{"id":65850,"date":"2021-05-30T10:47:30","date_gmt":"2021-05-30T10:47:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/websitedesigns.com.au\/elankanew\/?p=65850"},"modified":"2021-05-30T10:47:30","modified_gmt":"2021-05-30T10:47:30","slug":"climbing-sri-pada-by-uditha-devapriya","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/websitedesigns.com.au\/elankanew\/climbing-sri-pada-by-uditha-devapriya\/","title":{"rendered":"Climbing Sri Pada-By Uditha Devapriya"},"content":{"rendered":"

Climbing Sri Pada-By Uditha Devapriya<\/span><\/span><\/h1>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Source:<\/span><\/strong>Island<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

Photos by Dhananjaya Samarakoon<\/span><\/p>\n

When they weren\u2019t climbing Sri Pada or conversing with kings, the earliest foreign travellers to Sri Lanka were dwelling on gems, rubies, topazes, sapphires, and moonstones. From Pliny and Cosmas to Fa Hsien, Odoric of Pordenone, de Marignolli, Friar Hethoun, Marco Polo, Ibn Batuta, and de Castanheda, it was all rubies and gems: Fa Hsien saw a Buddha image \u201cin green jade more than 20 cubits high\u201d, \u201ca great ruby\u201d that shone \u201clike a bright star at night\u201d which Marco Polo described as \u201ca span long and as thick as a man\u2019s arms.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Polo, a merchant who had served at the court of Kublai Khan, wrote of ambassadors being sent by that emperor to the king of \u201cZeitan\u201d who asked him to yield this ruby in return for \u201cthe value of a city.\u201d The king refused, informing them that it was \u201ca jewel handed to him by his predecessors.\u201d The emissaries hence had to return empty-handed. Historians, including K. M. de Silva, have conjectured that this could have been the Tooth Relic.<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Sri Pada was the peak of gem country, and many of those travellers who made their way up there, believing it to be the site of paradise, surveyed the land below it. \u201cThe bottom is full of precious stones,\u201d Odoric wrote, while Ibn Batuta noted that \u201cgems are met with in all the localities.\u201d Both Odoric and Batuta believed that Adam found redemption at its foot, and this most probably led them to make fantastic pronouncements on it: for Odoric, \u201can exceedingly great mountain\u201d, and for Batuta, \u201cthe mountain of Serendib than which the whole world does not contain a mountain of greater height.\u201d Roland Raven-Heart was blunt: \u201cit is not even the highest in Ceylon.\u201d Still, claims continued to be made: in 1782 Pierre Sonnerat thought it to be \u201cthe highest in Asia.\u201d Being a naturalist, he should have known better.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"The land around the peak was known as Sabaragamuwa or\u00a0Habaragamuwa<\/i>, possibly because of its association with the\u00a0veddahs<\/i>: the\u00a0Mahavamsa<\/i>\u00a0tells us that after Kuveni had been forced to flee both Vijaya\u2019s settlements and her own clan with her two children, they came to settle at Sumanakuta. Sabara or \u201cHabara<\/i>\u201d literally means \u201cthe barbarian\u201d, and the area was called \u201cthe land of the barbarians.\u201d But Vijaya\u2019s settlements expanded, civilisation made its way to mountainous retreats, and the\u00a0veddahs<\/i>\u00a0moved away to Bintenna and Vellassa, with some of them finding a home further up north in the Vanniya: falling under the Jaffna kingdom, yet pledging their allegiance to the king of Kandy at the time of the British conquest.<\/span><\/p>\n

Eventually, Sabaragamuwa found itself lodged between two regions: to the south of the Peak, Ruhunurata, and to the north, everything else: \u201con the northwest the kingdom of Ceylon, and on all other sides the ocean.\u201d One of the earliest references to Sri Pada calls it \u201cAl-Rouhoun<\/i>\u201c,; an Arab merchant named Soleyman reportedly used the term in 851 CE.<\/span><\/p>\n

