Colonial Knowledge Formation under British Rule and Modern Sri Lankan Historiography

The National Trust – Sri Lanka Monthly Lecture Series No- 129 October 29, 2020

By Prof. Gamini Keerawella

I am extremely thankful to Mr. Kanag-Isvaran, Chairman, the National Trust- Sri Lanka, for introducing me to this distinguished audience. I take this opportunity to thank the National Trust for the honour, bestowed upon me by inviting to deliverer this lecture. I really appreciate the kindness of Mr. Wickremerathne, Vice-Chair of the National Trust, who contacted me on behalf of the National Trust first, for giving me the liberty to decide the theme of the lecture. I decided to present my thoughts on ‘Colonial Knowledge Formation under British Rule and Modern Lankan Historiography’.

I am a historian by training. I am proud to be a historian. What we study in history is not really a dead past. Even though the events and personalities that we study are dead and gone, the thinking process behind these events and personalities are living and reemerging again and again in the minds of generation after generation. In that sense, all history is contemporary. The theme we discuss today is more relevant to the contemporary Sri Lankan political discourses. Tracing the genealogy of modern Sri Lankan historiography would help understand historical roots of the concepts on which the contemporary political discourse is centered.

In my lecture, I wish to elaborate three main points. First, the knowledge formation was a key component of the British colonialism project in Sri Lanka. The political and economic aspects of colonialism, the political domination and the extraction of resources have been given adequate attention. But, without paying attention to the Colonial knowledge formation, the totality of British colonial project cannot be grasped. Second, re-reading history in terms colonial political categories is a main component of colonial knowledge formation. The gathering information about the past of the colonial territories and their subjects was considered essential for building colonial hegemony and resource mobilization and exploitation in colonial territories. Third, the modern Sri Lankan Historiography took its form in the context of colonial knowledge formation under British rule. The main thrust of my argument is that modern Sri Lankan Historiography originated as a British colonial project.

Re-reading Sri Lankan History under British rule did not take place in an empty space. What really happened was that the text of pre-colonial Sri Lankan historiography was re-read in terms of the evolving new political categories. As a point of departure to my argument, I wish to draw your attention to attention to Historical traditions in Sri Lanka prior to colonialism.

Pre-colonial Sri Lankan Historiography

Sri Lanka had one of the oldest and continuous historical traditions in Asia. The origin of this historical tradition could be traced back to the introduction of Buddhism to the island in the 3rd century BC. When the Buddhist cannons were presented, they accompanied an historical introduction in the form of attakatha in order to prove that it was the true Buddha’s teaching. Acoordingly, attakatha to the Pitaka became an integral part of the introduction of Buddhism. This historical tradition was naturalized subsequently in Sri Lankan soil and the Sinhala attakatha were produced with added details of the history of the island. The Buddhist texts in Sinhala, including the commentaries, were once again translated into Pali in the 5th century A.D. The Samantapasadhika is a Pali translation of the Sinhala atuva of Vinaya Pitaka.

As a number of Buddhist centers of learning emerged in the island, there were many variations of historical narrations. The available evidence clearly shows that the ancient historical thinking of the island was enriched with multiple perspectives. In order to understand the ancient historical traditions of the island, Mahawamsa and its tika, Vamsatthappakasini are very useful. According to Mahavansa Tika, the Mahavamsa was based on the Sihalatthakatha Mahavamsa. The Vamsatthappakasini mentions about Uttaraviharatthakata and also Uttaravihara-vasinam Mahavamsa. Uttaravihara was Abhayagiriya, a rival Buddhist center that competed with Mahavihara. Uttaravihara historical perspective was not similar to Mahavihara. Almost all the quotations from the Uttaraviharatthakata in Mahawamsa are either to point out differences in the tradition or to provide additional information not found in Sihalatthakata. The author of Mahavamsa (first part) was Mahanama thera of Mahavihara and it presented the tradition nurtured in the Mahavihara.

The earliest known chronicle of the island was Dipavamsa, written around the mid 4th century A.D., little earlier than Mahavamsa. As Luxman Su Perera pointed out, Deepawamsa gives us a fair indication of the nature of the early historical tradition. ” The memory verses, the double versions and numerous repetitions show that it stands very close to the original. Consequently, it gives us a fair indication of the nature of the early historical tradition. The many references to bhikkunis have led scholars to suppose that this may be the work of the bhikkunis of the in the Hatthalhaka nunnery.

Even though there were multiple narratives, the unique place of the Mahavamsa and its overriding importance must not be underestimated. It continued to shape the dominant historical thinking of the island for generations. The Mahavamsa was in circulation as reference material for generations up to the 18th century. It is evident from a reference made by John Davy a medical officer of the British Army who served in Sri Lanka in the period 1816-1820, in his book, An Account of the Interior of Ceylon and of its Inhabitants.

‘Old Chroncile ‘

The historical sketch which forms the tenth chapter, and concludes the first part of the work, was drawn up chiefly from the information which I was so fortunate as to extract from the late Dissava of Welassey, Malawa, an old man of shrewd intellect, a poet, historian, and astrologer, and generally allowed by his countryman to be the most able and learned of all the Kandyan chiefs. Part of the information that he communicated was given from a very retentive memory, and part was drawn from an old chronicle, or other historical romance of Ceylon, which he had by him, and to which he referred when his memory failed him.

The ‘old chronicle’ that Davy referred to was no doubt Mahavamsa.

