Book Review  by Prof. Rajiva Wijesinha

Soon after I finished Ameena Hussein’s book about Ibn Battuta’s pilgrimage, I opened another that was similar in theme, though written about a period well over a thousand years prior to Ibn Battuta’s day. This was Ravana’s Lanka: The Landscape of a Lost Kingdom by Sunela Jayewardene.

The narrative of her journeys makes it clear that she is close to Ameena, for the two families have travelled together on their journeys of exploration, in the footsteps of the characters who inspired them. For Sunela there is no doubt at all that Ravana is not a mythical character, but a real king, who ruled a magnificent kingdom in Lanka long before the received history of this land, based on the Mahavamsa. She produces a whole range of evidence that more than substantiates her claim.

Even more than Ameena, understandably so for it suppressed the very basis of her argument, she takes issue with the Mahavamsa, which she notes has deliberately suppressed all evidence of a flourishing civilization in this land before Vijaya landed, around 2500 years ago. She cites example after example of sophisticated living indicated by archaeological evidence, and shows how this country was a centre of trade for ages before the simplistic narrative of a country based only on agriculture took over and suppressed all else.

The rest of the world had kept our memory alive. I had known about classical references to links with this country, but it was Sunela’s extensive research that made clear how deep these went, and how sophisticated was the world with which the west had dealt. I had known about the reputation of Lankan steel – and indeed contributed to affirming this through having persuaded the British Overseas Development Administration to fund Gill Juleff’s excavations which established the method of production – but I had not known that this reputation went back two thousand years.

I had known too of Siran Deraniyagala’s discoveries of urban dwelling at Anuradhapura well before its supposed establishment after Vijaya, but I had not known his father had suggested all this previously. Nor did I know of the extensive work done more recently by Robin Coningham, a fresh-faced youth I had been instrumental in bringing down in the early nineties, in the project we had built around Gill. Under the guidance of the redoubtable Raymond Allchin, he discovered much, which Sunela incorporates into her quietly revolutionary narrative.

The book moves through different perspectives, archaeology to begin with, with accounts of different sites, but also travels to sites the potential of which is only dimly discerned, and then collations of historical records, as well as of religious beliefs. Running through much of these is her conviction of a technologically advanced civilization, the most obvious evidence for which is the development of an irrigation system that employed skills which it took many centuries thereafter to establish on a modern scientific basis. And whereas I had known of this in terms of the systems that still function, she looks at their application to irrigation in the area between Anuradhapura and the coast around present day Mannar.

The links through irrigation, between Anuradhapura and the maritime civilization of Mannar, which Sunela describes, are subsumed in the area which is perhaps the most dramatically described in the book. She traces the outline of a large city set slightly back from the coast, which had been the focus of the trading activity of the port which had flourished around Mannar. She shows how its use was facilitated by the current flowing down past the Indian coast, and the shelter offered by Mannar island.

But she also notes how little work has been done in that area, what remains – such as the pillars of what is termed Kuveni’s palace in Wilpattu, which I saw for the first time five years ago – being left virtually untouched, not so much for conservation reasons as because finding more would upset the received history that the Mahavamsa lays down. This is nothing short of tragic, for suppression of the past is a mark of insecurity which inhibits further progress. One reason why I have admired Iran so much is that, while there is no doubt of its commitment to Islam, it celebrates its pre-Islamic past.

Sunela’s account of her explorations of stone pillars and burial sites in Wilpattu is fascinating, but so is her account of a place many miles away, Raksagala on the south east coast, which I had known nothing about previously. There lies the tomb of Arahat Mahinda who, after he had converted Devanampiya Tissa, in the well-known narrative of the Mahavamsa, retired to what had been a previously established monastery for the rest of his days. There is a vivid account of the genius of its landscaping, stairways as well as a host of well-appointed caves for meditation.

As Sunela puts it, such a long-established retreat shows the existence of a sustained civilization that predated not just the official advent of Buddhism but also the advent of the Sinhalese through Vijaya’s arrival. But though there was when she visited a small archaeological team in place, it is nothing like enough to explore the area in the depth it cries out for.

