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Art. X.—Sîgiri, the Lion Rock, near Pulastipura, Ceylon; and the Thirty-ninth Chapter of the Mahâvaṁsa
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 15 March 2011
Extract
In Lat. 7° 59′ N., Long. 81° E., about fourteen miles N.E. of Dambulla, and about seventeen miles nearly due W. of Parâkrama Bâhu's capital, Pulastipura, is the singular natural stronghold referred to in the Thirty-ninth Chapter of the Mahâvamsa, and first re-discovered by Major Forbes, of the Ceylon Civil Service, in the year 1831. Sir Emerson Tennent (Ceylon, vol. i. p. 15) says of it: “Sîgiri is the only example in Ceylon of those solitary acclivities, which form so remarkable a feature in the table-land of the Dekkan, starting abruptly from the plain with scarped and perpendicular sides; and converted by the Indians into strongholds, accessible only by precipitous pathways, or steps hewn in the solid rock.” And, again (vol. ii. p. 579): “This gigantic cylindrical rock starts upward to a height prodigious in comparison with its section at any point, the area of its upper surface being little more than an acre in extent. Its scarped walls are nearly perpendicular, and in some places they overhang their base. The formation of this singular cliff can only be ascribed to its upheaval by a subterranean force, so circumscribed in action that its effects were confined within a very few yards, yet so irresistible as to have shot aloft this prodigious pencil of stone to the height of nearly 400 feet.” The height of the rock above the sea is probably more than this—a point which soon will be (if it is not already) settled by the Surveyors engaged in the Trigonometrical Survey of that part of Ceylon. I am also informed that the occurrence of so circumscribed and yet so irresistible a subterranean force is almost, if not quite impossible, and that the present position of Sîgiri, like that of the many similar strongholds in the table-lands of South India, may be more easily explained by a general subsidence of the soil around it. It is to be regretted that the geological history of Ceylon altogether has received so little attention; but it seems certain that Sîgiri owes its origin to the same force to which is due the great elevation which stretches for more than 150 miles in a N.E. direction from below Adam's Peak to Trinkomali, and forms the principal gneiss and granite mountain ranges of Ceylon, which, since their first appearance above the waters, have certainly undergone no second immersion. If this be so, then the crag of Sîgiri, which lies almost in the centre line of that upheaval, must be among those parts of the now habitable globe which first emerged from the deep, and have been longest accessible to man.
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References
page 192 note 1 Sir Henry Rawlinson, speaking at the meeting of the Royal Geographical Society, on the 15th of June last, on the Kashgar Expedition of Mr. Forsyth, said: “The fact of the greatest interest in connexion with the correspondence was the announcement that the system of trigonometrical triangulation carried on from India had overlapped the Russian triangulation from the North, so that we now have a series of triangulations from Archangel to Cape Comorin.” The triangulation has now been completed, I believe, to Dondra Head.
page 192 note 2 Tennent, , Ceylon, , i. 16.Google Scholar It may be interesting to notice, in connexion with Sir Emerson Tennent's theory, that Ceylon was never united to India by land, that Mr. Legge, of the R.A., now stationed at Galle, whose able researches into Ceylon Ornithology have met with so much success, informs me that there are on the southern slopes of the great mountain range at least thirty species of birds peculiar to Ceylon.
page 193 note 1 Eleven Years in Ceylon, by Forbes, Major, 78th Highlanders, vol. ii. p. 10.Google Scholar This valuable work, now very rare, was published in 1841.
page 193 note 2 For a short account of the present method of painting in Buddhist temples in Ceylon, see Note A. in the Appendix.
page 194 note 1 loc. cit. p. 11.Google Scholar
page 194 note 2 vol. ii. p. 31.
page 194 note 3 Nos. 91, 92, 93, and 94 of the Collection of Ceylon Photographs in the Colonial Office, Downing Street.
page 194 note 4 In the collection of photographs referred to in the last note there are thirteen photographs of Sîgiri rock and the ruins upon it. Nos. 86 and 89 give respectively S.E. and S.W. views of the rock, with the lake in the foreground. Nos. 87, 88, and 90 are views of the rock showing the remains of the celebrated climbing terrace. Nos. 95 and 96 are views of what was probably Kâṣyapa's audience hall. Nos. 97 and 98 are of a stone bath and a cave; and the rest are mentioned in the last note. The collection was kindly lent to the Royal Asiatic Society on the day on which this paper was read before it.
