THE INFLUENCE OF BUDDHISM ON CIVILISATION.
B.C. 137.After the reign of Dutugaimunu there is little in the pages of the native historians to sustain interest in the story of the Singhalese monarchs. The long line of sovereigns is divided into two distinct classes; the kings of the Maha-wanse or "superior dynasty" of the uncontaminated blood of Wijayo, who occupied the throne from his death, B.C. 505, to that of Maha Sen, A.D. 302;—and the Sulu-wanse or "inferior race," whose descent was less pure, but who, amidst invasions, revolutions, and decline, continued, with unsteady hand, to hold the government clown to the occupation of the island by Europeans in the beginning of the sixteenth century.
B.C. 137.To the great dynasty, and more especially to its earliest members, the inhabitants were indebted for the first rudiments of civilisation, for the arts of agricultural life, for an organised government, and for a system of national worship. But neither the piety of the kings nor their munificence sufficed to conciliate the personal attachment of their subjects, or to strengthen their throne by national attachment such as would have fortified its occupant against the fatalities incident to despotism. Of fifty-one sovereigns who formed the pure Wijayan dynasty, two were deposed by their subjects, and nineteen put to death by their successors.[1] Excepting the rare instances in which a reign was marked by some occurrence, such as an invasion and repulse of the Malabars, there is hardly a sovereign of the "Solar race" whose name is associated with a higher achievement than the erection of a dagoba or the formation of a tank, nor one whose story is enlivened by an event more exciting than the murder through which he mounted the throne or the conspiracy by which he was driven from it.[2]
1: There is something very striking in the facility with which aspirants to the throne obtained the instant acquiescence of the people, so soon as assassination had put them in possession of power. And this is the more remarkable, where the usurpers were of the lower grade, as in the instance of Subho, a gate porter, who murdered King Yasa Silo, A.D. 60, and reigned for six years (Mahaw. ch. xxxv. p. 218). A carpenter, and a carrier of fire-wood, were each accepted in succession as sovereigns, A.D. 47; whilst the "great dynasty" was still in the plenitude of its popularity. The mystery is perhaps referable to the dominant necessity of securing tranquillity at any cost, in the state of society where the means of cultivation were directly dependent on the village organisation, and famine and desolation would have been the instant and inevitable consequences of any commotions which interfered with the conservancy and repair of the tanks and means of irrigation, and the prompt application of labour to the raising and saving of produce at the instant when the fall of the rains or the ripening of the crops demanded its employment with the utmost vigour.
2: In theory the Singhalese monarchy was elective in the descendants of the Solar race: in practice, primogeniture had a preference, and the crown was either hereditary or became the prize of those who claimed to be of royal lineage. On reviewing the succession of kings from B.C. 307 to A.D. 1815, thirty-nine eldest sons (or nearly one fourth), succeeded to their fathers: and twenty-nine kings (or more than one fifth), were succeeded by brothers. Fifteen reigned for a period less than one year, and thirty for more than one year, and less than four. Of the Singhalese kings who died by violence, twenty-two were murdered by their successors; six were killed by other individuals; thirteen fell in feuds and war, and four committed suicide; eleven were dethroned, and their subsequent fate is unknown. Not more than two-thirds of the Singhalese kings retained sovereign authority to their decease, or reached the funeral pile without a violent death.—FORBES' Eleven Years in Ceylon, vol. i. ch. iv. p. 80, 97; JOINVILLE, Religion and Manners of the People of Ceylon; Asiat. Res. vol. vii. p. 423. See also Mahawanso, ch. xxiii. p. 201.
One source of royal contention arose on the death of Dutugaimunu; his son, having forfeited his birthright by an alliance with a wife of lower caste, was set aside from the succession; Saidaitissa, a brother of the deceased king, being raised to the throne in his stead. The priests, on the death of Saidaitissa, B.C. 119, hastened to proclaim his youngest son Thullatthanako[1], to the prejudice of his elder brother Laiminitissa, but the latter established his just claim by the sword, and hence B.C. 119.arose two rival lines, which for centuries afterwards were prompt on every opportunity to advance adverse pretensions to the throne, and assert them by force of arms.
1: Mahawanso, ch. xxxiii. p. 201.
In such contests the priesthood brought a preponderant influence to whatever side they inclined [1]; and thus the royal authority, though not strictly sacerdotal, became so closely identified with the hierarchy, and so guided by its will, that each sovereign's attention was chiefly devoted to forwarding such measures as most conduced to the exaltation of Buddhism and the maintenance of its monasteries and temples.