One element that shines through her narrative is the dedication to their work of the many members of the archaeological department she meets, not surprising given that their gurus were Siran, and Senaka Bandaranayake, and Sudharshan Seneviratne, whose commitment to truth was paramount. But publicizing their findings, and ensuring more discoveries, has not been managed at all effectively by those who decide on received wisdom, and sadly none of this is taught in schools. There what I termed the Anuradhapura-centric concept of this land, as I termed it when I tried so hard to change things, still dominates – though I now realise that it is not just Anuradhapura-centric, it relies on a vision of Anuradhapura that Anuradhapura itself, that magnificent city older than time, sustained in its grandeur for well over a millennium, would not itself understand.

The steady accumulation of the evidence Sunela has gathered, on the ground and in different narratives, establishes beyond doubt the accuracy of her principal thesis, namely the existence well before Vijaya, and well before Buddhism began – and she argues that it had arrived in Sri Lanka long before the conversion of Devanampiya Tissa, following visits of the Buddha himself – of an advanced civilization in this country.

Less unquestionable is her account of how that civilization developed. She believes that there were indigenous inhabitants here from prehistoric times, but she also argues that there were then waves of immigrants, who came across the sea and also by land from what she loosely describes as Persian areas, beyond the Indus. They she believes, though through interactions with the wisdom of those whose lands they came through or to, developed both the Indus civilization, and that of Lanka

She declares that in the period preceding recorded history, this land was inhabited by three tribes, the Rakusas, the Nagas and the Yakas. The first were the original inhabitants, who contributed their detailed knowledge of the land to the civilization that developed. The last were the dominant race, deriving from Persian immigration though with a healthy admixture of Rakusas, whose contribution to the physical basis of technological achievement – metallurgy for instance and the lie of the land – was invaluable, and which led to partnership in the national heritage, albeit at a lower level.

Different from these were the Nagas, who in an imaginative leap that is nevertheless most convincing she places on the coast, the repositories of a maritime culture they had derived from the voyages from other lands which had led to their settlement here. She argues convincingly that they dominated the Kelaniya kingdom, where the Buddha had preached – before going on to the Yaka kingdom in the hills – and that they were the people from whom Vihara Maha Devi and thence her son Dutugemunu derived.

All this is convincingly laid out in the second part of the book, entitled ‘Divided we fall’. That had been preceded by a description of the transition from cave dwellers to urbanization, though it is heralded by an account of the situation of the island and how and why migration had played such a large part in its development. Reading her account, one realizes how laughable it is to suppose that Vijaya was one of a kind, and that his advent brought civilization to a primitive dispensation. Indeed, she notes that the very fact that Kuveni was weaving suggests that Lanka had moved far beyond the simple life of the first cave dwellers and nomads.

The last section of the second part is about the Arya Sinhala and recounts how Vijaya’s advent led to consolidation of a kingdom at Anuradhapura of which he was seen as the only begetter. And that perhaps was true as far as Anuradhapura went as a capital, though Sunela also makes clear its long history as a trading centre between east and west.

The capital, Sunela argues, had been in the hills before Vijaya arrived. The third part of the book is entitled ‘The Time of the Yakas, but it is the shortest, and has just the one chapter, ‘Ravana of the Mayurangas’. Sunela claims that the Mayurangas were born of marriages of Yakas and Rakusas, and notes that Ravana’s mother was a Rakusa princess: in a footnote she mentions that, as late as the time of the Kandyan kingdom, crown princes were married to the daughters of Veddha chieftains, which she believes a reprise of this old tradition.

This chapter darts about the past, but interestingly, for instance in its assertion that Ravana married a princess from Gujarat – a link between what Sunela has described as Persian immigrants, who settled in various places on the long route southward – and that her father was the renowned architect mentioned in the Mahabharata as having built the palace of the Pandavas. But all this, featuring a close link between characters in the two great Indian epics, is shadowy, a prey to Sunela’s habit of not clearly identifying her sources. Rather she employs a discursive style, here and throughout the book, with annotations rather than footnotes, for instance simply declaring here that ‘Oral histories in Gujarat and Rajasthan maintain the presence of the Yaka and even feature King Ravana’.

Given that Sunela’s principal thesis is the suppression of history that does not fit in with a dominant narrative, one can understand her reliance on what is described as oral history and traditions. But it would have been more convincing had she cited the record of the name of Queen Mandodhari’s father in the Ramayana as well as in the Mahabharata, and also her evidence for the manner in which Ravana inherited the kingdom from Kumba Karna his half-brother, and how she relates that name to Kuvera, deified as a symbol of wealth.

