SRI LANKA FIELDWORK 2011: PROVISIONAL PHOTO ESSAY
by Wim van Binsbergen
© 2011 Wim van Binsbergen
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In the photo essay below I will highlight some of the main themes and
findings of my recent Sri Lanka fieldwork. However a disclaimer is in place
here: the fieldwork was very short (five weeks), extensive in that in the first
half much of the island was covered, and conducted after some exploration of
the rich available scholarly and travelogue literature, but without specific
training in either Sinhalese or Tamil. By consequence, the result below must be
regarded as extremely provisional, and may have to be considerably revised
later. Also, the data are inevitably fragmentary and full of gaps.
fieldwork in Sri Lanka
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We visited Sri Lanka during the hottest
period of the year, and were treated to frequent freak rains; the first thing
we bought after arrival, was umbrellas |
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Here Patricia van Binsbergen, who shared the
fieldwork having an MA in African Studies, is led through ankle-deep mud to
help plant rice seedlings; whereas sowing is men’s work, planting is women’s |
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with an ecstatic priestess in the outskirts
of Polonnaruwa |
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fieldwork during freak rains may be
challenging |
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in time-honoured anthropological tradition,
the effectiveness of Ayurvedic medicine is best tested on the researcher’s
own body |
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While we found Sri Lankans in general gifted
with an exceptional talent for hospitality and friendly conversation, this
was not always sufficient for our specific reseach purposes, and to identify
and approach the specific objects of our research we were fortunate to enlist
the services of a few guides / interpreters. Here is the excellent Mr
Mahinda, tuktuk (three-wheeled
taxi) driver and guide / interpreter in and around Polonnaruwa |
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Mr Umpali with children, beach vendor and guide
/ interpreter in and around Galle |
Asian-African parallels in material culture and
iconography
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Temple of the Tooth Relic, town of Kandy: the
ceremonial umbrellas that are temple paraphernalia in the Buddhism of South
and South East Asia, seem to have parallels in royal paraphernalia in West
Africa. In general one of the hypotheses generated in this fieldwork is that,
in addition to ecstatic cults of affliction, kingship may have been a major
context in which Buddhist elements of material culture were transmitted to
sub-Saharan Africa during the first and especially second millennium CE. |
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This statue of a Kuba king, which I acquired
in Zambia in 1994, first drew my attention to a possible Buddhist iconography
underlying some of Central African sculpture. I have since attempted, not
totally convincing, to find conical headdresses in continental South East
Asian iconography. However, the following examples from Sri Lanka show that
such conical headdresses are common in the representation of numerous South
Asian gods and demigods within Hinduism and Buddhism, including Vishnu,
Parvati, the Boddhisatva Maitreya, and various temple guards. |
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This temple guard from Kandy, Sri Lanka,
shows not only the conical headdress but also the flywhisk, which is also a
widespread regalium of African kings. |
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wood-carving in South Asia is often
reminiscent of ritual wood-carving in Southern Africa, e.g. as used on
divination tablets; however, this need not be attributed to historical links
but may also, at least in part, spring from the technological possibilities
and constraints of the material and the tools used |
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The same would appear to apply to ivory
carving |
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wooden temple structure in Sri Lanka (here
the Temple of the Tooth Relic, Kandy) is reminiscent, not only of
Buddhism-related sacred architecture throughout South and East Asia, but also
of royal architecture in the Western Grassfields, Cameroon |
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tortoise-shell combs, with remote parallels
in Africa which however need not imply recent historical connections |
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bracelets and ankle rattles, used in the
context of Lankan ceremonial and ritual dancing, and with functional (rather
than material) equivalents in Africa |
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A temple drum in a famous temple near Galle.
