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The Sinhalese Too Migrated to Sri Lanka from India: Part 7 – Pandukabhaya

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Myself . By T.V. Antony Raj

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As commanded by queen Bhaddakaccānā, Ummada Citta’s woman-attendant placed the infant boy in a basket and carried him to Dvaramandalaka, the village situated near the Cetiya mountain (Mihintale), east of Anuradhagama.

Some brothers of Ummada Citta, on a hunting spree in the Tumbara forest, saw the woman-attendant carrying the basket.

One of them asked her: “Where are you going? What are you carrying in the basket?”

She answered: “I am going to Dvramandalaka. I am taking sweet cake for my daughter.”

The prince then said: “Take the cake out and show it to us.”

Just then, the two dead attendants of Dighagamani, Citta the herdsman and Kalavela the slave, who as yakkas were protecting the infant, caused a great boar to appear. The princes pursued the boar. The attendant immediately hastened from there with the child and hurried towards the Dvaramandalaka.

She handed over Pandukabhaya and a thousand pieces of money to a herdsman who was secretly entrusted by queen Bhaddakaccānā to take care of her grandson.

On that very day, the herdsman’s wife bore him a son, and he declared that his wife had given birth to twins. He brought up and protected Pandukabhaya along with his own son.

Pandukabhaya practised diving deep in the pond and secretively hid in the hollow of a large tree standing in the middle of it. When he had stayed long enough in the hollow of the tree completely hidden from his playmates, he would come out and be again among them. When his friends asked him where he had been, he would mislead them with evasive words.

When Pandukabhaya was seven years old, his uncles came to know that he was alive. They found out where he lived and the pond where he used to play with his friends. They ordered their men to kill him, and his playmates.

One day, Pandukabhaya seated on the edge of the pond while his friends were playing in the pond saw the enforcers approaching. He dived deep into the water with his clothes on and reached the hollow tree. The assassins unable to find out who their victim counted the number of boys in the pond and the clothes lying nearby. When the count tallied they killed all the boys. They then went to their masters and declared that they killed all the boys.

Pandukabhaya’s foster-father comforted him for the loss of his playmates.

When Pandukabhaya was twelve years old, his uncles again came to know that he was alive. Once again, they charged their assassins to kill him.

One day, a group of Dvaramandalaka herdsmen caught a deer and sent Pandukabhaya to the village to bring fire from there. He went home. Feeling tired and footsore, he sent his foster-father’s son with the fire to the herdsmen.

The assassins surrounded the herdsmen and the twelve-year-old boy with the fire who they assumed to be Pandukabhaya and killed them all. They then went to their masters and declared that they killed the boy and all the herdsmen of the Dvaramandalaka village.

Then, when Pandukabhaya was sixteen years old, his uncles once again discovered that he was still alive and plotted to kill him. On knowing this, his mother, Citta, sent him a thousand pieces of money and a squad of armed men to accompany him to a safe place.

Pandukabhaya’s foster-father told him his mother’s message, and giving him a slave and the thousand pieces of money, sent him to seek out the Brahmin named Pandula, a rich man, well-versed in the vedic lieterature, who dwelt in Pandulagamaka village, in the southern district.

Pandula honoured Pandukabhaya as his guest. He tutored him the knowledge needed by a reigning prince. With assistance from Pandula’s son Canda (or Candena cassa puttena who belonged to the sippam samapitam), Pandukabhaya mastered ‘the art’ in a short time.

Pandula then gave him a hundred thousand pieces of money and asked him to enrol soldiers. When five hundred men had been enrolled, Pandula appointed his son Canda as Pandukabhaya’s chaplain.

Before sending Pandukabhaya with his soldiers in search of his quest, Pandula gave him money and told him that he should consecrate the woman as his queen at whose touch leaves turn to gold.

By the time Pandukabhaya reached Pana, a city near the Kasa-mountain (Probably near the modern Kahagalagama ‘village of the Kaha mountain ‘, about 18 miles SE from Anuradhapura, and 10 miles WNW from the mountain Ritigala), he had gathered seven hundred more followers on the way and gathered provision for all. From there he and his one thousand two hundred soldiers marched to the mountain called Girikanda.

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← Previous: Part 6 – Abhaya and Citta

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The Sinhalese Too Migrated to Sri Lanka from India: Postlude

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Myself . 

