Abstract
As far as contemporary debates about devolution from the centre in Sri Lanka are concerned, the Indian Asokan (Buddhist) State model need not be as disabling of State reform as it appears in contemporary parlance. In symbolic terms, Sri Lanka’s recently ended civil war was about the organisation of space between the centre and the periphery, particularly those parts of the periphery occupied by minority Tamils. The Buddhist majority Sinhalese have defended the postcolonial centralised State by recourse to a highly modern and fetishised Buddhist nationalism that projects a simplistic understanding of sovereignty back onto the precolonial and particularly pre-British past. The idea of a unitary sovereignty however was the result of the administrative reforms initiated by the British colonial State in the mid-nineteenth century. The argument here suggests that classical Buddhist accounts of sovereignty which revolve around the imagery of a cakkavatti (wheel-rolling) universal king, once materialised within a given geographical territory, reveal an account of sovereignty (or kingship), which far from unitary manifests extraordinary devolutionary moments. In its Sri Lankan inscription, the cosmic order of Theravada Buddhism reveals phenomena which evolved over a number of centuries, harnessing the influences of both Mahayana Buddhist and South Indian Hindu cultural forms. The cosmic order of Sinhalese Buddhism, although hierarchical in intent, legitimised a number of highly decentralised administrative structures that characterised the daily routine of the mandala cum galactic polities that emerged in Sri Lanka, including that of the Kandyan Kingdom, the last of these galactic polities. Sovereignty then in its Theravada Buddhist incarnation in the Sri Lankan landscape reveals both centralising and devolutionary moments, moments that are captured in the Kandyan Kingdom’s architectural, administrative and ritual representation.
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Notes
- 1.
- 2.
In the Hindu-Buddhist tradition, cakka signifies the king’s wheel of power. A systematic comparative study of the Hobbesian-Schmittian account of sovereignty and the Theravada Buddhist account of sovereignty has yet to be produced. This I hasten to add is not that account.
- 3.
Natha, derived from the Mahayana cult of Avalokitesvara, is the highest of the gods and in Sinhalese Buddhist tradition is the Maitri, the next Buddha to be (Holt 1996, Chapter 5; Tambiah 1992, 151). He is ‘characterised as continually contemplating the teachings of the Buddha and as being so unattached to the matters of existence, that he is expected by the Sinhalese to be the next Buddha (Maitri)… Vishnu is conceived of as the protector of Buddhism on the island; Kataragama is closely linked with the ancient Sinhalese Buddhist resurgence against Hindu Tamil domination; and Saman is the god of Adam’s Peak…the site of Buddha’s footprint and the Buddha’s first visit to Sri Lanka’ (Kapferer 1991, 159). Both Vishnu and Katagarama are concerned with affairs of the human world and combine both ordering and disordering powers ‘in their being’ (Id, 160). These guardian deities who came to prominence in the late Kandyan (eighteenth century) period under the Tamil Nayakkar kings replaced an earlier group of guardian deities (Holt in Deegalle 2006, 39; Liyanagamage 1986, 61–77; Pathmanathan 1986, 78–112). Obeyeskere (1984: 361–75) has drawn attention to the fact that South Indian (particularly Kerala) migrants to the island brought with them their Hindu deities. These deities were often incorporated into the Buddhist cosmic order, albeit in a hierarchical relation, the Hindu gods always subordinate to the Buddha.
- 4.
The cosmic order of Buddhism is only one of many ontologies that condition the daily Sri Lankan social imaginary.
- 5.
Kapferer (1998, 85–117) offers an account of the ontological grounding of postcolonial Sinhalese Buddhist nationalism.
- 6.
- 7.
As Kemper notes, the virtual claims of Buddhist kingship cum sovereignty ‘outraced reality’ ( 1991, 50).
- 8.
Anuradhapura was the first of Sri Lanka’s Buddhist polities, and by the tenth century CE, it had given way to the polity centred round Polonnaruva.
- 9.
The Arthashastra employs the mandala as a geopolitical concept to discuss the ‘spatial configuration of friendly and enemy states from the point of view of a particular kingdom’ (Tambiah 1976, 102, 70). Higham (1989, 239–355) provides a sustained engagement with the shifting dynamics between centralisation and devolution in the classic mandala polities of Southeast Asia which reached its zenith in the Angkorian mandala. A mandala is ‘composed of two elements – a core (manda) and a container or enclosing element (-la)’ (Tambiah 1976, 102).
- 10.
- 11.
The Arthashastra and some Jatakas (stories of the Buddha’s earlier incarnations) suggest that the ideal shape of an Indian city ‘was a square or rectangle which was divided by two main streets into quarters, symbolizing the four quarters of the universe’ (Duncan 1990, 50). The palace of the king was ‘either located in the center or in the eastern quarter of the city and faced either east or north’ (Id, 50).
- 12.
