavamsa,Buddhavamsa,Mahavamsa commentaries, and quotations from variousjatakas.[11][19] It is sometimes referred to in academic literature as theKampuchean Mahavamsa orKhmer Mahavamsa because it is distinguished by being recorded in theKhmer script. Its composition is attributed to an otherwise unknown monk called Moggallana and its exact period of composition and origin are unknown. The origin of this version is believed to beBurma orThailand.[27]
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