Mahāvaṃsa

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Mahāvaṃsa
TypePost-canonical text;
Pāli literature

Mahāvaṃsa (Sinhala: මහාවංශ (Mahāvansha), Pali: මහාවංස (Mahāvaṃsa)) is the meticulously kept historical chronicle of Sri Lanka until the period of Mahasena of Anuradhapura. It was written in the style of an epic poem written in the Pali language.[1] It relates the history of Sri Lanka from its legendary beginnings up to the reign of Mahasena of Anuradhapura covering the period between the arrival of Prince Vijaya from India in 543 BCE to his reign and later updated by different writers. It was first composed by a Buddhist monk at the Mahavihara temple in Anuradhapura in the 5th or 6th century CE.[2]

The Mahavamsa first came to the attention of Western researchers around 1809 CE, when Sir Alexander Johnston, Chief Justice of the British Ceylon, sent manuscripts of it and other Sri Lankan chronicles to Europe 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 atop Adam's Peak.[4]: 86  The first printed edition and widely read English translation was published in 1837 by George Turnour, a historian and officer of the Ceylon 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] A German translation of Mahavamsa was completed by Wilhelm Geiger in 1912. This was then translated into English by Mabel Haynes Bode, and revised by Geiger.[6]

In 2023, the Mahavamsa was listed an item of documentary heritage on the UNESCO’s Memory of the World International Register.[7][8]

Compilation

The Buddhist monks of the

Dipavamsa
(4th century CE) "Chronicles of the Island" is much simpler and contains less information than the Mahavamsa and was probably compiled using the Atthakatha on the Mahavamsa as well.

Authorship of the Mahavamsa is attributed to an otherwise unknown monk called Mahānāma by the Mahavamsa-tika. Mahānāma is described as residing in a monastery belonging to general

Dipavamsa or to the Sinhala Atthakatha.[11]

Contents

The contents of the Mahavamsa can be broadly divided into four categories:[11]

While much of the contents of the Mahavamsa is derived from expansions of the material found in the Dipavamsa, several passages specifically dealing with the

Abhayagiri vihara are omitted, suggesting that the Mahavamsa was more specifically associated with the Mahavihara.[11]

Further compilations

A companion volume, the

takeover of Sri Lanka in 1815
. The Culavamsa was compiled by several authors of different periods.

The combined work sometimes referred to collectively as the Mahavamsa, provides a continuous historical record of over two millennia, and is considered one of the world's longest unbroken historical accounts.

Abhayagiri vihāra
and other works of ancient engineering would never have been known.

Historical and literary significance

Historiographical sources are rare in much of South Asia. As a result of the Mahavamsa, 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 of Ashoka, and even the Tamil kingdoms of southern India.[11]

The Mahamvasa covers the early history of Buddhism in Sri Lanka, beginning with the time of

Siddhartha Gautama, the founder of Buddhism. It also briefly recounts the history of Buddhism in India, from the date of the Buddha's death to the 3rd Buddhist council where the Dharma was reviewed. Every chapter of the Mahavamsa 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 the Anuradhapura Maha Viharaya,[15] it has been said to support Sinhalese nationalism.[16][17]

Besides being an important historical source, the Mahavamsa is the most important epic poem in the Pali 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 the Mahavamsa was taken along the Silk Road to many Buddhist lands.[18] Parts of it were translated, retold, and absorbed into other languages. An extended version of the Mahavamsa, which gives many more details, has also been found in Southeast Asia.[19][11] The Mahavamsa gave rise to many other Pali chronicles, making Sri Lanka of that period probably the world's leading center in Pali literature.

Political significance

The Mahavamsa 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 the Tamil Nationalist movement. The Mahavamsa, 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 Tamil Jaffna.[21]: 148 [22]

Historical accuracy

Early Western scholars like Otto Franke dismissed the possibility that the Mahavamsa 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 the Mahavamsa, including Ashoka's missionary work and the kings associated with founding various monasteries and stupas.[4] The contents of the Mahavamsa beginning from the King Devanampiyatissa is considered mostly historically, apart from some bias by the writers.[23]

Culavamsa as the most accurate, with the early chapters of the Mahavamsa being too remote historically and the later sections of the Culavamsa 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 ancestor

Hsuan Tsang both recorded myths of the origins of the Sinhala people in their travels that varied significantly from the versions recorded in the Mahavamsa- in one version, the Sinhala are descended from naga 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]
: 58–9 

The story of the Buddha's three visits to Sri Lanka is not recorded in any source outside of the Mahavamsa tradition.

Tamils and Sinhala 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]: 48–9 [26]

The historical accuracy of Mahinda converting the Sri Lankan king to Buddhism is also debated. Hermann Oldenberg, a German scholar of Indology who has published studies on the Buddha and translated many Pali texts, considers this story a "pure invention". V. A. Smith (Author of Ashoka and Early 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 the Mahavamsa, the missionaries arrived in 255 BCE, but according to Edict 13, it was five years earlier in 260 BCE.[23]

Related works

The Mahavamsa is believed to have originated from an earlier chronicle known as the

Dipavamsa (4th century CE; lit.'Island Chronicles'). The Dipavamsa is much simpler and contains less information than the Mahavamsa and probably served as the nucleus of an oral tradition that was eventually incorporated into the written Mahavamsa. The Dipavamsa is believed to have been the first Pali text composed entirely in Ceylon.[11]

