KAMALIKA PIERIS

 The Tamil Separatist Movement invented a fictitious Tamil Buddhism to prevent Sinhalese taking over the Buddhist ruins in the north. Buddhist ruins, dated to the ancient and medieval periods and looking just like the ruins in the south were found in abundance in the north and east of Sri Lanka. This was a great blow to the Tamil Separatist Movement.

 Ven. Santhabodhi said that an academic from the University of Jaffna had arrived at Kurundi. He had been sent to find proof that Kurundi was not Buddhist. On his return he had stated that it was not possible to deny that Kurundi was Buddhist, but   we can say it is Tamil Buddhism and keep the Sinhalese out”.

 However, the evidence which shows that the North was Sinhala does not come from its Buddhist ruins. They come from Sinhala place names, cattle branding and the Vallipuram gold plate. Vallipuram plate was a valuable find. It showed that the north was ruled by the Sinhala king.  The Vallipuram plate was to be kept away from the Sinhala public, but its Tamil custodian waited for the right time and gave it to the Sinhalese.

Tamil Buddhism” means Buddhism   transmitted in Tamil as part of the Tamil culture.The fictitious Tamil Buddhism of the Northern Province must therefore come from Tamilnadu, not Anuradhapura. 

 Tamilnadu certainly had a Buddhist period and made a limited contribution to Buddhist civilization. Tamilnadu produced three Buddhist scholars Buddhagosa, Buddhadatta, and Dhammapala. But there is some doubt whether Buddhagosa was Tamil.

Tamilnadu produced several Tamil Buddhist epics, such as Manimekalai.  11th-century Veerasoliyam shows the prominence given to Buddhism in Tamil scholarship.  Tolkappiyam, the earliest Tamil grammar, written around the 3rd century BC, was written by a Buddhist. It was widely used in the Buddhist monasteries of Sri Lanka by those who knew Tamil.

Buddhism did not last long in Tamilnadu. Buddhism was eliminated from Tamilnadu, by Tamilnadu’s   Bhakti movement, which started in the 7^th century .The Bhakti movement focused on   Hindu gods and goddesses with special emphasis on Siva and Vishnu.  It was a militant movement. It opposed Buddhism. Buddhism lost popular support and also the patronage of the rulers. Tamilnadu became Hindu and has remained Hindu ever since. There are no Buddhist monuments on show in Tamilnadu today.

However, Mavali Rajan and Palas Kumar Saha (2020) stated that Buddhism did not disappear after the Bhakti cult came. Nagapattinam had a Buddhist colony and a Buddhist temple complex long after the arrival of Bhakti. 127 other Buddhist sites belonging to the same period were found along the coast, challenging the theory that Buddhism had vanished from Tamilnadu after Bhakti.

Rajan and Saha then went on to say that Buddhism flourished in Tamilnadu during  two  periods,  firstly in the early years of the Pallava rule (400-650 AD) and secondly in the Chola period (mid 9th to the early 14th century AD) .  The evidence for both Pallava and Chola Buddhism is in the   Buddhist shrines at Nagapattinam, Kanchipuram and  Kaveripattinam,,

Hiuen Tsang  had counted 50 monasteries and 4500 monks when he visited India in Pallava time. The Chola rulers  did not did not allow  Buddhism in the royal court, they  were dedicated Saivites. But they allowed the establishment of a huge Buddhist complex at Nāgapaṭṭiṉam in the 10th and 11th century,  for political reasons.

Other South Indian states fared better with Buddhism. The present day Hindu temples in Kerala show the influence of Vatadage architecture.  Buddhism declined in Karnataka by 7th century, but Mahayana Buddhism continued in pockets till the 12th Century. Gujarat had Buddhist rock cut caves of 1-4 AD at Talaja and Dhank.Devnimori had a monastery and stupa.

