| by JC Ahnagama
( February 2, 2013, Colombo, Sri Lanka Guardian) How does Tamil Diaspora convince the locals to fight and also maintain 80 million Tamils focused on their goal? Simply the propaganda like Dr. Vadivel's. Dr. Vadivel seem to have only superficial understanding of things he says. He depends on gullibility of the uninitiated. His proposition is that Tamil people lived in Lanka before Vijaya, and that this brutal king (who he indeed was) destroyed their aboriginal language forcing them to speak his language, Singhala or its predecessor. The story makes the Tamils want to believe it and Singhalese to start suspecting that it might be true.
Vijayaagamana:
According to Unesco's description of Ajanta Frescoes, the carving / painting of Vijayaagamana (above) could have been made 1st or 2nd centuries BC or 5th or 6th centuries AD. As such, the story of Vijayaagamana is an Indian one. The Mahaavamshaya or some collection of books now compiled together and called Mahaavamshaya tries to say Sinhala nation was established by Vijaya. (There are multiple versions of Mahaavamshaya, mainly in English. I refer here to the Singhala translation by Buddhist Cultural Centre, Dehiwala. I believe that when responsibly done, the most accurate translation of a Pali text is the Singhala one.)
The initial chapters of the book tries to fuse perhaps what was a folk story about a runaway cat that joined a merchant caravan with the Buddhist time-line to contrive the auspicious beginning of the Singhala nation. Ironically, that beginning was by the banished rogue prince descendent from patricidal Singhabaahu, the son of the fabled lion. In the Brahmajaala sutta, Buddha advises Bhikkhus against doing this kind of ridiculous thing .
The tenor of the book changes abruptly following those initial chapters to look more like narratives of actual happenings.
Singhala
The name Singhala is explained in several ways. People originated in a place called Singhala, People of the lion slayer, Singha-la, is one explanation of the name. Another is that it means those who have the blood of the lion, a simile for bravery of the people -- singha-le (pron. singha-lay). Then the three provinces of the island are known as thrisíhale (pron: thri-singha-lay) suggesting that these are the three sub-divisions of the island where people spoke Sinhala.
Mahaavamshaya says that Mahinda Mahathera spoke to the islanders in their language. So, 1. their language was not that of Mahinda, 2. that language was known outside the island. Buddhist 'atuvaa' or commentaries were written soon after in the language of the inhabitants. They are now lost but the translation in Pali exists. So, was it Tamil?
Tamil kings
Vadivel names kings and regional leaders of Dravidian ethnicity. Kings and rulers become so not because of their blood relation to the people but because the people accept them as rulers, whether due to coercion or preference. Queen of England is German. As a regional tradition, our people preferred their kings to be from the Kshatriya clan. The Buddhist temple had some influence over the rules of government. However, the durability of a rein depended on how shrewd the ruler is in pacifying the people or keeping them down.
Dutugemunu and Elara
Elara was a just king. But nandimitra found his people desecrating the Buddhist temples. He tried to take matters up himself but failed. Then he went in search of a Kshatriya prince to convince to fight Elara. That is how mahaavamshaya describes the events, not as Vadivel gives.
Tamil immigrants
No doubt, many Singhalese descend from former Dravidians who came to Lanka due to different circumstances (perhaps the ancestors of this writer too). However, they are now Singhalese with gratitude. Their warring blood makes them fight for their Singhala nation a tad stronger than the Singhalese whose blood line is longer.
Dravidians swam across the sea, hung on to logs and risked life to get here; they came when asked to come to fight wars of invasion; they came by invitation of kings of Lanka to fight their wars; they came to guard the island under military pact in return for land; they came as servants of the Portuguese in various capacities as soldiers to interpreters; they came similarly as servants of the Dutch; they were brought by British as guest workers to their plantations; they freely arrived during the British time as British Subjects from India and Malaysia too. They all wanted to stay back.
Some of them were given land and honors by the king. Some others surreptitiously settled down shedding their miserable past to live among the kind and accommodating 'aney pav' Singhalese that let them stay. So, the harsh semi-desert, caste discrimination, having to be called up to fight in others wars and terrible living conditions are behind, erased and forgotten.
Original people were Tamil?
What is suggested by Vadivel is that originally Lankans were all Tamils that became Singhala later. The idea that the people of the island spoke a Dravidian language before Vijaya is easily refuted. We can prove it using existing linguistic evidence.