Pre-modern Sri Lanka historiography emerged and sustained in a particular socio-political and economic order. It was an organic part of reproduction of culture in that particular socio-political order. This order was replaced by a colonial order under the British rule. The colonial knowledge generation on acquired territories and subjugated people was a key component of colonial project.

Colonial knowledge formation

The practice of gathering information on the land, people, religions and languages of the East by colonial agents began from the very beginning of western colonial encounters in Asia. The Christian missionaries took the lead. They believed that familiarity of native languages, manners and customs would be essential in carrying out missionary work successfully.

Building knowledge of the colonial territories and their people in the East reached a new phase in the mid-19th century along with British colonial dominance in Asia. Its epicenter of British colonialism in Asia was India. Soon after the British acquired Bengal, Bihar and Orissa in the second half of the 18th century, the process of studying the people and their language and culture commenced systematically with the patronage of Warren Hastings, the first Governor General of British India. The connection between the colonial power projects and the renewed interest in the study of ancient languages, religions and history of the oriental people is abundantly clear. With the help of Brahmin Pandiths, Charles Wilkings translated Bhagavad Gîtâ into English in 1785. Writing a preface to the first English translation, Warren Hastings stated:

Every accumulation of knowledge and especially such as is obtained by social communication with the people over whom we exercise domination founded on the right of conquest, is useful to the state…it attracts and conciliates distant affections; it lessens the weight of the chain by which the natives are held in subjugation; and it imprints on the hearts of our countrymen the sense of obligation and benevolence…. Every instance which brings their real character home to observation will impress us with more generous sense of feeling for their natural rights, and teach us to estimate them by the measure of our own.

Charles Wilkins and Nathaniel Halhed, writers of the British East India Company in Bengal were among the first to study the Sanskrit. In 1783, William Jones came to India as a judge in the newly established Supreme Court of Bengal. As a judge in the Supreme Court, he was first interested in translating Manusmati (Laws of Manu) into English. He later translated Kalidasa’s Abhiknana Shakuntala and Ritu Samhara, and Jayadeva’s Gita Govinda into English. In the process of studying the society, he started learning Indian languages with the help of Brahmin Pundits of Bengal. William Jones was instrumental in establishing the Asiatick Society in 1784 in Bengal under the patronage of the Governor General Warren Hastings. In the third anniversary lecture of the Bengal Asiatic Society in 1786, William Jones stated:

The Sanskrit language, whatever be its antiquity, is of a wonderful structure; more perfect than the Greek, more copious than the Latin, and more exquisitely refined than either, yet bearing to both of them a stronger affinity, both in the roots of verbs and the forms of grammar, than could possibly have been produced by accident; so strong indeed, that no philologer could examine them all three, without believing them to have sprung from some common source, which, perhaps, no longer exists.

This statement not only challenged then prevailing Western perceptions of language history but also paved the way for the development of racial anthropology. William Jones statement of common source of origin of Sanskrit and the European clasical languages received a wide publicity. European philologers, historians, archeologists and ethnologists rushed to the East for intellectual pursuits in colonial environment.

In 1800, Governor Lord Wellesley established the Fort Williams College in Calcutta in order to train colonial civil servants. The Asiatic Society of Bengal and the Fort William College became one seat of Orientalist research where the concept of Indo-European family of languages originated. A while later, in 1812, Francis Whyte Ellis

cholarship of orientalisn , ann Histoty Colonial Collector of Madras presidency established the College of Fort St George to train young colonial civil servants of the Company in South India. The colonial administration in Madras, the Literary Society of Madras and the College of Fort St. George remained the triad of the Madras School of Orientalism. In 1816, F.W. Ellis first published proofs of the existence of the Dravidian language family, after studying ‘dhatu malas’ of the three South Indian languages- Telugu, Kannada and Tamil.

Comparative Grammar

In 1856, Bishop Robert Caldwell, elaborated it further and used the term ‘Dravidian’ to identify that language group in his Comparative Grammar of the Dravidian or South Indian Family of Languages. by quoting Pãnini and other ancient grammarians, Henry T. Colebrooke had argued in his article in Asian researches in 1801, titled ‘On the Sanskrit and Prakrit languages’, that Prakrit was the precursors of modern Indian languages, giving birth to the concept of linguistic unity of India. Now, the concept of linguistic unity of India was challenged by the Madras School of Orientalists, namely, Ellis, Campbell, and Caldwell.

Even though Britain took the lead in building new knowledge on the East but the other European colonial powers also claimed their shares. The first Oriental Society in Europe was the one founded by the Dutch in 1781 in order to map the languages in South East Asia. While Britain had its Royal Society (1823) the French had its own society- Acadèmie des Inscriptions et des Belles Letters. The competition between British and French orientalists to claim authority on oriental scholarship provided an impetus to ‘Oriental Studies’. Anquetil-Duperron, who worked for the French India Company in Pondicherry, returned to Paris with over two hundred manuscripts. His translation of Zend-Avesta and Ouvrage de Zoroastre was a reflection of French interest in Oriental Studies. William Jones who studied Persian at Oxford first came into prominence when he challenged the authority of Anquetil-Duperron.

The European contribution to the development of Oriental scholarship is important at this point. Paris became the main centre of the continental Europe for the construction of knowledge on the Orient. The first Chair of Sanskrit outside Britain was Antoine-Lẽonard de Chẽzy at the Collẽge de France. Eugẽne Bournouf later succeeded him. The first translation of Mahavamsa into an European language was done by Eugẽne Bournouf. In Paris, France Bopp and Max Mủller Studied Sanskrit under Bournouf. I will come to them later.

(To be continued)