Sinhabahu: Paradigmatic myth of Oedipus
Dr Ruwan M Jayatunge
The mythological Story of Sinhabahu describes the origin of Sinhala
nation. According to the mythology, the Princess Suppadevi of Vanga
Kingdom was kidnapped by a ferocious lion and took her to the
wilderness. While living with the lion she became pregnant and had
twins. The newly born son was named Sinhabahu and daughter was named
Sinha Seevali. The lion kept them in a cave and used to cover the
entrance with a mighty rock.
Scene from Professor Ediriweera Sarachchandra’s Sinhabahu |
When Sinhabahu was sixteen years of age, he removed the megalith and
escaped with his mother and the sister. They went to the Lala kingdom
evading the lion. When the lion found that the family had escaped it
became furious and attacked villages seeking Princess Suppadevi and two
children. The desperate villagers pleaded the King to rescue them from
the fierce lion. The king of the Lala kingdom requested Sinhabhu to stop
the menace caused by the lion. Young Sinhabahu went in search of the
lion and killed him with a deadly arrow. The people praised Sinhabahu
for rescuing them from the evil beast. He was rewarded as a hero. Prince
Sinhabahu built a city called Sinhapura and married his sister Sinha
Seevali. They had a son named Vijaya. According to Mahawansa Prince
Vijaya was the first recorded King of Sri Lanka from 543 BC to 505 BC.
The lion or the beast was the father of Prince Sinhabahu who
kidnapped his mother from her clan. The lion could have been a metaphor
for a strong man with a monstrous strength or a man with a Lion face
(consider that fact that in Hansen's disease lion-like appearance or
leonine facies is evident)
Prof Gananath Obeyesekere postulates that Sinhabahu myth is the
paradigmatic myth of the Sri Lankan Oedipus.
In his outstanding publication, The Work of Culture Symbolic
Transformation in Psychoanalysis and Anthropology Prof Obesekara states
that the Sinhabahu myth is striking for the absence of reference to
remorse or any ethical qualms for father killing.
There are many mythological stories like Sinhabahu that could be
found in the ancient cultures.
Dr Wijaya Dissanayaka, Consultant Psychiatrist and the eminent
lecturer, was on the view that most of these stories narrate the killing
of the beast or the dragon by the hero, which truly depicts the oedipal
conflict.
The ancient English poem Beowulf and Sinhabahu has some similarities.
The Beowulf - the oldest surviving epic poem in the English language
that was written in 700 AD evolved through many retellings before it was
written down. Beowulf narrates an epic story of a prince who kills a
terrible monster known as Grendel and frees the people. From Sinhabahu
to Beowulf and to the modern day Star Wars (the clash between Luke
Skywalker and Darth Vader) symbolize the conflict between farther and
son. All these stories have one thing in common. The son is challenging
the father’s authority projecting his primal hate towards the father and
eventually commenting a patricide.
Sigmund Freud was fascinated by the greatest works of world
literature such as Oedipus Rex, The King, Hamlet, and the Brothers
Karamazov that dramatically describe the unconscious motives of
patricide. Oedipus Rex, written by the Hellenic poet Sophocles,
describes the patricide and incest motif. In the psychoanalytic
perspective, it was transitional dynamic of the “ego” overcoming the
“superego.
In Civilization and Its Discontents (1930) Freud wrote that it is
impossible to get “away from the assumption that man’s sense of guilt
springs from the Oedipus complex and was acquired at the killing of the
father by the brothers banded together.
Freud never had a chance to read the Sinhabahu legend, but Carl Jung
might have read it when he came to Sri Lanka. However, there were no any
psychoanalytical writings based on Sinhabahu by Jung.
Sigmund Freud expressed that parricide was the great crime at the
base of all social evolution. In Totem and Taboo (1913), Freud’s
cultural speculation on the Primal Father - the dominant male (The Lion
in the Sinhabahu’s instance) Freud suggested that eventually the
displaced sons of the primal father banded together and killed their
oppressive patriarch. Freud was on the view that in primitive societies,
the head of the family gave free reign to the instinctual manifestations
of his aggression at the expense of all others. Freud luridly wrote
about the patricide and its unconscious motive. He made an emphasis on
the term ‘Vatermord’ or murder of the father by the son. Freud further
states that the hero commits the deed unintentionally.
Dr Vamlk Volkan, Professor of Psychiatry of the University of
Virginia, luminously writes on the killing of the totem animal or the
patricide thus.
Long ago primitive people lived in small tribes led by despotic
leaders. With his unlimited power, the leader or father considered all
the women of the tribe his exclusive property. If the young men of the
tribe, or sons, expressed jealousy, they were killed, castrated or
excommunicated.
Their fate unbearable, the young men joined forces, killed the father
and ate him. But the father’s influence would not disappear. In death he
became more powerful. Haunted by the ghost of their father, the sons
replaced him with a horrible and strong animal, a totem. It absorbed the
sons’ ambivalence—the simultaneous hate and love they were experiencing
for their dead father. Since the ghost of their father lived in the
totem, however, the sons were still not free of his influence and their
hate for him, as well as their love for him, continued. Totemism is thus
both a religious and a social system” (Hence, the totem animal was used
to maintain two useful prohibitions—one against killing the totem animal
(patricide) and the other against having sexual relations with women of
the same totem or clan (incest).
(Totem and Taboo in Romania: A Psychopolitical Diagnosis - Dr. Vamlk
Volkan)
In Totem and Taboo Freud, profoundly analyzed the incest in the
ancient human societies and intricately discussed the emotional
ambivalence associated with totem objects. |