Ceylon; an Account of the Island Physical, Historical, and Topographical with Notices of Its Natural History Part 76

[Sidenote: A.D. 515.]

Such was the feebleness of the royal house, that of the eight kings who succeeded Mogallana between A.D. 515 and A.D. 586, two died by suicide, three by murder, and one from grief occasioned by the treason of his son. The anarchy consequent upon such disorganisation stimulated the rapacity of the Malabars; and the chronicles of the following centuries are filled with the accounts of their descents on the island and the misery inflicted by their excesses.

CHAP. X.

THE DOMINATION OF THE MALABARS.

[Sidenote: A.D. 515.]

It has been already explained that the invaders who engaged in forays into Ceylon, though known by the general epithet of Malabars (or as they are designated in Pali, _damilos_, "Tamils"), were also natives of places in India remote from that now known as Malabar. They were, in reality, the inhabitants of one of the earliest states organised in Southern India, the kingdom of Pandya[1], whose sovereigns, from their intelligence, and their encouragement of native literature, have been appropriately styled "the Ptolemies of India." Their dominions, which covered the extremity of the peninsula, comprehended the greater portion of the Coromandel coast, extending to Canara on the western coast, and southwards to the sea.[2] Their kingdom was subsequently contracted in dimensions, by the successive independence of Malabar, the rise of the state of Chera to the west, of Ramnad to the south, and of Chola in the east, till it sank in modern times into the petty government of the Naicks of Madura.[3]

[Footnote 1: Pandya, as a kingdom was not unknown in cla.s.sical times, and its ruler was the [Greek: Basileus Pandion] mentioned in the _Periplus of the Erythraean Sea_, and the king Pandion, who sent an emba.s.sy to Augustus.--PLINY, vi. 26; PTOLEMY, vii. 1.]

[Footnote 2: See an _Historical Sketch of the Kingdom of Pandya_, by Prof. H. H. WILSON, _Asiat. Journ._, vol. iii.]

[Footnote 3: See _ante_, p. 353, n.]

[Sidenote: A.D. 515.]

The relation between this portion of the Dekkan and the early colonisers of Ceylon was rendered intimate by many concurring incidents. Wijayo himself was connected by maternal descent with the king of Kalinga[1], now known as the Northern Circars; his second wife was the daughter of the king of Pandya, and the ladies who accompanied her to Ceylon were given in marriage to his ministers and officers.[2] Similar alliances were afterwards frequent; and the Singhalese annalists allude on more than one occasion to the "damilo consorts" of their sovereigns.[3]

Intimate intercourse and consanguinity, were thus established from the remotest period. Adventurers from the opposite coast were encouraged by the previous settlers; high employments were thrown open to them, Malabars were subsidised both as cavalry and as seamen; and the first abuse of their privileges was in the instance of the brothers Sena and Goottika, who, holding naval and military commands, took advantage of their position and seized on the throne, B.C. 237; apparently with such acquiescence on the part of the people, that even the _Mahawanso_ praises the righteousness of their reign, which was prolonged to twenty-two years, when they were put to death by the rightful heir to the throne.[4]

[Footnote 1: _Mahawanso_, ch. vi. p. 43.]

[Footnote 2: _Mahawanso_, ch. vii. p. 53; the _Rajarali_ (p. 173) says they were 700 in number.]

[Footnote 3: _Mahawanso_, ch. x.x.xviii. p. 253.]

[Footnote 4: _Mahawanso_ ch. xxi. p. 127.]

[Sidenote: A.D. 515.]

The easy success of the first usurpers encouraged the ambition of fresh aspirants, and barely ten years elapsed till the _first_ regular invasion of the island took place, under the ill.u.s.trious Elala, who, with an army from Mysore (then called Chola or Soli), subdued the entire of Ceylon, north of the Mahawelli-ganga, and compelled the chiefs of the rest of the island, and the kings of Rohuna and Maya, to acknowledge his supremacy and become his tributaries.[1] As in the instance of the previous revolt, the people exhibited such faint resistance to the usurpation, that the reign of Elala extended to forty-four years. It is difficult to conceive that their quiescence under a stranger was entirely ascribable to the fact, that the rule of the Malabars, although adverse to Buddhism, was characterised by justice and impartiality.