Although the Chronicles are agreed on the point that it was Vattagamini Abhaya who found the Footprint of the Buddha and so initiated a cult of worship around it, the earliest historical evidence for that cult comes to us from inscriptions during the reign of Vijayabahu I; it is said that this king dedicated a village called Gilimaya for the benefit of the pilgrims. Later rulers who the Chronicles refer to as travellers, devotees, or patrons of the Peak included Nissanka Malla; Parakramabahu II; Vijayabahu IV; Vikramabahu, the\u00a0de facto<\/i>\u00a0founder of the\u00a0udarata<\/i>\u00a0kingdom; Rajasinghe I; Vimaladharmasuriya II; Narendrasinghe; Sri Vijaya Rajasinghe; and Kirti Sri Rajasinghe. While Marco Polo, Father Marignolli, Ribeiro, and Queyroz did dwell on the Peak, the first European to complete the ascent was a German soldier who had served the Dutch East India Company: Daniel Pathey, in 1684.<\/span><\/p>\n

Since we have no written evidence prior to the reign of Vattagamini Abhaya or Vijayabahu I, we have to rely on folklore and oral history. Perhaps the most intriguing story surrounding the Peak is its purported link with Ravana, a myth largely based on the\u00a0Mahavamsa<\/i>\u2019s allusion to the Buddha\u2019s first and third visits to the island, both of which, we are told, took him to the summit. Followers of Mahayanism, particularly in India and China, believed in the seventh and eight centuries AD that the Buddha delivered a discourse, the\u00a0Lankavatara Sutra<\/i>, to the chief of the\u00a0raksas<\/i>, Ravana, there. Senarath Paranavitana wrote that\u00a0Lankavatara<\/i>\u00a0was another name for Sri Pada: \u201cthe summit of the mountain in the ocean at Lankapura.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

By contrast, the Theravada tradition does not touch on the Peak this way, and the\u00a0Dipavamsa<\/i>, the predecessor to the\u00a0Mahavamsa<\/i>\u00a0which dwells on the Buddha\u2019s visits to the island, does not mention the Peak at all. That, however, did not stem the tide of speculation; over the decades historical research concluded to varying degrees that the mountain played a pivotal role in the\u00a0Ramayana<\/i>. Two Sanskrit plays, Mur\u0101ri\u2019s\u00a0Anargha-raghava<\/i>\u00a0and R\u0101ja\u015bekara\u2019s\u00a0Balaramayana<\/i>, featured the Peak: the former after Ravana returns to his country with Sita aboard his vehicle, the latter after Rama has slain Ravana.<\/span><\/p>\n

If Ravana the chief of the\u00a0raksas<\/i>, and Vibishana after him, did rule from Sri Pada \u2013 points on which there is no historical consensus, barring the findings of the late Mirando Obeyesekere which were all, ultimately, based on the slim, slender evidence of certain ola inscriptions that have as of yet found no favour with historians and archaeologists \u2013 it certainly makes sense, as Paranavitana believed at the time, that the Peak was the abode of\u00a0Yama-raja<\/i>\u00a0and that the\u00a0Sumana-saman<\/i>\u00a0of Sinhala Buddhist mythology was in fact Yama prior to the establishment of the primacy of Theravada Buddhism. According to Paranavitana, Saman was a \u201ccolleague\u201d of Varuna, a Hindu god whose cult was established in India at the time of the first settlement of Sinhalese in Sri Lanka. The name\u00a0Samantukuta<\/i>, or \u201cSaman\u2019s abode\u201d, did not gain traction until the seventh century, by which time Sinhala Buddhist mythology had absorbed Saman as a Sinhala Buddhist god; the\u00a0Nikaya Sangrahaya<\/i>, written in the 14th century AD, has him as one of the four guardians of the land, alongside Vishnu, Vibishana, and Skanda.<\/span><\/p>\n

When Paranavitana suggests that Saman is Yama, and that a term of disparagement Niganta-Giri uses on the fleeing Vattagamini Abhaya,\u00a0Maha-kala sinhaya<\/i>, is a reference to the king\u2019s pretensions as an incarnation of\u00a0Yama-raja<\/i>\u00a0\u2013\u00a0Maha-kala<\/i>\u00a0being a synonym of\u00a0Yama-raja<\/i>\u00a0\u2013 he is engaging in a rereading of Pali inscriptions contested by modern historians. Paranavitana\u2019s knowledge of Pali and Sanskrit did not win him credibility with such findings, and far from accepting them, his colleagues tried to disprove them, just as they did with his controversial interpretation of Maudgalyana and Vattagamini Abhaya.<\/span><\/p>\n