A subsequent work sometimes known as

Culavamsa contains three sections composed by five different authors (one anonymous) belonging to successive historical periods.[11]

In 1935, Buddhist monk Yagirala Pannananda published

J. R. Jayawardene
.

A commentary on the Mahavamsa, known as the Mahavamsa-tika, is believed to have been composed before the first additions composing the

Extended

In Southeast Asia, a Pali work referred to as the "Extended Mahavamsa" includes not only the text of the Sri Lankan Mahavamsa, but also elements of the

See also

References

  1. .
  2. ^ Gananath Obeyesekere, “Buddhism, ethnicity and Identity: A problem of Buddhist History,” in “Journal of Buddhist Ethics”, 10, (2003): 46 https://blogs.dickinson.edu/buddhistethics/files/2010/04/Obeyesekere.pdf
  3. .
  4. ^ .
  5. ^ "The Mahavansa. Part II / translated from the original Pali into English for the Government of Ceylon by L.C. Wijesinha, mudaliyar". nla.gov.au. National Library of Australia. Retrieved 24 January 2024.
  6. ^ Mahavamsa. Ceylon Government. 1912.
  7. ^ "Mahavamsa, the Great Chronicle of Sri Lanka (covering the period 6th century BCE to 1815 CE)". UNESCO. 2023.
  8. ^ "'Mahavamsa': Great Chronicle of Sri Lanka added to UNESCO Memory of the World Register". Ada Derana. 27 June 2023. Retrieved 3 July 2023.
  9. ^ Manjula, H.A.K.L., ed. (22 March 2022). "Anuradhapura Maha Viharaya". Lankapradeepa. Retrieved 3 July 2023.
  10. ^ Oldenberg 1879.
  11. ^ .
  12. .
  13. Paranavitana
    and Nicholas, A concise history of Ceylon (Ceylon University Press) 1961
  14. ^ K. Indrapala, Evolution of an Ethnicity, 2005
  15. .
  16. ^ Senewiratne, Brian (4 February 2012). "Independence Day: A Day For Action, Not Mourning". Colombo Telegraph. Archived from the original on 12 July 2016. Retrieved 12 July 2016.
  17. ..
  18. ^ "Mahavamsa, the great chronicle". Sunday Observer. 29 June 2008. Archived from the original on 2 February 2016. Retrieved 5 November 2014.
  19. ^ a b Dr. Hema Goonatilake, Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society of Sri Lanka. 2003
  20. ^ H. Bechert, "The beginnings of Buddhist Historiography in Ceylon, Mahawamsa and Political Thinking", Ceylon Studies Seminar, Series 2, 1974
  21. ^ a b Communal politics under the Donoughmore Constitution, 1931–1947, Tissara Publishers, Colombo 1982
  22. ^ Hindu Organ, June 1, 1939 issue (Newspaper archived at the Jaffna University Library)
  23. ^ a b c Wilhelm Geiger (1912). Mahavamsa: Great Chronicle of Ceylon. New Delhi: Asian Educational Services. 16-20.
  24. ^ Murphey 1957.
  25. ^ E.J. Thomas. (1913). BUDDHIST SCRIPTURES. Available: http://www.sacred-texts.com/bud/busc/busc03.htm. Last accessed 26 03 10.
  26. ^ a b Thomas R. Trautmann. “Consanguineous Marriage in Pali Literature.” Journal of the American Oriental Society, vol. 93, no. 2, 1973, pp. 158–180. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/598890. Accessed 14 May 2020.
  27. ^ von Hinüber 1997.

Bibliography

Editions and translations

  • Geiger, Wilhelm; Bode, Mabel Haynes (transl.); Frowde, H. (ed.): The Mahavamsa or, the great chronicle of Ceylon, London: Pali Text Society 1912.
  • Guruge, Ananda W.P.
    : Mahavamsa. Calcutta: M. P. Birla Foundation 1990 (Classics of the East).
  • Guruge, Ananda W. P. Mahavamsa: The Great Chronicle of Sri Lanka, A New Annotated Translation with Prolegomena, ANCL Colombo 1989
  • Ruwan Rajapakse, Concise Mahavamsa, Colombo, Sri Lanka, 2001
  • DHS Abayaratna (ed.) The Sinhalese Maháwansa ... an easy Sinhalese literal translation of the ... "Mahawansa" versified in the Pali language by ancient scholars such as Mahanama Mahasthavira [with an appendix on more recent history] 1922
  • Sumangala, H.; Silva Batuwantudawa, Don Andris de: The Mahawansha from first to thirty-sixth Chapter. Revised and edited, under Orders of the Ceylon Government by H. Sumangala, High Priest of Adam's Peak, and Don Andris de Silva Batuwantudawa, Pandit. Colombo 1883.
  • Turnour, George (C.C.S.): The Mahawanso in Roman Characters with the Translation Subjoined, and an Introductory Essay on Pali Buddhistical Literature. Vol. I containing the first thirty eight Chapters. Cotto 1837.
Early translation of a Sinhalese version of the text
  • Upham, Edward (ed.): The Mahavansi, the Raja-ratnacari, and the Raja-vali : forming the sacred and historical books of Ceylon; also, a collection of tracts illustrative of the doctrines and literature of Buddhism: translated from the Singhalese. London : Parbury, Allen, and Co. 1833; vol. 1, vol. 2, vol. 3

External links