The first famine of Lanka and its salutary sequel

Padma EDIRISINGHE

In the neighbouring sub-continent, I happened to set my eyes on a book titled “Famines of India”. Then it struck me that I have never come across a book, “Famines of Sri Lanka”. May be the “non-academic” that I am, the book simply did not cross my path. Or may be such a book was never written. Not all babies conceived in the mother’s womb come out with life intact. Mishaps do occur. So with books, Many books are conceived within the minds of would be authors but many a slip occurs between the conception and the birth of a book. Ennui sets in most cases and circumstantial factors too play their part.

The 1866 famine caused by a shortage of rice was bloated out of proportion by the debut of a host of Sinhala newspapers out to sensationalise the reader. But the famine that occurred in the first Century Anno Domini never got newspaper publicity for the simple reason that the glare of media had not set in.

Leave alone media, not even the art of writing was prevalent in those caverns of Time. But strangely this first famine finally ended with a massive and highly significant recording of a vast component of knowledge handed down orally for centuries. The oral tradition of preserving the Dhamma need no elaboration. It came down from the time of Buddha and hence the Buddha Putras, acted as the repositories of the doctrine.

All was well as long as all things went well. But there erupted a very severe famine in the 1st Century AD made worse by a political upheaval. One Brahmana Thissa, from South India, according to historical sources had usurped the throne. This led to this famine being baptized Brahmana Tissa Saaya or Beminiti Saaya.

The famine like any other human catastrophe would have just passed away as a transient scene on the stage of human history overflowing with such calamities but no, in this instance it led to a permanent and very beneficial imprint on the corpus of knowledge in the world.

Starvation

The monks happened to suffer most from the starvation since they had to depend on the lay people for their alms. E.W. Adikaram in his “Early history of Buddhism” gives this succinct and poignant account of the starving bhikkus.

“For 12 years there was a severe famine which has no parallel in the history of the island. The monasteries of Anuradhapura were abandoned and the bhikkus made their way either to India or to the hilly districts of Ceylon”.

Some perhaps made their way to the next world too. Anyway no one returned to the monasteries of the capital. But soon some mentors seem to have become active and 60 of the monks about to leave Lanka’s shores had been asked to return and climb up to the Malaya terrain and live there feeding themselves on roots and leaves. A very altruistic motive had propelled this move. They were requested to go on reciting the texts lest they forget them.

Let us get back to scholar, Adikaram.

“When they had sufficient strength to sit down they recited the texts, keeping themselves in that posture, and when they could no longer keep their bodies erect, they laid their heads on mounds of sand and continued their recitations. In this wise they preserved in full for 12 years the texts and the commentaries.

The famine taught the nation a very significant lesson. The many loopholes connected to preserving knowledge via the oral tradition was brought home. Demise of prelates who specialised in certain parts of the Dhamma meant that the particular knowledge died with them. Extraneous factors too played their part.

In fact here is another quote.

Attacked

“The island was in constant danger of being attacked by non-Buddhist foreigners and whenever they were successful that period proved to be a very dark one for Buddhism. Wars and other forms of political unrest necessitated the abandoning of the chief centres of learning such as the Maha Vihara.”

Now the more senior Theras gathered together and discussed ways and means of ameliorating these conditions which resulted in the Great assembly at Aloka Vihara off Matale. In those rocky enclaves, five hundred monks clad in saffron and ochre robes sat and committed to writing the whole of the Tripitaka along with the commentaries for the first time in history “in order that the true doctrine might endure”.

While such a stupendous academic exercise was being systematically orchestrated within those fantastic formations sprung from the earth, people of some countries today risen to the apex of material civilisation were running naked or swathed in leaves behind wild animals for their sustenance.

Leave alone languages modified for such superior writing purposes as doctrinal recordings, mere alphabets and they were so far apart. Veteran writer K. Jayatileka, whose book, “Sinhalayage Arambaya saha avasanaya” (“Beginning and end of the Sinhala race”) which the present writer translated into “Saga of the Sinhale” (Sinhale here connoting all that is connected to the Sinhala race) declining to translating the Sinhala title verbatim, poses this very pertinent question. Here is his passage that encases the question which could be pertinent to this article.

Identified

“Today all that is identified with the name Sinhala is teetering on the brink of doom. It is almost as though the whole world has camped against us.

Do we deserve this animosity? Have we not contributed our mite to the enrichment of world civilisation?”

Here is the answer given by two famous academicians of course written earlier.

“The preservation of the Theravada Canon in the Pali language which had been lost in India at a comparatively early date, is the greatest contribution that the Sinhalese people had made to the intellectual heritage of mankind”.

From “A concise history of Ceylon” by C.W. Nicholas and S. Paranavithana quoted in “Educational policies and progress” by Prof. J.E. Jayasuriya.