Sri Lanka - from Euro-Asian commercial hub to pan-world socio-political importance

Text of the Commemorative Oration by former Ambassador of Sri Lanka to France and USA Professor Ananda W. P. Guruge delivered on November 24 in Colombo

Conscious of the signal honour conferred on me by inviting me to deliver the D A Rajapaksa commemorative address, I wish to express my most grateful thanks to the President and the organizing committee for according me the welcome opportunity to pay a tribute to a national leader for whom my affection and esteem are of the highest order. D A Rajapaksa was introduced to me by Wijayananda Dahanayake in 1956 when I was assigned to the Ministry of Education and Cultural Affairs. I already knew the family from my student days in the University through George and Kamala and was aware that in 1952, when S.W.R.D. Bandaranaike crossed to the Opposition, D A Rajapaksa was behind him. Bandaranaike has later told that he thought that it was his own shadow. Rajapaksa was a founder-member of the Sri Lanka Freedom Party.

Ever since, until I resigned from the Ceylon Civil Service to go abroad in 1967, we met frequently on matters pertaining to education in the Beliatta electorate, in particular, and the Hambantota District, in general. We became friends especially because he was an unassuming, down-to-earth and extremely courteous person, who considered the welfare of the people as his foremost consideration. One time Captain of the Cricket Eleven of Richmond College, he stood for justice and fair play and never made an unreasonable request. If ever he took any side, it was always in favour of the disadvantaged, the down-trodden and the under-privileged. If ever he pleaded for special consideration of his electorate, it was because he was convinced that the region was long neglected and needed special attention.

Welfare of the poor

The directive I had from all the ministers I served (namely, Dahanayake, Badiudin Mahmud and Kalugalle) was to give any request from D A Rajapaksa the highest consideration as he was deeply and genuinely committed to the development of the region and the welfare of the poor. As a result I had been to his area often and enjoyed his most generous hospitality. Ours was a friendship that both of us valued and cherished.

That he was a unique human being with the most lovable qualities of boundless compassion to humanity was the assessment of every person who came in touch with him. Therefore, I was not surprised to read what Kamala Wickremasuriya had written in her book Piyum Maga. She says, He guided and helped us ever since the day we lost our father. The vacuum was filled by him, the man who was really a Bosath. He had the qualities of a Bosath, never uttering a falsehood nor a harsh word. He was a beacon of light to our family whom he treated as his own. Our hunger was his hunger. Our wants were his wants. Always we were the first although we were his brother's children. He was a man who did not stand at the rich man's gate, but went into the poor man's hut to help. That is what he gave us. That vision is still carried on by his children.

D A Rajapaksa's lasting contribution to the nation is that he gave us a united, patriotic, efficient and dedicated family whose manifold services to the country are to his credit. They have earned our appreciation and gratitude by liberating the nation from the menace of terrorism and thereby bringing solace to millions who lived in fear and anxiety for three decades. The family, as a whole, brings me memories of D A Rajapaksa's own career. The Speaker reminds me of his father's days as the Deputy Speaker always with a smile urging tolerance and consensus. The Defence Secretary recalls his silent courage and determination. Minister of Economic Development carries on in a wider framework what he did both as a State Councillor and Minister of Agriculture and Lands. The President portrays vividly D A Rajapaksa's vision and mission for the long-term welfare of the people and is carrying them out most effectively.

With this heart-felt tribute to D A Rajapaksa, may I proceed to the subject which the President has chosen for this oration: Sri Lanka – from the Euro-Asian commercial hub to pan-world socio-political importance. What I plan to cover, though very briefly, is the unparalleled record of Sri Lanka's foreign relations in commercial, diplomatic, religious, cultural and political spheres which span its 25 centuries of written history.

No other country, perhaps with the exception of China, has been open to its neighbours as well as distant regions of the known world for such a long and unbroken period as our island. It has maintained a high level of visibility and exerted a significant impact on the world. This Sri Lanka has achieved in spite of its size. Small though our island is, its contribution to the world has been substantial. It is a record to be recalled with pride so as to be motivated to follow the example of outreach to the world which our ancestors have set for us.