Buddhism was strongest in Andhra Pradesh. Andhra Pradesh has 140 listed Buddhist sites, the best known are Nagarjunakonda, Amaravati and Bavikonda. Buddhism and commerce went together and Andhra Pradesh was at the centre of trade routes. Five routes converged at the capital, Vengi. The Andhra  kings were known as Vengi kings.

The rock cut monasteries in the Western Ghats show that   Buddhism was strong in Maharashtra too. Ajanta and Ellora in northern Maharashtra are well known but there are  more than 50 other sets of rock cut temples.     Kanheri caves were a major monastic education centre. It became Mahayana later.These cave temples were executed by several dynasties ruling in  Maharashtra  such as Satavahana, Vakataka, and Rashtrakuta.  

The Tamil Separatist Movement has sporadically put forward the notion of Tamil Buddhism in Sri Lanka .TNA MP S. Sritharan said in Parliament in 2011, that people who lived in places such as Madagal and Nandagal were Tamil Buddhists and they have left evidence of this . Historians say Nagadeepa and Kantarodai are Sinhala Buddhist settlements. In fact they are Tamil Buddhist settlements. The Sinhalese and Tamils are the two main races in the country and both have their heritage. Equal importance must be given to protecting not only the cultural heritage of the Sinhalese but also of the Tamils.

 In 1995, Buddhist items in Jaffna museum were   labeled Tamil  said historian DGB de Silva at a talk  on the archaeology of the Jaffna peninsula, given at the RASSL in 2012. University of Jaffna   has  added the subject Buddhism in Tamilnadu” to its courses of study.

Tamil Separatist Movement   looked to see whether  Tamils in Sri Lanka  had actually embraced Buddhism . The  ICES journal Nethra, published a piece by K.B. Malik on the  subject (2002).

Malik looked at the Census data and found that  there were 12,813  Tamil Buddhists, in the 1881 census Most were in the Western province.  By 1891 Tamil Buddhists had grown to 15,861.   JP Lewis writing of the Vanni, (1895) said that there were three Sinhala Hindus but he had not seen them. Also four Tamil Buddhists who also he has not seen.   

Ponnambalam Arunachalam said in the  1901 Census report that many Tamil who were really Hindu had been given as Buddhist due to a misunderstanding with the census takers. And in the 1911 Census the enumerator was asked to check when Tamils said they were Buddhist  whether they went to kovil or temple.  In the  1921 and 1945 Censuses there were no Tamil Buddhists in the Western province or anywhere else, concluded Malik..

There is no evidence  to  show that Tamil Buddhism ever existed in the north.  But there is plenty of evidence to show that Sinhala Buddhism was practiced  there. The Buddhist ruins found in the north and east are  identical to the Buddhist ruins found in the south. The   Buddha image, its headdress, the way the robe is draped, the mudras, are identical to those in the south. Similalry, the stupa mounds, the guard stone, siripatula, yupa gala and the script used in the inscriptions,  resemble those found in the south.

Buddhist  countries developed their own distinctive Buddha  image. Sri Lanka has the Samadhi Buddha. Thailand favored the    bhumi sparsha pose   and  also  did the  walking Buddha. If there  really was a separate Tamil Buddhism in the north, excavations would have produced  a distinct Tamil Buddha statue. Nagapattinam  yielded   Buddha statues, small ones, I think,   but no one has said that our statues resemble Nagapattinam.

The American missionaries who arrived in Jaffna in  1813  looked carefully  at  the culture they had come to meddle with. They made inquiries about religion because that was their main interest. If there had been any kind of Tamil  Buddhism  in Jaffna,  even if it was held only in oral tradition, and  had only been practiced in the dim past,  the American missionaries would have sniffed it out and stated it in their records. But the American missionaries say nothing about Tamil Buddhism .

Lastly, if the Tamil Separatist Movement  honestly thought that the ruins were those of  their own precious Tamil Buddhism ,they would have preserved them  for political reasons, not destroy them as they are doing today. Shenali Waduge observed  that  genuine Tamil Buddhists would  protect the  Buddhist heritage sites in the north, not vandalilse  them.   (CONTINUED)