Indian Epigraphy c14.s2: 2. Ceylon
Indian Epigraphy c14.s2
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2. Ceylon
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Among the countries of South-East Asia, Ceylon’s cultural contact with India is the oldest. According to an old Ceylonese tradition, Prince Vijaya, son of the king of Siṃhapura in Rāḍha (in South-West Bengal; or less probably Lāṭa in Gujarat) and a great-grandson of the king of Vaṅga (then South Bengal), colonised Ceylon about the beginning of the 5th century B.C. About the middle of the 3rd century B.C. the Maurya emperor Aśoka of Pāṭaliputra (near modern Patna) is known to have maintained friendly relations with Tāmraparṇī or Ceylon. He is also stated to have sent to that country a Buddhist mission which converted Devānāmpriya Tiṣya, king of the island, to Buddhism together with his subjects. Ceylon’s contact with the Tamil-speaking region of South India, just beyond the Palk Strait, has been very close throughout the ages and, during the major portion of the 11th century A.D., wide areas of the island formed parts of the empire of the Coḷas of Tañjavūr. It is therefore interesting to note that the Ceylonese language belongs to the Aryan (and not the Dravidian) group. Old Ceylonese traditions appear to suggest that the peoples of Eastern and Western India were mainly responsible for the spread of Aryanism in that land.² The Ceylonese royal house often contracted matrimonial alliance with Indian ruling families such as the Pāṇḍyas of the South and the Kaliṅgas of the East.
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² See CHI, Vol. I, pp. 605-606.
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The close contact of Ceylon with non-Tamil India in pre-Christian times seems to be indicated by another fact. We know that the early independent rulers of India were satisfied with the simpler title Rājan while the Indo-Greek kings of North-Western Bhāratavarṣa introduced the royal title Rājā mahān or Mahārāja, which was essentially a translation of the old Persian title Kṣāyaθiya vazṛka enjoyed by the Achaemenian monarchs, about the middle of the 2nd century B. C. The earliest indigenous Indian monarch assuming the title Mahārāja is king Khāravela of Kaliṅga who flourished about the close of the 1st century B.C., while the same title appears in Ceylonese epigraphs which may be somewhat earlier in date.¹ This seems to suggest that the title was borrowed by Ceylon from Western or North-Western Bhāratavarṣa which came under the influence of the Greeks. Some of these early Ceylonese records have to be read from right to left in the Kharoṣṭhī fashion.² This also seems to point to Ceylon's contact with the Kharoṣṭhī-using areas of the said part of India. The letter ḷ in early Ceylonese epigraphs is not idicated by a diacritically marked l as used in the Early Brāhmī alphabet of the Tamil areas but by ḍ endowed with a diacritical mark as known from other parts of India.
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¹ Cf. Select Inscriptions, pp. 206 ff., 232-33.
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² Ibid., p. 233.
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The story of the introduction of Indianism in Ceylon is different from that of its spread in Indochina and Indonesia which came under the influence of Indian merchants, adventurers and priests about the beginning of the Christian era. In many of these countries Brahmanical Hinduism not only spread earlier than Buddhism but Śaivism seems to have been the dominating religious faith throughout the early period. This was not the case with Ceylon where Buddhism was always the predominant faith as it is now.
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Sanskrit inscriptions are rare in Ceylon, the more popular Indian languages there being Prakrit and Pali. The Ruvanavalisāya pillar inscription in Late Brāhmī of about the 5th century A.D. and the Kuchchaveli rock inscription in a developed form of the same alphabet assignable to a date about the 7th century A.D. are two of the few early Ceylonese records in Sanskrit.¹ The Gārandigala inscription of about the first half of the 8th century A.D. is one of the early epigraphs in Ceylonese while the Sanskrit inscription from the Jetavanārāma is written in the Siddhamātṛkā alphabet of Northern India and may be assigned on palaeographical grounds to a date in the 9th century A.D.² Many Tamil inscriptions, especially of the time of the Coḷa occupation of Ceylon during the 11th century A.D., have been discovered in the island.³
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¹ *Ep. Zeyl.*, Vol. III, pp. 120 ff., 158 ff.
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² Ibid., pp. 195 ff.; Vol. I, pp. 1 ff. The earliest record dated in the Buddha-nirvāṇa era is the Anuradhapura inscription of year 941 (=28th regnal year of Buddhadāsa’s son Upatisya), Kuja-vāra, Pūrṇimānta-Pauṣa-badi 1=16th December 396 A. D. (*Univ. Cey. Rev.*, Vol. XVIII, pp. 129 ff.).
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³ Cf. *SII*, Vol. IV, Nos. 1388 ff.
Linked texts (1)
- Kuccavēli Rock Inscription — Sanskrit