Possibly they recognised to some extent their pretensions, as founded on their relations.h.i.+p to the legitimate sovereigns of the island, and hence they bore their sway without impatience.[2]

[Footnote 1: TURNOUR'S _Epitome_, p. 17; _Mahawanso_, ch. xxi. p. 128; _Rajavali_, p. 188.]

[Footnote 2: See _ante_, p. 360, n.]

The majority of the subsequent invasions of Ceylon by the Malabars partook less of the character of conquest than of forays, by a restless and energetic race, into a fertile and defenceless country. Mantotte, on the northwest coast, near Adam's Bridge, became the great place of debarcation; and here successive bands of marauders landed time after time without meeting any effectual resistance from the unwarlike Singhalese.

The _second_ great invasion took place about a century after the first, B.C. 103, when seven Malabar leaders effected simultaneous descents at different points of the coast[1], and combined with a disaffected "Brahman prince" of Rohuna, to force Walagam-bahu I. to surrender his sovereignty. The king, after an ineffectual show of resistance, fled to the mountains of Malaya; one of the invaders carried off the queen to the coast of India; a third despoiled the temples of Anaraj.a.poora and retired, whilst the others continued in possession of the capital for nearly fifteen years, till Walagam-bahu, by the aid of the Rohuna highlanders, succeeded in recovering the throne.

[Footnote 1: TURNOUR'S _Epitome_, p. 16. The _Mahawanso_ says they landed at "Mahat.i.ttha."--_Mantotte_, ch. x.x.xiii. p. 203.]

[Sidenote: A.D. 515.]

The _third_ great invasion on record[1] was in its character still more predatory than those which preceded it, but it was headed by a king in person, who carried away 12,000 Singhalese as slaves to Mysore. It occurred in the reign of Waknais, A.D. 110, whose son Gaja-bahu, A.D.

113, avenged the outrage by invading the Solee country with an expedition which sailed from Jaffnapatam, and brought back not only the rescued Singhalese captives, but also a mult.i.tude of Solleans, whom the king established on lands in the Alootcoor Corle, where the Malabar features are thought to be discernible to the present day.[2]

[Footnote 1: This incursion of the Malabars is not mentioned in the _Mahawanso_, but it is described in the _Rajavali_, p. 229, and mentioned by TURNOUR, in his _Epitome_, &c., p. 21. There is evidence of the conscious supremacy of the Malabars over the north of Ceylon, in the fourth century, in a very curious doc.u.ment, relating to that period. The existence of a colony of Jews at Cochin, in the southwestern extremity of the Dekkan, has long been known in Europe, and half a century ago, particulars of their condition and numbers were published by Dr.

Claudius Buchanan. (_Christian Researches, &c._) Amongst other facts, he made known their possession of Hebrew MSS. demonstrative of the great antiquity of their settlement in India, and also of their t.i.tle deeds of land (_sasanams_), engraved on plates of copper, and presented to them by the early kings of that portion of the peninsula. Some of the latter have been carefully translated into English (see _Madras Journ._, vol.

xiii. xiv.). One of their MSS. has recently been brought to England, under circ.u.mstances which are recounted by Mr. FORSTER, in the third vol. of his _One Primeval Language_, p. 303. This MS. I have been permitted to examine. It is in corrupted Rabbinical Hebrew, written about the year 1781, and contains a partial synopsis of the modern history of the section of the Jewish nation to whom it belongs; with accounts of their arrival in the year A.D. 68, and of their reception by the Malabar kings. Of one of the latter, frequently spoken of by the honorific style of SRI PERUMAL, but identifiable with IRAVI VARMAR, who reigned A.D. 379, the ma.n.u.script says that his "_rule extended from Goa to Colombo_."]

[Footnote 2: CASTE CHITTY, _Ceylon Gazetteer_, p. 7.]

A long interval of repose followed, and no fresh expedition from India is mentioned in the chronicles of Ceylon till A.D. 433, when the capital was again taken by the Malabars; the Singhalese families fled beyond the Mahawelli-ganga; and the invaders occupied the entire extent of the Pihiti Ratta, where for twenty-seven years, five of them in succession administered the government, till Dhatu Sena collected forces sufficient to overpower the strangers, and, emerging from his retreat in Rohuna, recovered possession of the north of the island.[1]

[Footnote 1: _Rajavali_, p. 243; TURNOUR'S _Epitome_, p. 27.]