Interestingly enough, his interpretations of the latter kings find their way to his assertions about Sri Pada. In the\u00a0Culavamsa<\/i>\u00a0Maudgalyana, at the thought that dignitaries \u201chave attached themselves to my father\u2019s murderer\u201d, gnashes his teeth and orders that they be put to death. In the\u00a0Mahavamsa<\/i>, Vattagamini Abhaya, enraged that a dignitary neglects to prostrate himself before him, kills him and alienates his ministers, who are then advised by a monk to repose their trust in the usurped king. These narratives are only barely referred to in the Chronicles; for Paranavitana, they point at a desire to attain divine status, the status of\u00a0Yama-raja<\/i>, who he equates with Saman, among the kings of the time: a tendency only scantily if not elliptically referred to by pro-Theravada and pro-Mahavihara chroniclers.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"In arguing that Saman was an incarnation of Yama, Paranavitana denuded him of negative connotations: \u201cthis deity, the King of Righteousness (Dharma-raja<\/i>), is \u2018good to the good\u2019 (Sivas sivanam<\/i>).\u201d Yet even more fantastic than Saman as Yama and Sri Pada as Ravana\u2019s abode \u2013 it\u2019s a little surprising that while he explored the former, Paranavitana was not as ready to explore the historicity of the Peak as a key part of the\u00a0Ramayana<\/i>, a discrepancy Mirando Obeysekere attributed to the archaeologist\u2019s reluctance to accept the Ravana myth \u2013 is the contention that Alexander the Great, who most narratives unequivocally state did\u00a0not<\/i>\u00a0go beyond the lower Indus Valley in his Indian campaigns, climbed the summit.<\/span><\/p>\n

Two pieces of evidence are marshalled in support of this theory: a grotto at the foot of the mountain with the name \u201cIskander\u201d inscribed on it, which Ibn Batuta came across and wrote on; and references to the island and the peak in the writings of Ashraff, a Persian poet. The only other reference to Alexander travelling to the island comes from Pascal-Fran\u00e7ois-Joseph Gossellin, a French historian who wrote of Onesicritus, the pilot of Alexander\u2019s fleet, visiting the island. Onesicritus does mention Taprobane, but nothing proves that he visited it, or that Alexander ascended the Peak on his horse Bucephalus. As for Ashraff and his work\u00a0Zaffer Namah Skendari<\/i>\u00a0in which he dwells on Alexander\u2019s visit, his story is too fabulous despite its extensive description of the country: a description that would not have been too difficult to procure from secondary sources, even in his time.<\/span><\/p>\n

In actual fact, Alexander sent his naval chief Nearchus to explore the coast from the Indus to Mesopotamia, making it unlikely that he came across, even less landed at, Sri Lanka, as Gosselin claimed. Valentia (1811) was among the first English writers to doubt the veracity of Gosselin\u2019s findings; his extensive critique of the latter\u2019s\u00a0Recherches sur la Geographie des Anciens<\/i>\u00a0lays to rest all assertions that Alexander crossed the Indian Ocean. Another possible view, more tenable, is that Iskander may have actually been Skanda, a literal reference to the mountain, or \u2013 and this is not as hard to buy as the Alexander thesis \u2013 Murugan. As Skanda, he became a popular mountain deity of the Sinhalas and Veddas; it may well have been that he \u201cofficiated\u201d the Peak and its surroundings before his cult shifted to Kataragama.<\/span><\/p>\n

The writer can be reached at udakdev1@gmail.com<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Climbing Sri Pada-By Uditha Devapriya Source:Island Photos by Dhananjaya Samarakoon When they weren\u2019t climbing Sri Pada or conversing with kings, the earliest foreign travellers to Sri Lanka were dwelling on gems, rubies, topazes, sapphires, and moonstones. From Pliny and Cosmas to Fa Hsien, Odoric of Pordenone, de Marignolli, Friar Hethoun, Marco Polo, Ibn Batuta, and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":65851,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"aside","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[34990,31851],"class_list":{"0":"post-65850","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-aside","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-articles","8":"tag-mirando-obeysekere","9":"tag-sri-pada","10":"post_format-post-format-aside"},"yoast_head":"\nClimbing Sri Pada-By Uditha Devapriya<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"When they weren\u2019t climbing Sri Pada or conversing with kings, the earliest foreign travellers to Sri Lanka were dwelling\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"noindex, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" 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