1: It was the dying boast of Dutugaimunu that he had lived "a slave to the priesthood." The expression was figurative in his case; but so abject did the subserviency of the kings become, and so rapid was its growth, that Bhatiya Tissa, who reigned A.D. 8, rendered it literal, and "dedicated himself, his queen, and two sons, as well as his charger, and state elephant, as slaves to the priesthood." The Mahawanso intimates that the priests themselves protested against this debasement, ch. xxxiv. p. 214.
B.C. 119.A signal effect of this regal policy, and of the growing diffusion of Buddhism, is to be traced in the impulse which it communicated to the reclamation of lands and the extension of cultivation. For more than three hundred years no mention is made in the Singhalese annals of any mode of maintaining the priesthood other than the royal distribution of clothing and voluntary offerings of food. They resorted for the "royal alms" either to the residence of the authorities or to halls specially built for their accommodation [1], to which they were summoned by "the shout of refection;" [2] the ordinary priests receiving rice, "those endowed with the gift of preaching, clarified butter, sugar, and honey."[3] Hospitals and medicines for their use, and rest houses on their journeys, were also provided at the public charge.[4] These expedients were available so long as the numbers of the priesthood were limited; but such were the multitudes who were tempted to withdraw from the world and its pursuits, in order to devote themselves to meditation and the diffusion of Buddhism, that the difficulty became practical of maintaining them by personal gifts, and the alternative suggested itself of setting apart lands for their support. This innovation was first resorted to during an interregnum. The Singhalese king Walagam Bahu, being expelled from his capital by a Malabar usurpation B.C. 104.B.C. 104, was unable to continue the accustomed regal bounty to the priesthood; dedicated certain lands while in exile in Rohuna, for the support of a fraternity "who had sheltered him there."[5] The precedent thus established, was speedily seized upon and extended; lands were everywhere set apart for the repair of the sacred edifices[6], and eventually, about the beginning of the Christian era, the priesthood acquired such an increase of influence as sufficed to convert their precarious eleemosynary dependency into a permanent territorial endowment; and the practice became universal of conveying estates in mortmain on the construction of a wihara or the dedication of a temple.[7]
1: Mahawanso, ch. xx. p. 123; xxii. p. 132,135.
2: Mahawanso, ch. xxviii. p. 167.
3: Mahawanso, ch. xxxii. p. 196-7.
4: Mahawanso, ch. xxxii. p. 196 xxxvii. p. 244; Rajaratnacari, p. 39, 41.
5: Mahawanso, ch, xxxiii. p. 203. Previous to this date a king of Rohuna, during the usurpation of Elala, B.C. 205, had appropriated lands near Kalany, for the repairs of the dagoba.—Rajaratnacari, p. 37.
6: In the reign of Batiya Tissa, B.C. 20. Mahawanso,, ch. xxxiv. p. 212; Rajaratnacari, p. 51.
7: Mahawanso, ch. xxxiv. p. 214.
B.C. 104.The corporate character of the recipients served to neutralise the obligations by which they were severally bound; the vow of poverty, though compulsory on an individual priest, ceased to be binding on the community of which he was a member; and whilst, on his own behalf, he was constrained to abjure the possession of property, even to the extent of one superfluous cloth, the wihara to which he was attached, in addition to its ecclesiastical buildings, and its offerings in gems and gold, was held competent to become the proprietor of broad and fertile lands.[1] These were so bountifully bestowed by royal piety, by private munificence, and by mortuary gifts, that ere many centuries had elapsed the temples of Ceylon absorbed a large proportion of the landed property of the kingdom, and their possessions were not only exempted from taxation, but accompanied by a right to the compulsory labour of the temple tenants.[2]
1: HARDY'S Eastern Monachism, ch. viii. p. 68.
2: The Rajaratnacari mentions an instance, A.D. 62, of eight thousand rice fields bestowed in one grant; and similar munificence is recorded in numerous instances prior, to A.D. 204.—Rajaratnacari, p. 57, 59, 64, 74, 113, &c. Mahawanso, ch. xxxv. p. 223, 224; ch. xxxvi. p. 233.
As the estates so made over to religious uses lay for the most part in waste districts, the quantity of land which was thus brought under cultivation necessarily involved large extensions of the means of irrigation. To supply these, reservoirs were formed on such a scale as to justify the term "consecrated lakes," by which they are described in the Singhalese annals.[1]
1: Rajaratnacari, ch. ii. p. 37; Rajavali, p. 237.