By T. V. Antony Raj

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The Veddhas or Wanniya-laeto (‘forest-dwellers’) of the wanni (dry monsoon forest) are Sri Lanka’s indigenous inhabitants. According to scholars, the Veddhas of today perpetuate a direct line of descent from the island’s original Neolithic community that dates back to at least 16,000 BC.

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Wanniya-laeto ('Vedda') elders of Dambana. (Source: Vedda.org)
Wanniya-laeto (‘Vedda’) elders of Dambana. (Source: Vedda.org)

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For the past eighteen centuries or more the indigenous Veddha communities have been forced to retreat deeper into the ever-shrinking forests pummeled by successive waves of immigration and colonization that began with the arrival of the north Indians in the 5th century BC.

According to their culture the Veddhas revere and venerate their ancestors. At present, the surviving dwindling Veddha communities still live in the dry monsoon forests with their uncanny knowledge of their jungle habitat. They still retain the memory of their prehistoric culture and preserve their cultural identity and traditional lifestyle, despite facing the many challenges and relentless pressure from the surrounding dominant Sinhala and Tamil communities.

In the North Central and Uva provinces of Sri Lanka, a few Veddhas have been absorbed into the mainstream Sinhala communities and on the East Coast into the Tamil communities.

The migration routes of the ancestors of the Sinhalese and other ethnic groups into Sri Lanka.
The migration routes of the ancestors of the Sinhalese and other ethnic groups into Sri Lanka.

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Ancient chronicles such as the Mahavamsa, relate the origin of the Sinhalese people of Sri Lanka to the arrival of Prince Vijaya from an area either in the northeast or northwest India, and his later affiliation with people from south India. Students of Indian history argue that the lore of Vijaya should be interpreted to favour either one or the other of the northern origins, or a mixture of people from both areas.

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W. S. Karunatillake (late), Professor Emeritus of Linguistics at the University of Kelaniya, Sri Lanka.
W. S. Karunatillake (late), Professor Emeritus of Linguistics at the University of Kelaniya, Sri Lanka.

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W. S. Karunatillake (late), Professor Emeritus of Linguistics at the University of Kelaniya, Sri Lanka, a Sinhala linguist, supported the hypothesis that the Sinhalese people originated in Eastern India because over 50% Sinhala words resemble words in the Bengali language. Even so, the question: “Did Vijaya and his companions migrate to Sri Lanka from Singhpur, Kalinga in northeast India, or from Sihor, Gujarat in northwest India?” still remains unresolved.

Some scholars identify the Lála country, where Sinhabahu founded Sinhapur, with the modern Rarh region of West Bengal, India that is still called Lala/Larh. Sanskrit texts refer to it as Lata-desa. Al-Biruni, a historian, chronologist and linguist of the medieval Islamic era calls it Lardesh in the extreme hilly west of Bengal where the Hooghly district and modern Singur is located. However, some scholars identify the region as modern Gujarat.

References weigh more in favor of Vijaya’s origin to lower Indus, and Sihor, which was officially known as Sinhapur in Kathiawar peninsula in ancient times. Also, the only home to Asiatic lions (locally referred as ‘Sinh‘ or ‘Sinha‘) is Gir Forest in Kathiawar peninsula in Gujarat and the approach to core Gir territory is just a few miles away from Sihor. In fact, to date, lions are sighted in rural areas adjoining Sihor.

According to the history chronicled in the Mahavamsa, Prince Vijaya and his wayward followers before landing at Tambapanni, first disembarked at the haven called Suppäraka, now identified with modern Sapporo, in the Thana district north of Mumbai. If Lála country was in northeast India, how could Vijaya and his companions dispatched from there, land at the port of Suppäraka in northwest India?

If we presume that the story of Vijaya narrated in the Mahavasa is historically correct, then, Prince Vijaya and his followers would have set sail from northwest India from a coastal harbour in Gujarat. Their contribution to the modern Sinhalese must have been erased by the long-standing interrelationship with people from Tamil Nadu for over 2,000 years.

According to the Mahavamsa, the population of Sri Lanka is heterogeneous – composed of diverse ethnic groups from India.

So far, most studies on the genetic affinities of the Sinhalese have been contradictory. Some investigators suggest a predominantly Bengali contribution and a minor Tamil and North Western Indian contribution, while others point towards a predominantly Tamil origin followed by a significant Bengali contribution with no North Western Indian contribution.