The Cakkavatti Sihanada Sutta provides canonical authority for this kind of relationship between superiors and subordinates. It tells us that ‘enemy kings become client kings’ (Collins 1996: 429). This is likely to be a reference to the situation concerning taxation (ibid: 429–30). The cakkavatti does not interfere in the tax raising power of his new client kings, instead proceeding to extol the virtues of rule by dhamma.
- 13.
Sections of the Pali Vinaya ‘suggest[s] that the political systems of at least eastern India [which incorporated its capital Pataliputra] during the time of early Buddhism were constituted on galactic lines’ (Tambiah 1976, 70–71, my interpolation).
- 14.
This pattern of State organisation extended all the way to the Indonesian archipelago. Moertono characterises the Javanese polity of Mataram between the sixteenth and nineteenth centuries as one in which ‘territorial jurisdiction could not be strictly defined by permanent boundaries, but was characterised by a fluidity or flexibility of boundary development dependent on the diminishing or increasing power of the center’ (1968, 112).
- 15.
H.W. Tambiah (1963, 291–311) provides a detailed account of not just the authority of kingship during the Anuradhapura period but also the manner in which the power of kingship in this period was far from absolute and rather mediated by a number of administrative and judicial officials.
- 16.
I do not necessarily regard these galactic polities as corresponding to a European medieval feudal State structure at either the ideational or the material level (Leach 1958, 17–20; Gunawardana 1971, 22–25; 1978, 267; Roberts 1994, 79–81). In sharp contrast to European medieval political theories which argued for a differentiation between the spiritual and temporal domains, even if that separation was divinely ordained, the Buddhist civilisation of the rajarata was characterised by a literati who emphasised ‘the complementarity of the Sangha and the monarchy’ (Roberts 1994, 81; Gunawardena 1979, 207–10). Vassalage and chivalry entailed a ‘personal bond between two men and lasted only during their lifetime’ (Roberts 1994, 82; Bloch 1962, 145–62). In contrast rituals integral to the Asokan Persona such as dakum (where social inferiors paid homage to social superiors) entailed wholesale subordination to the cakkavatti. That said in terms of content, there may be similarities in the devolutionary dynamics of the European medieval State that emerged in the tenth century (Maddicott and Palisser 2000) and the Buddhist galactic polity, although more scholarship needs to be done in order to substantiate potential similarities.
- 17.
The kingdom of Jaffna was to remain outside the jurisdiction of Parakramabahu II (Kemper 1991, 66).
- 18.
Mahavamsa (5. 78). The Asokavadana (Exemplary Gifts of Asoka) tells us that Asoka instead ‘built 84,000 relic mounds known as dharmarajikas (monuments of the King of Righteousness)’ (Kemper 1991, 169, fn 20; Strong 1983). The Mahavamsa (5. 78) gives voice to this legend by suggesting that he built 84,000 viharas in honour of the 84,000 divisions in the dhamma.
- 19.
- 20.
The ideals of the cakravarti and rajadhiraja (supreme sovereign) are associated with Hindu ideals of kingship. The mode of the cakravarti stands in contrast with the Buddhist ideal of the cakkavatti who ruled according to the dhamma, the cakravarti rulers of the South Indian polities ruling instead with the force of danda (the stick) in the manner of a divine supreme overlord (Holt in Deegalle 2006, 46; Pathmanathan 1982, 120–45).
- 21.
- 22.
The Mahavamsa tells us that Sakra commanded the divine architect Visvakarma to make ‘bricks so that King Dutthagamani could build’ (Duncan 1990, 53) the Mahathupa, the great relic chamber in Anuradhapura.
- 23.
- 24.
Metonymy functions in a similar way such that one feature of the physical environment of these polities could stand in for the whole field of reference of the world of the gods (Duncan 1990, 22).
- 25.
Duncan (Id, 58–64) provides an account of its architecture and political fortunes prior to its emergence as the centre of royal power in the sixteenth century.
- 26.
On the death of the Buddha, Sakra received the tooth relic of the Buddha and proceeded to worship it (Id, 48).
- 27.
Dalada means ‘tooth’ and maligava means ‘palace’.
- 28.
Duncan (1990, 109–18) elaborates on the way in which synedoches signifying Mount Mandara were represented in the architecture of the palace/temple complex in the eastern rectangle. We will see that the palace/temple complex was marked by ‘hierarchical practices, by ritual acts, and the statutory, executive and judicial powers vested in its offices’ (Roberts 2004, 63).
- 29.
The allusion to the city as a microcosm of the cosmic centre was common in Hindu-Buddhist Southeast Asia (Geertz 1980).
- 30.
Dakum, also known as penum (penuma), is a term ‘that can be rendered as “appearance”’, (Roberts 2004, 60) whereby on a number of times ‘each year the tenants are expected to visit the lord, bringing him certain specified gifts and pay him formal obeisance by presenting forty leaves of betel (bulat) and falling on the ground in worship’ (Seneviratne 1978b, 152).
- 31.