Where the circumstances of the ground permitted, their formation was effected by drawing an embankment across the embouchure of a valley so as to arrest and retain the waters by which it was traversed, and so vast were the dimensions of some of these gigantic tanks that many yet in existence still cover an area of from fifteen to twenty miles in circumference. The ruins of that at Kalaweva, to the north-west of Dambool, show that its original circuit could not have been less than forty miles, its retaining bund being upwards of twelve miles long. The spill-water of stone, which remains to the present time, is "perhaps one of the most stupendous monuments of misapplied human labour in the island."[1]
1: TURNOUR, Mahawanso, p. 12. The tank of Kalaweva was formed by Dhatu Sena, A.D. 459.—Mahawanso, ch. xxxviii. p. 257.
B.C. 104.The number of these stupendous works, which were formed by the early sovereigns of Ceylon, almost exceeds credibility. Kings are named in the native annals, each of whom made from fifteen to thirty[1], together with canals and all the appurtenances for irrigation. Originally these vast undertakings were completed "for the benefit of the country," and "out of compassion for living creatures;"[2] but so early as the first century of the Christian era, the custom became prevalent of forming tanks with the pious intention of conferring the lands which they enriched on the church. Wide districts, rendered fertile by the interception of a river and the formation of suitable canals, were appropriated to the maintenance of the local priesthood[3]; a tank and the thousands of acres which it fertilised were sometimes assigned for the perpetual repairs of a dagoba[4], and the revenues of whole villages and their surrounding rice fields were devoted to the support of a single wihara.[5]
1: Rajaratnacari, p. 41, 45, 54, 55; King Saidaitissa B.C. 137, made "eighteen lakes" (Rajavali, p. 233). King Wasabha, who ascended the throne A.D. 62, "caused sixteen large lakes to be enclosed" (Rajaratnacari, p. 57). Detu Tissa, A.D. 253, excavated six (Rajavali, p. 237), and King Maha Sen, A.D. 275, seventeen (Mahawanso, ch, xxxviii. p. 236).
2: Mahawanso, ch, xxxvii. p. 242.
3: Mahawanso, ch. xxxiv. p. 210; xxxv. p. 221; xxxviii. p. 237, Rajaratnacari, ch. ii. p. 57, 59, 64, 69, 74.
4: Mahawanso, ch. xxxv. p. 215, 218, 223; ch. xxxvii. p. 234; Rajaratnacari, ch. ii. p. 51. TURNOUR'S Epitome, p. 21.
5: Mahawanso, ch. xxxv. p. 218, 221; Rajaratnacari, ch. ii. p. 51; Rajaviai, p. 241.
So lavish were these endowments, that one king, who signalised his reign by such extravagances as laying a carpet seven miles in length, "in order that pilgrims might proceed with unsoiled feet all the way from the Kadambo river (the Malwatté oya) to the mountain Chetiyo (Mihintala)," awarded a priest who had presented him with a draught of water during the construction of a wihara, "land within the circumference of half a yoyana (eight miles) for the maintenance of the temple."[1]
1: Mahawanso, ch. xxxiv, p. 3.
B.C. 104.It was in this manner that the beautiful tank at Mineri, one of the most lovely of these artificial lakes, was enclosed by Maha Sen, A.D. 275; and, together with the 80,000 amonams of ground which it waters, was conferred on the Jeytawana Wihara which the king had just erected at Anarajapoora.[1]
1: Rajaratnacari, ch. ii. p. 69.
To identify the crown still more closely with the interests of agriculture, some of the kings superintended public works for irrigating the lands of the temples[1]; and one more enthusiastic than the rest toiled in the rice fields to enhance the merit of conferring their produce on the priesthood.[2]
1: TURNOUR'S Epitome, p. 33.
2: Mahawanso, ch. xxxiv. The Buddhist kings of Burmah are still accustomed to boast, almost in the terms of the Mahawanso, of the distinction which they have earned, by the multitudes of tanks they have constructed or restored. See YULE'S Narrative of the Mission to Ava in 1855, p. 106.
These broad possessions, the church, under all vicissitudes and revolutions, has succeeded in retaining to the present day. Their territories, it is true, have been diminished in extent by national decay; the destruction of works for irrigation has converted into wilderness and jungle plains once teeming with fertility; and the mild policy of the British government, by abolishing raja-kariya[1], has emancipated the peasantry, who are no longer the serfs either of the temples or the chiefs. But in every district of the island the priests are in the enjoyment of the most fertile lands, over which the crown exercises no right of taxation; and such is the extent of their possessions that, although their precise limits have not been ascertained by the local government, they have been conjectured with probability to be equal to one-third of the cultivated land of the island.
1: Compulsory labour.