However, it is emphatically proved that the ancient ancestors of the current Sinhalese people came originally from northeast or northwest India as shown by genetic, linguistic and religious connections. After their arrival in Sri Lanka, the ancients intermarried to a minor extent with the indigenous Veddhas. Population genetic studies on the Sinhalese undertaken by various investigators show that they certainly intermarried extensively with Tamils of Southern India than with the Veddhas.

For the most part, according to the Mahavamsa, the modern Sinhalese are related to the Tamils as far back as 543 BC, with some elements of ancestry connected later with Bengalis, Gujaratis, Punjabis and Indian Moors. This is also supported by a genetic distance study, which showed low differences in genetic distance between the Sinhalese and the Tamil, Keralite and Bengali volunteers.

Because Sri Lanka lies on important sea trade routes, it has from ancient times received a constant influx of people from India and from various parts of the world, especially from the Mediterranean, Middle East, Europe, and the far-east. However, the genetic studies on the Sinhalese do not seem to show any ancestry from China or Southeast Asia.

In the 1995 study, “Genetic affinities of Sri Lankan populations” by Dr. Gautam K. Kshatriya (Source: National Institute of Health and Family Welfare, Munirka, New Delhi, India) published in Hum Biol. 1995 Dec;67(6):843-66, the author says:

Mythological and historical sketches of the Sri Lankan population indicate that it is heterogeneous and composed of diverse ethnic groups. Ancient chronicles of Sri Lanka relate the origin of the Sinhalese to the legend of Prince Vijaya, who arrived on the northwest coast of the island in 543 B.C. from northeast or northwest India. … Taking into consideration mythological, historical, and linguistic records of Sri Lanka, I attempt to study the degree of gene diversity and genetic admixture among the population groups of Sri Lanka along with the populations of southern, northeastern, and northwestern India, the Middle East, and Europe.

The genetic distance analysis was conducted using 43 alleles controlled by 15 codominant loci in 8 populations and 40 alleles controlled by 13 codominant loci in 11 populations. Both analyses give a similar picture, indicating that present-day Sinhalese and Tamils of Sri Lanka are closer to Indian Tamils and South Indian Muslims. They are farthest from Veddahs and quite distant from Gujaratis and Punjabis of northwest India and Bengalis of northeast India. Veddhas, are distinct because they are confined to inhospitable dry zones and are hardly influenced by their neighbors.

The study of genetic admixture revealed that the Sinhalese of Sri Lanka have a higher contribution from the Tamils of southern India (69.86% +/- 0.61) compared with the Bengalis of northeast India (25.41% +/- 0.51), whereas the Tamils of Sri Lanka have received a higher contribution from the Sinhalese of Sri Lanka (55.20% +/- 9.47) compared with the Tamils of India (16.63% +/- 8.73).

Genetic Admixture of Sinhalese by Dr. Gautam K. Kshatriya

In the 2009 study, “Prevalence of genetic thrombophilic polymorphisms in the Sri Lankan population–implications for association study design and clinical genetic testing services” by V.H. Dissanayake, L.Y. Weerasekera, G.G. Gammulla, and R.W. Jayasekara (Source: Human Genetics Unit, Faculty of Medicine, University of Colombo, Kynsey Road, Colombo 8, Sri Lanka.) first published electronically on July 8, 2009, is consistent with the notion that Sinhalese are closely related to other Sri Lankans. The frequencies of the alleles observed were very similar between Sinhalese, Sri Lankan Tamils, and Moors and they were also similar to those in some ethnic groups from southern India. Excerpts from the Abstract:

“We investigated the prevalence of genotypes/alleles of single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNP) and haplotypes defined by them in three genes in which variations are associated with venous thromboembolism in 80 Sinhalese, 80 Sri Lankan Tamils and 80 Moors in the Sri Lankan population and compared the SNP data with that of other populations in Southern India and haplotype data with that of HapMap populations. … The frequencies observed were similar to data from other South Indian populations; […]”

Both the above studies present almost a similar picture. Genetic distance analysis, despite the limitations imposed by the data, shows that modern Sinhalese and Tamils of Sri Lanka are closer to the Tamils and Keralites of south India and the upper caste groups of Bengal. They are farthest from Veddahs and quite distant from Gujaratis and Punjabis of northwest India.

Similarly, the Tamils of Sri Lanka are closer to the Sinhalese because they were always and are near to each other historically, linguistically, and culturally.

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← Previous:  Part 6 – Abhaya and His Sister Ummada Citta

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