page 195 note 1 The breastwork and steps are clearly visible in Photograph No. 88.
page 195 note 2 Forbes, 's Eleven Years, vol. ii. p. 10Google Scholar; Ceylon, Tennent's, vol. ii. p. 580.Google Scholar
page 196 note 1 The names are not quite the same, but a comparison of the verse referred to with v. 12, p. 254, and vv. 4, 5, p. 120, of Tumour's Mahâvaṁsa will show, I think, that the same person is referred to. There may be a mistake in the length of the reigns of Dhâtusena and his two sons, which is given as 18 years in each instance, but even without that it would not be impossible for Mahânâma to have lived more than 36 years after the coronation of his nephew Dhâtusena.
page 196 note 2 vol. ii. p. 3. Sir E. Tennent is also of Forbes's opinion, Ceylon, , vol. i. p. 393.Google Scholar
page 197 note 1 See Note F. in the Appendix.
page 197 note 2 Crawford, , in his History of the Indian Archipelago (vol. ii. p. 359)Google Scholar, referring to similar claims in Javanese history, says: “Oppression on the part of the Government acting on the singular credulity and superstition of the people, gives rise in Java to those rebels called in the language of the country Kraman, a word which literally means ‘a pretender to royalty,’ ‘an impostor.’ Whenever the country is in a state of anarchy, one or more of these persons is sure to appear.” There are several similar instances in Ceylon history, of which the most celebrated is that of Parâkrama the Great, who, in default of any nearer royal ancestor, claimed descent from Wijaya, the Conqueror, himself—a claim which seems to have been as readily admitted in his own time as it is in ours.
page 198 note 1 According to the Mahâvamsa, , p. 251Google Scholar: but according to the Râjaratnâkara, , p 81Google Scholar of the MS. in the Library of the University of Cambridge, he made this as well as many other tanks.
page 198 note 2 The derivation of this word is curious. Nuwara-wæwa=nagara-vâpi is the fine tank near to the “city” of Anurâdhapura; Kalâ-wæwa=Kâla-vâpi; wiya, according to the tradition of the district, is for the third great tank in it, the Pahadewila-wæwa, now called Pâdavil-kulam, that part of the district having become Tamil (Ceylon, Tennent's, vol. ii. p. 506).Google Scholar Either my informant, however, or the tradition itself, seems mistaken on this last point.
page 198 note 3 Mahâvaṁsa, Turnour's, p. 259.Google Scholar
page 199 note 1 ProfessorLassen, , Ind. Alt. vol. iv. p. 292Google Scholar, calls Dhâtusena “a monarch distinguished for his piety and gentleness”—a description which seems rather at variance with the facts of the narrative.
page 199 note 2 ProfessorLassen, , in his Indische Alterthumskunde, vol. iv. p. 291Google Scholar, states the King's answer to have been that he had no other treasures besides “bathing in that tank.” This rendering destroys the very point of the reply. The King undoubtedly meant that he had nothing left beyond the consciousness of the great public benefit he had conferred on the people by his gigantic irrigation works.
page 209 note 1 “This ancient institution,” says SirTennent, E., Ceylon, , vol. ii. p. 595Google Scholar, “identical in its objects with the punchayets of Hindustan, the gerousia of the Greeks, and the Assembly of the Elders in the Gate among the Jews and Romans, still exists in Ceylon.” See Maine, 's ‘Village Communities,’Google Scholarpassim.
page 211 note 1 Fa Hien mentions the beauty and correctness of the Ceylon paintings of this period, Foe Koue Ki, chap, xxxviii.; and Dhâtusena sent a picture of Buddha to the then Emperor of China. Teunent, , Vol. i. p. 475.Google Scholar King Jyeṣhṭa Tiṣhya, A.D. 340, was a painter, Mah. p. 242, according to the translation by Turnour; but the word citrâni in the Pâli may there mean various, and not paintings.
page 211 note 2 Ceylon, , vol. i. p. 490.Google Scholar
page 212 note 1 Compare Forbes, , Ceylon, vol. ii. p. 194.Google Scholar
page 212 note 2 See the instance of the priests of the three sects interceding with Parâkrama the Great to make peace with the people of Râmânya, given in my translation of Narendracaritâvalokanapradîpikawa, in the Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal, vol. xli. p. 199Google Scholar, and the passages quoted in the note. Forbes, , vol. ii. p. 206Google Scholar, gives three instances of religious persecution; but in these cases kings, not priests, are the persecutors.