We know that people in a given geographic area develop their own phoneme (basic sound) inventory to use in speech. They use that same sound set when speaking other languages as well. Hence we have the Singhala and Tamil 'accents' when we speak English. So, if the Tamil people wholesale dropped Tamil and adopted the new ruler's language, Singhala, then they should display salient phonological traits of their former language, Tamil.
There are two living examples of this phenomenon that we can directly verify. First is Colombo Creole, which is English spoken with Singhala accent and localizing word choices, interjections, gesticulations etc. The other is in North India. Although the North Indian languages are Indo-Aryan, they exhibit the signature Dravidian phonological trait of retroflex (muurdhaja) T and D that no other region of Indo-Europeans have. Well, Indo-Europeans invaded North India and the native Dravidian people adopted the language of the dominant culture, just like it is happened in Colombo.
If when Vijaya invaded Lanka the people started speaking his language, and if they were Dravidian, then they should have retained the special T and D phonemes. T and D alveolar consonants are identical in English and Singhala. Tamils pronounce English T and D in the retroflex or muurdhaja style. It follows that if they adopted Singhala, today Singhalese (former Tamils) should pronounce T and D exactly the way *all* native Indic speakers pronounce English T and D. That is not the case. Retro-flex or muurðhaja means 'generated with the tip of the tongue curled up to the palate'. It is impossible for the Singhalese to do this.
In addition, North Indians regularly use the mahaa-praana or aspirated consonants. (Listen carefully to a North Indian say 'thousand' or 'Buddha'). The Singhalese reduce them to alpa-praana without any guilt. What these *existing* linguistic evidence says is that Singhala was *not* derived from *any* Indian language, Aryan or Dravidian, be it Pali, Sanskrit or Tamil.
We have some Indo-European cognates to augment this argument further. vathura (water), hela (hill), haDa (handa - sound) and thuru (trees) come to mind that have no cognates (words that sound and mean similar) in the Indian languages (Pali, Sanskrit and Tamil included). They go closely with the English words. If two branches of Indo-European, (Germanic and Indo-Aryan) share mutually exclusive cognates with Singhala, it is only possible that Singhala is older than both the groups.
Singhala is not Dravidian but Indo-European
If the original people of Lanka spoke Tamil, then Singhala should be a Dravidian language, but its vocabulary is Indo-Aryan plus some that are neither found in Dravidian or Indo-European (oluva, kakula, kalava etc. body parts). To say that Singhala evolved through the intermingling of the Tamil, Pali and Sanskrit languages is a mistake one can make only if he is unfamiliar of any of these languages. Singhala regularly borrows from Sanskrit. It is a common feature of all Indic languages including Tamil. It also has words that perhaps derived / adapted from Sanskrit and Pali, but much fewer come from Tamil, even less than from Spanish!
Ancient Singhalese in America?
To the conventional wisdom, it is hilarious to say that mother-of-all-Indo-European may have happened in little Lanka. However, given that the ocean is the most low tech and oldest means of long distance travel, anything is possible. Some people believe that Maya Civilization was established by Lankans specifically from maayaa rata in Lanka by traveling 150 days from the West of Mexico.
Google 'xilanca ceylon' and read all about how Hindus established Mayan civilization. Notice that the researchers fail to recognize that the words cited as Tamil are actually Sanskrit, which is part of Singhala speech since 1st century, and Sanskrit would have existed in Lanka even before that and may be proto-Singhala was something closer to Sanskrit. The Indian researchers seem to deliberately avoid mentioning that the people who went to Mesoamerica came specifically from Maya Rata in Lanka, while the American fellow that first made the discovery makes the unambiguous connection of Maya Rata and Mayan Empire.
What Singhalese have to face is such hate and malice from people who have never been to the island. These people exude hate in their actions and speech. The war continues.
Tamil or Sanskrit
Vadivel does not seem to know that Tamil borrows from Sanskrit. So he mistakes, 'ratna', 'nagara' to be Tamil. They are pure Sanskrit words, not Dravidian. Eliya in 'Nuwara Eliya' means 'light' and 'outdoors' in Singhala. I was born in Nuwara Eliya. It is a very sunny place.
Ratnapura is undiluted Sanskrit: ratna+pura (gem city). He mentions a kakkavanna tissa. It is probably Tamilized kaavantissa. If he insists that the name is kakka vanna, both kakkaa and vanna are Indo-European words. But I cannot imagine a king named 'color of kakkaa'. Yes, Nalla Thanni is indeed Tamil, and Tamils live in Lanka, only that they are not aborigines of Lanka, maybe Veddas are.
