An addendum to the unveiling of a painting at the Royal Asiatic Society of Sri Lanka
by Punsara Amarasinghe
The Silk Roads
The term Silk Road arose from the mind of German geographer Ferdinand Von Richthofen in the late 19th century. Still, its historical saga dates back to antiquity, which connected multiple civilizations to share a common destiny for trade with the eventual goal of attaining financial prosperity. A romanticised nostalgia for Silk Roads has been revived recently in the aftermath of Beijing’s ambitious launch of the Belt and Road Initiative as China tends to justify its new version of globalization through the kaleidoscope of the past, where Silk Roads had major connectivity with the Chinese civilization. This silk route projection in the 21st century denotes a geopolitical message, which is much akin to the emergence of Pax Sinica in the next few decades.
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| Unveiling the Silk Road painting at the Royal Asiatic Society: a gift from Dr. Karunasena Kodituwakku, celebrating Sri Lanka's cultural ties with China. |
The unveiling of the Silk Road painting at the Royal Asiatic Society in Colombo is an apt event for leveraging the cultural ties between Sri Lanka and the Silk Road community in a time of cultural pessimism. The painting was donated to RAS by the former minister of education and cultural affairs Dr. Karunasena Kodituwakku and it was a gift that he received from the Chinese during his tenure as Sri Lanka’s ambassador in Beijing between 2015-2020. The style of the painting aggrandises the grandeur of China in the days of yore and the theme of the painting “ The Middle Kingdom and the Silk Roads “gives a stark reflection of Xi Jinping’s obsession with invoking China’s past majesty to its current rise as a historical connectivity. The painting contains the map of China indicating its position as the epicenter of the world and a ship sailing in the high sea, which is a reminder of the ancient maritime silk route. After the unveiling of the painting by Dr. Kodituwakku at the Royal Asiatic Society Premises Dr. Ajith Amarasinghe and Dr. Antonina Mendis from Jagiellonian University delivered two lectures on China’s interactions from a historical point of view. In Amarasinghe’s remarks, he traces the historical factors relating to Admiral Cheng Ho’s visit to Sri Lanka in the 15thcentury based on his nuanced research, in which Dr. Amarasinghe argues that the Chinese eunuch admiral never had the intention of subduing the island.
Ming-Kotte War
On the contrary, Amarasinghe portrayed him to be a fine diplomat with an acute sense of strategy who never wanted to conquer another land. Ironically the details of Cheng Ho’s affair in Kotte Kingdom lurked in the annals of history as major chronicles remain vague in narrating how Chinese troops invaded Kotte. One striking feature of this incident was that the Chinese never attempted to plunder or obliterate the Sinhalese polity emulating the previous invaders such as Cholas and the rest of the South Indian invaders. In the Chinese narratives written during the Ming dynasty, the Chinese were offended by the contempt and arrogance shown by the Sinhalese when they assaulted the Chinese and their ships. An extract from the 1515 book, The Collected Works of Yang Rong, reveals the racist Chinese attitude:
“Straight-away, their dens and hideouts we ravaged and made captive that entire country, Bringing back to our august capital, Their women, children, families and retainers, leaving not one, Cleaning out in a single sweep those noxious pests, as if winnowing chaff from grain… These insignificant worms, deserving to die ten thousand times over, trembling in fear… Did not even merit the punishment of heaven. Thus, the august emperor spared their lives, And they humbly kowtowed, making crude sounds Praising the sage-like virtue of the imperial Ming ruler.”
The Chinese jingoism is well captured in the account of Yang Rong, who justified Cheng Ho’s second visit to Lanka, in which he militarily crushed Kotte ruler Alakeshvara and finally Alakeshvara himself was taken as a prisoner to China. While writing on these events some Indian historians tend to argue that China’s entry to the Western Ocean was not such a friendly voyaged based on bonhomie and mutual friendship as they displayed the ambitions to control the Asian maritime trade routes with Melaka, Palembang. Samudera, Calicut and Sri Lanka as key ports. Some analysts have described these voyages as “maritime proto-colonialism”! However, it is an undeniable factor that one cannot ignore regardless of whatever the comments made by modern historians, Ming China lacked the brutal set of psyches to annihilate a civilization, which was a stark contrast to the 16th-century Christian invaders from Spain and Portugal. From a vantage point, Beijing’s stance towards the peripheral states in the 21st century resembles what the Ming dynasty upheld in the 15th century as modern China shows no interest in meddling with the internal matters of foreign nations.
Dynamics of Indo-Sino Relations
Dr. Antonina Mendis, a trained Indologist and well-cited researcher from Jagiellonian University in Poland, presented an analysis of the geopolitical realities arising from China’s presence in the Indo-Pacific region. She questioned the dynamics of China-India relations and their implications for Sri Lanka. Her examination focused on how Chinese strategy toward the Indian Ocean developed during Deng Xiaoping’s era. It is widely known that the modern Chinese state promotes the concept of the “Chinese dream” in its policies, blending socialist values with the ethos of Chinese civilization. Infused with Confucian-Taoist values, Xi Jinping’s contemporary China regards the largest democracy, India, as a challenge to its expansionist ambitions in the Indian Ocean. India, haunted by memories of the 1962 Indo-Sino war and the recent 2020 Ladakh border skirmish, perceives China’s rapid growth as a direct threat. Dr. Antonina’s insightful analysis revealed the potential impact of China’s involvement on the island. The unveiling of a painting depicting the silk routes at the oldest academic society in Sri Lanka symbolizes the island’s historical connection to the Silk Road. Sri Lanka’s geographic location has consistently placed it at pivotal points in history. Now, with the advent of Pax Sinica, the island’s future is uncertain, and the best approach to avoid being caught in emerging global rivalries is to build strategic partnerships with both India and China without antagonizing either.
Dr. Punsara Amarasinghe is a lecturer at the Faculty of Law, General Sir John Kotelawala Defence University. His co-edited book “Thirty Years Looking Back: The Rule of Law, Human Rights and State Building in the Post-Soviet Space was published in 2022 .
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