page 213 note 1 Forbes, , Eleven Years in Ceylon, vol. ii. p. 2Google Scholar, note. Prof. Lassen adopts the native interpretation here rejected.
page 214 note 1 Whatever the derivation of our word ‘stair-case’ may be, the latter portion is certainly not the Italian case, and has therefore no analogy to the Pâli expression in the text.
page 214 note 2 Abh. Edit. Subhûti, v. 209.
page 214 note 3 This meaning is confirmed by the use of the word in the Mahâvaṁṣa, , p. 163Google Scholar, line 9, and is given in the Abhidhânappadîpikâ, , v. 216.Google Scholar
page 214 note 4 This temple was originally built 25 cubits high by Buddha-dâsa A.D. 340, the author of Sârârtha-saṅgraha, a Sanskrit work on medicine, which Turnour says (Mah. p. 245) is still extant. Lassen, , Ind. Alt., iv. 208Google Scholar, wrongly calls this work Sâratâsangrâha, . At vol. ii. p. 519Google Scholar, he fixes the date of Suṣruta, the earliest Sanskrit work on Medicine, at “several centuries before Muhamed.” If really extant, Bnddha-dâsa's work would be most important for the history of Medicine in the East. Dhâtusena, Kâṣyapa's father, reconstructed the temple with a height of 21 cubits. Mah. pp. 247, 257.
page 214 note 5 Prof. Lassen, 's Indische Alterthumskunde, vol. iv. p. 292.Google ScholarSirCeylon, Emerson Tennent's, vol. ii. p. 589.Google ScholarUpham, 's Sacred and Historical Books, vol. i. chap, xxxix. p. 341.Google Scholar In his note Prof. Lassen says that Upham divides the Mahâvaṁsa in a manner different from Turnour's division: but this is a mistake. Upham is quite right in calling this chap. Ko. xxxix.
page 216 note 1 The œ in Elu and Simhalese is pronounced when short like the English a in hat, and when long like the French è before r, as in mère.
page 216 note 2 The engraving of which is also to be found in Fergusson's History of Architecture, and in Col. Yule's remarks on the Senbyu Pagoda, Journal K.A.S., 1870, p. 412.Google Scholar
page 217 note 1 It may be noticed that the stone gives the King's name as Kâlinga Niṣṣaṅka; Armour separates the two names, and spells the latter Nissankha; Tennent then drops the former, and spells the latter Nissanga. Now there was a king Kirti Nissanga (A.D. 1187–1192), so that here we have a precisely similar mistake to that which is found in the native books, that Kirti Nissanga made the great hall in the Damhulla rock, whereas the inscription itself—my copy, text, and translation of which are in the hands of the Ceylon Asiatic Society for publication—clearly gives the name Niṣṣanka, without the epithet Kirti, but adding the well-known title Kâlinga Parâkrama Bâhu. Sir Emerson Tennent makes the same mistake in his description of the Mâligâwa, Daladâ, vol. ii. p. 590.Google Scholar
page 218 note 1 Upham, Mahâvaṁsa, , vol. i. p. 341Google Scholar; Râjaratnâkara, , ii. p. 76Google Scholar; Râjawaliya, , ii p. 241.Google ScholarKnighton, History of Ceylon, p. 104.Google ScholarForbes, vol. ii. pp. 3, 291.Google Scholar Professor Lassen, who does not seem to have anywhere made use of Tennent's work, repeats this erroneous statement in the Indische Alterthumskunde, , vol. iv. p. 292.Google Scholar One may point out small errors in that storehouse of Oriental learning, without stopping each time to express one's appreciation of a work whose yalue has long been universally admitted.
page 219 note 1 Ceylon, , vol. i. p. 392.Google Scholar
page 219 note 2 Sir Coomâra Swâmy translates this “caused a record to be written of what he had done.”
page 219 note 3 Prof. Lassen twice states that the tooth was kept in a tope, Indische Alterthumskunde, , vol. iv. pp. 657, 706Google Scholar; but this, from the nature of a tope or dâgaba (sthûpa = dhâtu garbbha in Ceylon usage), is impossible. The Dâgabas were never opened, except in one extraordinary instance; and the tooth which was constantly shown was always kept in a Daladâ Mâligâwa. That at Anurâdha-pura is close to the Thûpârâma; that at Pulastipura—a most exquisite little building—was close to the King's palace, as was that at Kandy.