B.C. 104.One peculiarity in the Buddhist ceremonial served at all times to give a singular impulse to the progress of horticulture. Flowers and garlands are introduced in its religious rites to the utmost excess. The atmosphere of the wiharas and temples is rendered oppressive with the perfume of champac and jessamine, and the shrine of the deity, the pedestals of his image, and the steps leading to the temple are strewn thickly with blossoms of the nagaha and the lotus. At an earlier period the profusion in which these beautiful emblems were employed in sacred decorations appears almost incredible; the Mahawanso relates that the Ruanwellé dagoba, which was 270 feet in height, was on one occasion "festooned with garlands from pedestal to pinnacle till it resembled one uniform bouquet;" and at another time, it and the lofty dagoba at Mihintala were buried under heaps of jessamine from the ground to the summit.[1] Fa Hian, in describing his visit to Anarajapoora in the fourth century, dwells with admiration and wonder on the perfumes and flowers lavished on their worship by the Singhalese[2]; and the native historians constantly allude as familiar incidents to the profusion in which they were employed on ordinary occasions, and to the formation by successive kings of innumerable gardens for the floral requirements of the temples. The capital was surrounded on all sides[3] by flower gardens, and these were multiplied so extensively that, according to the Rajaratnacari, one was to be found within a distance of four leagues in any part of Ceylon.[4] Amongst the regulations of the temple built at Dambedinia, in the thirteenth century, was "every day an offering of 100,000 flowers, and each day a different flower."[5]
1: Mahawanso, ch. xxxiv.; Rajaratnacari, p. 52, 53.
2: FA HIAN. Foè Kouè Ki, ch. xxxviii. p. 335.
3: Rajavali, p. 227; Mahawanso, ch. xi. p. 67.
4: Rajaratnacari, p. 29, 49. Amongst the officers attached to the great establishments of the priests in Mihintala, A.D. 246, there are enumerated in an inscription engraven on a rock there, a secretary, a treasurer, a physician, a surgeon, a painter, twelve cooks, twelve thatchers, ten carpenters, six carters, and two florists.
5: Rajaratnacari, p. 103. The same book states that another king, in the fifteenth century, "offered no less than 6,480,320 sweet smelling flowers" at the shrine of the Tooth.—Ib., p. 136.
B.C. 104.Another advantage conferred by Buddhism on the country was the planting of fruit trees and esculent vegetables for the gratuitous use of travellers in all the frequented parts of the island. The historical evidences of this are singularly corroborative of the genuineness of the Buddhist edicts engraved on various rocks and monuments in India, the deciphering of which was the grand achievement of Prinsep and his learned coadjutors. On the pillars of Delhi, Allahabad, and other places, and on the rocks of Girnar and Dhauli, there exist a number of Pali inscriptions purporting to be edicts of Asoca (the Dharmasoca of the Mahawanso), King of Magadha, in the third century before the Christian era, who, on his conversion to the religion of Buddha, commissioned Mahindo, his son, to undertake its establishment in Ceylon. In these edicts, which were promulgated in the vernacular dialect, the king endeavoured to impress both upon his subjects and allies, as well as those who, although aliens, were yet "united in the law" of Buddha, the divine precepts of their great teacher; prominent amongst which are the prohibition against taking animal life[1], and the injunction that, "everywhere wholesome vegetables, roots, and fruit trees shall be cultivated, and that on the roads wells shall be dug and trees planted for the enjoyment of men and animals." In apparent conformity with these edicts, one of the kings of Ceylon, Addagaimunu, A.D. 20, is stated in the Mahawanso to have "caused to be planted throughout the island every description of fruit-bearing creepers, and interdicted the destruction of animal life,"[2] and similar acts of pious benevolence, performed by command of various other sovereigns, are adverted to on numerous occasions.
1: It is curious that one of these edicts of Asoca, who was contemporary with Devenipiatissa, is addressed to "all the conquered territories of the raja, even unto the ends of the earth; as in Chola, in Pida, in Keralaputra, and in Tambapanni (or Ceylon)." This license of speech, reminding one of the grandiloquent epistles "from the Flaminian Gate," was no doubt assumed in virtue of the recent establishment of Buddhism, or, as it is called in the Mahawanso "the religion of the Vanquisher," and Asoca, as its propagator, thus claims to address the converts as his "subjects."
2: Mahawanso, ch. xxxv. p. 215. The king Upatissa, A.D. 368, in the midst of a solemn ceremonial, "observing ants, and other insects drowning in an inundation, halted, and having swept them towards the with the feathers of a peacock's tail, and enabled them to save a themselves, he continued the procession."—Mahawanso, ch. xxxvii p. 249; Rajaratnacari, p. 49, 52; Rajavali, p. 228.