Other sources, the Brahmi inscriptions dotted around the island as well as information contained in texts such as the Dhatuvamsa, the Sihalavatthuppakarana and the Sahassavatthuppakarana, indicate that the early settlements were ‘disparate and that petty rulers held sway over various parts of the island’ (Tambiah 1992, 132, 133–37).
- 32.
C.R. de Silva has referred to ‘ritual sovereignty’ (1995, 11).
- 33.
The adigars were drawn from the radala caste, the upper reaches of the goyigama (cultivators) caste and each was responsible for the administration of the provinces in their half.
- 34.
(Dewaraja et al. 1995, Vol. II: 322–23). In practice the king’s power was limited by the economically weak nature of the polity, by the nobility who controlled much of the corvee labour in the polity, as well as by a practical desire not to alienate the peasantry whose labour was vital for Sakran-inspired building projects. The pattern of dual replication was repeated for a number of prominent office holders in the royal court. It was also a feature of the office holders of the Dalada Maligava which was ‘divided into the “outer” (general administration) and “inner” (the ritual work) groups’ (Tambiah 1992: 174; Dewaraja et al. 1995, Vol. II: 328–332).
- 35.
The duty of these offices was generally limited to revenue collection and account keeping.
- 36.
Disa is the ‘Pali term for a direction point of the compass. The term for governor is disava – [disa + va (thing)]’ (Duncan 1990, 93).
- 37.
Duncan (1990, 95–96) notes an important distinction in relation to the frequency with which the synecdoches of the world of the gods and the world of the cakkavatti were reproduced in the western and eastern rectangles, the western rectangle containing only a fraction of the number that the eastern rectangle possessed. This was reflective of the fact that the ‘western rectangle was the profane portion of the city which, in relation to the eastern rectangle of the city, stood as does the earth to the heavens’ (Id, 94).
- 38.
A detailed account of the responsibilities of the various principal headmen is provided in Dewaraja et al. 1995, Vol. II, 334.
- 39.
The caste structure in Kandyan society was organised around endogamous occupational groups such that ‘each caste was economically privileged in the sense that it alone had the right o supply a particular kind of labour’ (Id, 336).
- 40.
While Sinhalese rulers applied their customary law to Muslims, they recognised Muslim personal law, a policy that was partially followed by the Portuguese.
- 41.
Tambiah relying on Sir John D’Oyly’s early nineteenth century, A Sketch of the Kandyan Kingdom notes: ‘Demala (Tamil) Pattu, also called Halpattuwe Rata, was that part of the Puttalam region that came under the jurisdiction of the Kandyan Kingdom in the early nineteenth century. D’Oyly’s listing includes villages granted to those of the “Moor Religion” and to “Malabar people,” some of whom had recently landed’ (1992, 175, fn. 50).
- 42.
For example, there were the potters department (badahalabadda), washerman’s department (radabadda), weaver’s department (handabadda) and the elephant department (kuruve badda) (Dewaraja et al. 1995, Vol. II, 336).
- 43.
In the language of political economy, this was a patron-client enterprise, and in the period following the introduction of open market reforms in 1977, it has not been uncommon to find a small group of entrepreneurs monopolising government contracts.
- 44.
The caste structure in Kandyan society was organised around endogamous occupational groups such that ‘each caste was economically privileged in the sense that it alone had the right to supply a particular kind of labour’ (Dewaraja et al. 1995, Vol. II, 336).
- 45.
The pomp and circumstance of the Perahera echo Foucault’s (1982) account of the politics of the spectacle in Discipline and Punish in which sovereign power in the West in the premodern period is inscribed on the body of the subject through the aesthetics of public execution, for example. This contrasts with modern power (governmentality), which is much more diffuse in its application (Foucault 1982).
- 46.
The Mahavamsa records that when Dutthagamani marches into battle against Elara, he does so having had a relic of the Buddha ‘put into his spear’ (cited by Seneviratne 1978b, 96).
- 47.
By the time the Kandyan kingdom had ceded control of all the island’s coastline to the Dutch in 1766, the transition from what had been a ‘surplus-generating agricultural system’ (Duncan 1990, 34) in the earlier dry zone polities in Anuradhapura and Polannuruva to a Kandyan polity which generated production at subsistence level was complete. Economic decline would pursue apace in the highlands until the British colonial State developed a plantation economy (Id, 30–34).
- 48.
Seneviratne (1978b, 108–10) provides a detailed account of the various sections of the Kandyan polity and social order that participated in the Perahera.
- 49.
North was the direction in which a cakkavatti must initially march at the commencement of his reign (Duncan 1990, 122).
- 50.
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de Silva Wijeyeratne, R. (2014). The Mandala State in Pre-British Sri Lanka: The Cosmographical Terrain of Contested Sovereignty in the Theravada Buddhism Tradition. In: Wagner, A., Sherwin, R. (eds) Law, Culture and Visual Studies. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-90-481-9322-6_25
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