The Singhala script
Vadivel says that Singhalese did not have writing till very recent years. The earliest occurrence of Brahmi akshara was in the 6th century BC in Anuradhapura, about 3 centuries before Asoka's time when it is seen in India. (and before Elara). That makes Brahmi actually Old Singhala. We have records of how Brahmi gradually transformed into present Singhala script. So, it is possible that Old Singhala is the original script of all Indic scripts including Tamil. The Thonigala rock inscription is dated to the rein of either of Dutta-Gamini or Vatta Gamini both of whom are from BC times 1st or 2nd centuries. The Tripitaka was written down in the Singhala script in the 1st century.
Those were all before even the Tamil nation was established by Rishi Agasti who was a Northerner that worked under the patronage of king Kulashekara. Kulashekara, according to Mahaavamsha, lived around turn of the 13th century. He sent an expedition to Lanka to steal the Tooth Relic. By the way, Elara was a Chola king, an ancestor of Telugu speaking people. Tamil nation did not exist then.
Vadivel shows Dravidian scripts and asks if Singhala is similar to Telugu. He is talking about the scripts, *not* the languages. If you transliterate the sentences of other languages in the list, there is absolutely no correspondence between the Singhala words and the Dravidian words.
The closest script to Singhala among the Dravidian languages is Malayalam, the language of the Malaya Rata as Singhalese called it and Malaya Nad as Indians call it. That is roughly the mountainous south western edge of India. (Kerala and part of Karnataka). Singhalese had regular cultural and maritime interaction with Malaya Rata throughout its history.
Origin of Tamil and the Tamil people
Pandyans (Tamil rulers) are mentioned in Mahaavamshaya only after 13th century. Isn't it curious that this is so when Tamil Nadu is the Indian state closest to Lanka, given the Mannar 'bridge' to Tamil Nadu? Southern thorn-brush desert of India is roughly Tamil-Nadu. This is the proper Deccan, which name is derived from the Sanskrit word Dakshina -> Singhala Dakuna. It gets rain only once a year and is hot throughout the year. People of this region were called mleccas (barbarians) by the others. They were reputed as highway robbers. It can be easily conjectured that before the exponential population increase of the last few centuries, people were not so congested to go and take up living in harsh environs. The people in the Malaya Nad region were and even now known as Malaivars or mountain people. Tamil Nadu is not a mountainous place, but they too were called Malaivars and Malabars by Europeans.
As we know, Singhalese were close with Malayalis, so much so that the Malayali script was influenced by the Singhala script. This is no surprise because of the Buddhist influence. Hindus were not interested in writing as the Brahmins passed down the oral traditions along their lineage to ensure their special social status.
It is quite probable that the name Tamil was adapted from the Singhala word Damila (ðamila) as the new nation of Tamil emerged on Agasti's efforts. dravida -> davida -> daviøa (ø standing for muurdhaja layanna / lavanna or dark L which is hormorganic with D) -> damiøa -> þamiø (þ = th).
Immigration - integration - assimilation
It is entirely plausible that Singhalese were Shaivas, Vaishnavas, Shaaktas or adherents of some other Hindu division before Buddhism. Vadivel is right in saying the obvious, that so called Buddhists are Hindu practitioners. I too believe that these are mostly practices the former Dravidians brought to Lanka and not things that existed in past history. That is a feature in group immigration called integration -- the locals adopting some cultural features of the newcomers. These immigrants and natives have now fully assimilated making sum of the two greater than the individual groups.
The natural process of immigration to a country by a group is arrival with desire to remain, gradual and friendly interaction with natives, contributing to the culture and economy as congenial to the natives and finally becoming one with the natives. When immigration is controlled by government or church by trying to artificially preserve the foreign identity of the newcomer keeping apart from the native, it invariably leads to future clash between the new and the old. The growing hate among Europeans against Muslims in their countries is because the government and mosque try to preserve the Muslim culture that does not go well with the native culture.
Aging Rajasingha I had to face the Portuguese menace and was looking world over for help to stop them. He entered into a military pact with the Pandyans, married a Tamil princess, and allowed Tamils to come and own land and yet remain as foreigners. Obviously both Tamils and the king had decided Jaffna as their assigned post because the climate in Jaffna is similar to that of Tamil Nadu. There was no incentive for them to assimilate like Rajasingha required others before owning land.
The British created a similar problem by bringing guest workers from India who kept their connection with India by traveling back and forth.
These two groups never assimilated. Educated people like dR. Vadivel ought to help Tamil people stop ambiguity of allegiance and assimilate as Singhalese just like the people that he points to that have successfully become Singhalese.
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