Commercial relations

An ancient Chinese legend suggests that Sri Lanka was colonized by a maritime trader called Sinhala as a result of commercial relations with its aborigines. Though there is no reference in the Buddhist Canon, both Buddhist traditions speak of visits by the Buddha: the Mahavamsa refers to three visits while the Mahayana tradition says that Ravana sent his aerial vehicle to fetch the Buddha to preach the Mind-only doctrine here. Although according to our history, Vijaya and his followers were banished from Lata for banditry, they still maintained relations with mainland India by seeking wives from Southern Madhura and sending for a sibling to be his successor. Waves of later immigrants from Northern India continued their relations with the homeland.

By the fourth century BCE we have evidence that Sri Lankan ships plied between the Indus valley in present Pakistan and the island. Onesicritus, the naval admiral of Alexander the Great (356-326 BCE), records that the voyage took 20 days and the Sri Lankan ships were technically of an inferior quality. Around the same time, the Mahavamsa states that Pandukabhaya (circa 380-310 BCE) set aside a part of the new city of Anuradhapura to Greeks. A few decades later, but before Mahinda Thera’s mission, Asoka's Rock Edicts II and III include Tambapanni as a country to which he had sent aid in the form of rare plants, medicinal herbs and medical treatment to humans and animals. Further, a number of votive inscriptions in the Brahmi script refer to foreign merchants and mariners such as the Kambhojas from Northern Pakistan, Murunda or Saka from the Scythian region, Lampada from Afghanistan and Jhavaka from Indonesia as donors to Buddhist institutions. Regular ships seem to have plied between Tamralipti in the Gangeti Delta in India and Jambukola near Chulipuram in the Jaffna Peninsula and that was the route taken by their Sanghamitta to come with the Bo-sapling. Gokanna or Trincomalee was similarly a port to which ships had come from India. All this points to existing trade routes with the neighbouring countries.

Trade with Indonesia dates back to the days of Devanampiyatissa (250-210 BCE). His brother, Mahanage, who fled to Magama after the attempt made on his life with a poisoned mango, served as the head of the Javanese regiment of the Ten Brother Kings. Hambantota meaning the port for sampans (the Cantonese word for a ship) may have been in use from that time. A Brahmi inscription shows that Godavaya near Ambalantota was an international port.

What Sri Lanka exported included spices and metals. In Sanskrit the word Sinhalaka means cinnamon, pepper and brass. In Hindi the word for nutmega is Lanka. As the Greco-Roman region in Europe and China in East Asia rose in prosperity and chose luxury goods from each other, a number of routes – especially three land routes and one maritime route – came into use. As Sri Lanka was exactly the mid-point, the port of Mahatittha or Mantota or Mantai near Talaimannar became the mainentropot.

The monsoon winds contributed to this in that Greco-Roman ships from the West and the Chinese ships from the East travelled into this port. Apparently Sri Lankan ships plied in both directions and a Chinese chronicler has recorded that the Sri Lankan ships were the largest that came to their ports. While Sri Lankan exports to the West could have been spices, pearls, gems and precious stones, the exports to the East could have been rice produced with the large scale irrigation schemes, iron for whose production commercial-scale furnaces had recently been excavated, ivory and elephants.

To both regions two popular exports were white Muslim - a high quality cotton cloth - and Kitul treacle, which was said to be a favourite of kings. Almost forty Greek and Latin and as many Persian and Arabic writers have accounts of Sri Lankan relations with their countries from the fourth century BCE. Pliny the Elder had interviewed the four ambassadors to the court of Emperor Augustus or Claudius of Rome in the first century BCE and had given a very favourable account of the Sri Lankan king and government. One of the ambassadors was the son of Sri Lanka's ambassador to China.

Diplomatic missions

The most detailed information comes from the second century map of Ptolemy, which calls it Taprobane. It shows the major topographical features and the location and names of several cities and four ports. Apparently reflecting the importance attached to it in the tales of sailors, its size was depicted many times larger. Around 550 CE Cosmas Indicopleustes wrote a book by the name of Christian Topography based on his travel in the Red Sea and the Indian Ocean and included in it a comprehensive description of Sri Lanka. He found a Nestorian Christian Church in Anuradhapura with clerics and adherents.

The fact that the capital city of the country housed foreigners is further testified to by the Chinese pilgrim Fa-Xien (circa 410 CE), who says that the houses of Sabean merchants were very beautifully adorned.