[Sidenote: A.D. 515.]

Dhatu Sena, after his victory, seems to have made an attempt, though an ineffectual one, to reverse the policy which had operated under his predecessors as an incentive to the immigration of Malabars; settlement and intermarriages had been all along encouraged[1], and even during the recent usurpation, many Singhalese families of rank had formed connections with the Damilos. The schisms among the Buddhist themselves, tending as they did to engraft Brahmanical rites upon the doctrines of the purer faith, seem to have promoted and matured the intimacy between the two people; some of the Singhalese kings erected temples to the G.o.ds of the Hindus[2], and the promoters of the Wytulian heresy found a refuge from persecution amongst their sympathisers in the Dekkan.[3]

[Footnote 1: Anula, the queen of Ceylon, A.D. 47, met with no opposition in raising one of her Malabar husbands to the throne.--TURNOUR'S _Epitome_, p. 19. Sotthi Sena, who reigned A.D. 432, had a Damilo queen.--_Mahawanso_, ch. x.x.xviii. p. 253.]

[Footnote 2: Sri Sanga Bo III. A.D. 702, "made a figure of the G.o.d Vishnu; and was a supporter of the religion of Buddha, and a friend of the people."--_Rajaratnacari_, p. 78.]

[Footnote 3: _Mahawanso_, ch. x.x.xvii. p. 234; TURNOUR'S _Epitome_, p.

25.]

[Sidenote: A.D. 515.]

The Malabars, trained to arms, now resorted in such numbers to Ceylon, that the leaders in civil commotions were accustomed to hire them in bands to act against the royal forces[1]; and whilst no precautions were adopted to check the landing of marauders on the coast, the invaders constructed forts throughout the country to protect their conquests from recapture by the natives. Proud of these successful expeditions, the native records of the Chola kings make mention of their victories; and in one of their grants of land, engraved on copper, and still in existence, Viradeva-Chola, the sovereign by whom it was made, is described as having triumphed over "Madura, Izham, Caruvar, and the crowned head of Pandyan;" Izham, (or Ilam) being the Tamil name of Ceylon.[2] On their expulsion by Dhatu Sena, he took possession of the fortresses and extirpated the Damilos; degraded the Singhalese who had intermarried with them; confiscated their estates in favour of those who had remained true to his cause; and organised a naval force for the protection of the coasts[3] of the island.

[Footnote 1: _Mahawanso_, ch. x.x.xvi. p. 238.]

[Footnote 2: DOWSON, on the Chera Kingdom of India.--_Asiat. Journ._ vol. viii. p. 24.]

[Footnote 3: _Mahawansa_ ch. x.x.xviii. p. 256. and x.x.xix. TURNOUR'S MS., _Trans._]

But his vigorous policy produced no permanent effect; his son Mogallana, after the murder of his father and the usurpation of Kasyapa, fled for refuge to the coast of India, and subsequently recovered possession of the throne, by the aid of a force which he collected there.[1] In the succession of a.s.sa.s.sinations, conspiracies, and civil wars which distracted the kingdom in the sixth and seventh centuries, during the struggles of the rival branches of the royal house, each claimant, in his adversity, betook himself to the Indian continent, and Malabar mercenaries from Pandya and Soli enrolled themselves indifferently under any leader, and deposed or restored kings at their pleasure.[2]

[Footnote 1: TURNOUR'S _Epitome_, p. 29; _Rajavali_ p. 244.]

[Footnote 2: TURNOUR'S _Epitome_, p. 31; _Rajavali_ p. 247.]

[Sidenote: A.D. 523.]

The _Rajavali_, in a single pa.s.sage enumerates fourteen sovereigns who were murdered each by his successor, between A.D. 523, and A.D. 648.

During a period of such violence and anarchy, peaceful industry was suspended, and extensive emigrations took place to Bahar and Orissa.

Buddhism, however, was still predominant, and protection was accorded to its professors.

[Sidenote: A.D. 640.]