Myths, Legends and Folklore II & Citta the Enchantress

 

FROM THE PAGES OF HISTORY

Myths, Legends and Folklore II

In order to overcome this difficulty, it has been proposed to take Lata of the chronicles to be the same as Radha in Western Bengal, and to locate Sinhapura in the place known as Singur. But, if a band of immigrants started from a port in Bengal, it is very unlikely that they would have touched land at a place on the north-western seaboard of Ceylon, where Tambapanni was. And there was no need for them to have come to Supparaka or Barukachcha – ports on the western coast of India – before they arrived in Ceylon. On the other hand, if they started from Gujarat, Barukachcha and Supparaka were on their route to Ceylon. And, in Gujarat, there was in the olden days a place known as Sinhapura, now called Sihor. This uncertainty resulting from an examination of the traditional history has led scholars to compare the Sinhala language with the Aryan languages of India, in order to ascertain the region from which the ancient Sinhalese migrated to Ceylon. But the result has been equally in decisive. Some linguists maintain that the affinities of Sinhalese are with western languages like Marathi while others are equally certain that Sinhalese is related to the eastern languages like Bengali. A comparison of the language of the oldest Sinhalese inscriptions with that of the Asokan edicts has led to a similar indecisive result. It is therefore likely that the Sinhalese language, as well as the people, was the result of a fusion of elements from the west with those from the east of Aryavarta.

But the band of immigrants who gave their name Sinhala to the composite people, their language and the Island seem to have come from north-western India. At the time of their immigration to Ceylon, they were settled in the region then called Lata, but it appears that their original habitat was on the upper reaches of the Indus River. Several early Brahmi inscriptions of Ceylon refer to a community of people called Kambojas who then lived in various parts of Ceylon, and an early Pali text refers to a Kambojagama in Rohana. The Kambojas occupied a territory in what is now the border-land between Pakistan and Afghanistan. If they migrated southwards, ultimately arriving and settling down in Ceylon, it must have been in the company of the Sinhalas. There was a Sinhapura in this region, and there was also a land known as Vanga not very far from it. The Vanga country in the Vjaya legend could very well have been this region and not Bengal. The statement in the chronicle that Sumitta, Vjaya’s brother, espoused a princess of the Maddas, a Ksatriya tribe in the Punjab, also indicates that the original Sinhalas were connected with the lands of the upper Indus. The leaders of the early Sinhalese bore the title of Gamani and the Sanskrit epic Mahabharata informs us that there were powerful chieftains who bore the title Gramaneya, on the banks of the Indus. The Greek writer Onesicritus tells us that there was communication between ports at the mouth of the Indus and Taprobane (Tambapanni). Certain episodes of the Sinhala legend as known to Hsuan Tsang refer to Persia and an island between Baluchistan and Socotra. The characteristics, which the language of the early Sinhalese inscriptions, have in common with the eastern edicts of Asoka are also found in the edicts of the extreme north-west. All the evidence goes to establish that the original Sinhalese migrated to Gujarat from the lands of the upper Indus, and were settled in Lata for some time before they colonized Ceylon.

Not long after the Sinhalese came to this Island from the north-west of India other bands of Indo-Aryans in ports like Gokanna (Trincomalee) on the eastern coast, and it is they who introduced the word Ganga, the name of the particular river in India as the generic name of rivers, and gave that name to the longest river in the Island which fell into the sea near the port at which they landed. No river falling to the sea on the north-western seaboard of the Island, which attracted immigrants from Western India, is called a Ganga.

There is no evidence that there were in Ceylon people of an advanced culture at the time the Indo-Aryans settled in it. The Yaksas figuring in the Vijaya legend and Nagas mentioned in connection with the visits which the Buddha is believed to have paid to the Island, are clearly referred to as superhuman beings, not as races of men. There is no justification to assume that they were races of men with a superior civilization. Similar is the case with the Raksasas of the Ramayana. For over a thousand years after the advent of the Indo-Aryans to Ceylon, the Lanka of the Ramayana was held by learned men in India to be a place different from Ceylon.

The people who lived in the Island when the Indo-Aryans settled in it were yet in a culture to which the name Neolithic (Later Stone Age) has been given by prehistorians. They were not acquainted with the use of metal and used weapons and tools of quartz, wood and bone. They were in the food-gathering stage of economy, but may have been acquainted with the use of hand-made pottery and practised slash-and-burn agriculture. They do not appear to have offered any serious resistance to the newcomers; on the other hand, they were willing to exchange such products of the land as they were in possession of, with trinkets that the visitors offered them. These people, whose main occupation was hunting, are referred to in the Pali writing of Ceylon as Milakkhas or Nesadas. They adopted the language, religion and as much of the superior civilization of the new settlers as they could absorb. The great majority of the people who later were known as Sinhalas must have been descended from these autochthones, says Prof. S. Paranavitana in University of Ceylon - A Concise History of Ceylon.

 

Citta the Enchantress

Reverting to the traditional account, Panduvsudeva is said to have had ten sons and a daughter, the youngest of all. Around this princess, named Citta the Enchantress, and her son, who was the hero of the Sinhalese of the pre-Buddhist period, and was the founder of the Anuradhapura kingdom and of the first dynasty of Ceylon kings, has gathered a whole cycle of folktales, some of which find parallels in the Jataka story and in the myths of Krsna, the cowherd god of India. It was foretold by a soothsayer at her birth, so, the story runs, that a son born of her would one day kill her brothers. To avert such a calamity, the brothers wished to kill the infant princess, but the eldest prince Abhaya, prevented this and, instead, had her confined in a chamber built on one pillar so that she could not have intercourse with men. What had been ordained by Fate could not be prevented; so, when she grew to maidenhood, a son of one of her maternal uncles, named Dighagamani, who was at the king’s court, found means of access to her with whom he had fallen in love. The princess conceived and in due time gave birth to a son. She exchanged her baby with that of a serving woman who had given birth to a son on the same day. The brothers were satisfied that they had cheated Fate, but eventually discovered that the son of their sister was being brought up in obscurity. They made several attempts to kill the boy, but every time Providence intervened to save him, sometimes at the cost sacrificing innocents.

When the child of Destiny, named Pandukabhaya, was sixteen years old, his mother arranged for his education under a Brahmana named Pandula, who lived in the Southern District. When the prince had completed his education, the Brahmana supplied Pandukabhaya with the necessary funds to raise a band of soldiers, allowed his own son to be the prince’s comrade-in-arms, and sent him forth in his career of adventure. In the meantime, Panduvasudeva had died after a reign of thirty years and his eldest son, Abhaya, had succeeded him. Collecting a number of followers around him, Pandukabhaya proclaimed his name and took up his abode at the city of Pana near the Kasa Mountain. Here his following increased to seven hundred, but in the initial stage of his career as an insurgent, his uncles do not seem to have made a determined attempt to annihilate him.

The romantic element is not wanting even in the account of Pandukabhaya’s career as a rebel against his uncles. From Pana, the prince moved to a region called Girikanda ruled by an uncle of his named Siva. He encountered the uncle’s daughter travelling with her handmaidens in a cart taking meals to her father who was supervising his agricultural activities. Pandukabhaya requested the princes to give him a meal; she consented and collected some banyan leaves on which to serve the food to his followers, after having served him in a golden vessel, says Prof. S. Paranavitana

By Chandra Edirisuriya