Cosmas Indicopleustes called the Island the Emporium Mediatrix or the midway emporium; that in today's terms would mean ‘the commercial hub’. It was then really the middle of the Maritime Silk Route between Europe and China and the port of Mantai bears witness to the variety of nations that had exchanged goods there. In the three preliminary excavations conducted in Mantai in early 1980s, artifacts from Greece, Rome, Persia, Venice and Arabia were found in plenty. Now that peace has returned, may I fervently request the President to see that the archaeological work there is resumed in earnest as it would show the world the importance of Sri Lanka as the hub of Euro-Asian trade.

Even more detailed information comes from the Chinese annals of various dynasties. They record numerous diplomatic missions from Sri Lanka to the Chinese court for over a period of 16 centuries, the last being the four missions of Parakramabahu VI of Kotte (1411-1466).

Bhikkhuni ordination

In comparison to all this evidence of our foreign relations, the Sri Lankan sources are extremely flimsy. For example we have in the Mahavamsa the list of delegations that participated in the inauguration of Ruvanveliseya by King Dutthagamini (161-137 BCE) and it names, besides well-known Indian monasteries, Kashmir, Pallavabhoga and Alikasanda. The tenth century commentary on the Mahavamsa mentions Romanukka (- Romanus) as the place from which the Bhatikabhaya (22 BCE-7 CE) obtained coral to decorate the Ruvanveliseya. Of course, there is the trilingual inscription in Chinese, Persian and Tamil in the port of Galle. Fortunately, a plenty of data is to be found in foreign sources on what Sri Lanka contributed to the world culture. These specifically deal with Sri Lanka's role in the promotion of Buddhism.

Two Prakrit inscriptions of the second or third century at Nagarjunakonda in Andhra Pradesh refer to a Sihalavihara (Sinhala monastery) there with the typical Sri Lankan shrines as a cetiyaghara (stupa in a house) and a bodhighara (a structure around the Bo-tree) and speaks of monks of Tambapanni, who were revered for having spread Buddhism to Kashmir, China and various parts of the Indian subcontinent. The Allahabad inscription containing a panegyric on the Gupta Emperor Samudragupta (330-375 CE) refers to Sri Lanka as Sainhalaka. At Buddhagaya is a record of the monastery that King Sirimeghavanna (301-328 CE) built with permission from the Gupta emperor for the use of Sri Lankans going there on pilgrimage. It had been occupied almost to the time Buddhism disappeared from India. The disciple of Indian Buddhist philosopher Nagarjuna (circa 2nd century) was a Sri Lankan prince named Aryadeva and the succeeded him as the abbot of Nalanda University. Similarly a Sri Lankan monk had been in a position of authority at Ajantha for one of the most prominent murals to depict the arrival of the Sinhalas in the island.

Vinaya commentary

Evidence from China includes the translations into Chinese of Vimuttimagga, a work of Thera Upatissa of Abhayagiri, as Cietao-lun and of the Sinhala Vinaya commentary as Shan-jian-lupiposha. This Vinaya commentary appears to have been translated into Chinese from the Sinhala original before it was rendered into Pali by Buddhaghosa as Samantapasadika. Fa-Xien took from Sri Lanka the Dharmaguptika Vinaya, which remains to this day the rules guiding the monastics of the whole of East Asia.

Equally lasting in impact is the mission of the Sri Lankan nun Devasara, who in 439 CE established the Bhikkhunisasana in China. To this date, the order of nuns in East Asia is regarded as its continuation while the rest of Asia lost the tradition of Bhikkhuni ordination.

Apart from the comprehensive accounts in the works of Fa-Xien and Xuan-Shang, Chinese histories mention the visits of the Kashmir King Gunavarman, who after a stay in Abhayagiri went to China and became a well known authority on the Vinaya, Amoghvajra and his teacher Vajrabodhi, who spread Tantric Buddhism in China, and a team of five Sinhala monks of whom one was a skilled sculptor of great talent. An account of the Long-gen Grottoes states that forty-thousand craftsmen worked for 50 years there and among them were Sri Lankans.

According to Yi-jing at least five Chinese monks other than Fa-Xian had visited Sri Lanka and one of them is said to have attempted to steal the Tooth Relic from the hands of the king. Several attempts had been made by China to get hold of the Tooth Relic and even the last missions of Chen-Ho, which resulted in the abduction of the ruler Alagakkonara in the 15th century, was for that purpose.

To be continued