This type of sliding over interesting elements is what makes one wish she had had a better editor – who might also then have ensured that she wrote in sentences, rather than in hanging clauses, designed perhaps to enhance the intensity of her narrative but more likely arising from carelessness. Unfortunately, I suspect she intended the book to be simply a record of a personal quest, rather like Ameena’s account of Ibn Batutta’s travels. But whereas that was clearer in its admittedly less momentous argument, and well evidenced, this reads at times like the retailing of a personal mythology, drawing strands from all over but leaving a lot of loose ends.

Still, these are undoubtedly fascinating. Thus, Kubera’s next startling appearance in the book, as a squat figure in relief at the top of the Nalanda Gedige. Sunela compares this to Cambodian architecture, and dates it to the last Mahayana era, noting erotica but also ‘the only officially accepted identification of any character related to the Mayuranga dynasty’. But when she asks, ‘Who revered Ravana’s sibling?’ one realizes she has allowed predilection to triumph over science – unlike the Yakas she praised – and leaped from Kumba Karna to an Asian symbol of wealth to reverence for Ravana’s brother.

Her account of the Nalanda Gedige occurs in the fourth part of the book, ‘The Landscape of a Lost Kingdom’, which relates her travels to different parts of the island in search of traces of Ravana and of the prehistoric period. I have already mentioned her account of the grand trading city on the northwest coast and the quiet monastic retreat in the south east. Then she also writes about Anuradhapura, with a striking account of the discoveries of the team led by Robin Coningham, and about the surroundings in the Dumbara Valley of the assumed location of Ravana’s palace and its defences.

She talks about Budhuruvagala, that beautiful Mahayana monastery near Monaragala, about cemeteries in Wilpattu around her grand western city, and also about Adam’s Peak. Here she cites a possible reason for it having been held sacred by so many for so long, and its alleged proximity to paradise: it seems it is in the place on the earth where gravity is least forceful, which would explain the assumption that it was a possible take off point for the heavens.

She also describes here what I gather was also put forward in her first book, The Line of Lanka, that the mountain is at the centre of lines that connect four shrines sacred to God Saman, the titular deity of the mountain. She argues that he is derived from Rama’s brother Lakshmana, who was left to look after the land soon after Ravana had been conquered, though he soon went back to join his brother in India, leaving the kingdom to Ravana’s brother Vibhishana, who had joined Rama.

Sunela claims that the four shrines, including the famous devale near Ratnapura, are at the ends of a cross, centred on Adam’s Peak. Earlier she had shown that the Nalanda Gedige was at the very centre of the island. This mathematical precision she claimed was evidence for the technological capacity of the Yakas – and not only did this allow them to measure across mountains, they were also able to measure across seas, for she takes the line on to an island in the Maldives which has ruins reminiscent of the tomb of Mahinda at Raksagala.

After the tour de force of this fourth part, Sunela comes to ‘The Death of a King’, and describes vividly the way she believes Rama overcame Ravana. She argues that his bow shot not an arrow but some sort of explosive, and she describes the collapse of part of the mountain where Ravana was supposed to have had his palace. She notes the collapse of the entrance to a cave through which Ravana’s son Indrajit was, she argues, coming to the support of a garrison. Her case she believes is strengthened by the tales of villagers in the area, around the lake of Dunvila, ‘the lake of the bow’, by which she has a home, for whom Ravana’s kingdom is still a historical rather than mythical reality.

She is condign in her criticism of Vibhishana, to whom Rama left the kingdom, who she argues was hated, so that it was not surprising it was in a shambles when a few decades later Vijaya appeared. But even more interesting is her suggestion that Ravana had not lusted after Sita, but was instead trying to rescue his long-lost daughter – sent away when it was foretold that she would destroy the kingdom – when he heard she was living in the jungles.

What Sunela does not do is connect Sita with a daughter of Ravana, who is attested in an inscription as having gifted a cave to the Sangha on a rocky outcrop in Kumana in the southeast of the country. Her name was Shohili, and one wonders if she might have been the daughter left behind when Sita was sent away.

Such speculation is in line with the joyous creativity of the book. It is well worth reading, and most informative, though I do wish standard practices had been followed, including an index, to make it easier to absorb, and also to render the links Sunela makes easier to follow.