Again one is tempted to see such religious paraphernalia turned into regalia
in the course of Asian-African transfer in the most recent millennia. In
Sinhalese such a drum is called mahabela,
‘big drum’; the Nkoya word for a two-sided drum, notably the hourglass drum
of the royal orchestra, is mukupele,
without convincing Nkoya < Bantu etymology. |
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Instruments of the royal orchestra of King
Kahare, Zambia (1977); the double hour-glass drum to the left is the mukupele |
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There is only a superficial resemblance
between common types of reliquaries in South Asia under Buddhism, and royal
bells in South Central Africa; yet the connection deserves further
exploration, in view of my more general hypothesis that South Asian ritual
objects may have been transmitted to Africa and transformatively localised to
be come regalia. With drums, bells play a major role in Buddhist ritual in
drawing divine attention to pious offerings being made |
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representations of Africa and Africans are rare and
tend to demonisation
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The study of African-Asian connections would
be much easier if, on either side of the Indian Ocean, historical actors
would display conscious awareness of such connections. This turns out to be
very rarely the case. The South and East Asian, ‘Sunda’ elements I believe to
detect in South Central African kingship and religion, are hardly ever backed
by local consciousness – except where cults of affliction, and Conus shell regalia, in the interior
are consciously traced to the Indian Ocean cost, but not beyond. In Asia a
similar situation was found. Just like in Chinese, Africa is ‘The
Non-Continent’, so also in Sri Lanka Africa was conceptually remote, and
tended to be demonised – like in this series of statues from a temple near
Galle, where the Buddha image is surrounded by a square of orange-attired
monks, at whose feet kneel statues representing all local and overseas
peoples featuring in the Lankan maritime intercontinental complex – with at
the end what seems demonised Africans. Also in Museums, the extension of this
system to Africa is implied (e.g. in relation to African products of
domestications such as kaffircorn, bullrush millet and a type of cattle, and
trade beads) but never highlighted |
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A picture gallery halfway the Sigiriya rock
displays the famous ‘Damsels’, dating from the early 2nd mill. CE,
and gain representing various local and overseas peoples; this particular
image is traditionally designated as ‘the African lady’, although her
features and pigmentation suggests otherwise. |
trade beads as major indicators of transcontinental
continuity from West Africa via South Asia to China and v.v.
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Beads are some of the items recognised to
link Africa and Asia. Apart from the semi-precious stones shown here, the
Anuradhapura Museum, in its Treasury department supposed to display royal
treasure and regalia, possesses an ostrich shell necklace of a type
indistinguishable from current San ones in Southern Africa; such necklaces
were… …also found in Ancient Egypt. Probably ostrich shells were also found
in the deserts of Central Asia, but their specific processing into small,
pierced, multi-angled beads does suggest and African connection |
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This map on display in the Colombo National
Museum does admit African connections. It claims that dhow nautical technology reached from East Africa to Indonesia,
but by a familiar myopia strikingly restrict the area of outrigger technology
to the NW Indian Ocean. Modern insights are that outriggers were invented in
an Austronesian-speaking South East Asian / Western Pacific context c. 3000
BCE, and were decisive in the recent peopling of the Pacific Ocean. The
outrigger canoe in itself is treated as an indication of Sunda influence,
e.g. by Dick-Read 2005. Given the state of emergency prevailing in Sri Lanka
for decades now, even after the end of the civil war in 2009, harbours were
out of bounds and we were unable to ascertain on the spot whether anything
remains of the pre-modern nautical technology of the dhows, once linking Africa and Asia. |
masks as possibly continuous between Africa and Asia
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Although
a widespread item of material and ritual culture in Africa, masks are by no
means restricted to that continent, and the striking preponderance of masks
in Sri Lankan traditional culture need not be an indication of cross-continental
transmission; yet further exploration is needed on this point |
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regalia
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Kingship has one of my main topics of
research in South Central Africa, hence an obvious theme in the present
tracing of African-Asian connections. Material culture is an obvious venue to
identifying such connections. One of the disappointments of this exploration
in Sri Lanka is the paucity of regalia in local and national museums and in
the private antiques trade. Perhaps this is less surprising when we realise
that the last Lankan king, that of Kandy, was captured by the British in
1815. From yhe sixteenth century CE on nearly all local kingships have been
encapsulated in the mercantile and colonial power formations of the
Portuguese, Dutch and British. Supposedly, historical regalia are to be found
in the museum collections of these nations, rather than on Sri Lanka. This
priceless throne appears to be the most impressive regalium to be found on
the island – but it was commissioned by and given by the Dutch to a local
king in the mid-17th century. |
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Temple of the Tooth Relic, Kandy: elephants
occur in large numbers in Sri Lanka, and – much like in royal contexts in
South Central and West Africa – tusks are signs of the highest religious or
political status. When I first met King Kahare in 1972, he was driven to my
home in Lusaka, sitting in the back of in a white vanette amidst an array of
large, precious ivory tusks to which royal chiefs then could still claim a
right |
The Sigiriya rock and king Kasyapa’s tragic history
as a likely source of inspiration of the Central African myth of King Kapesh
Kamunungampanda
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For forty years, my research into the
ethnohistory of South Central Africa has been haunted by the image of Kapesh
Kamunungampanda, ‘The Kapesh [which present-day Nkoya interpret as: Tower] of
joined forked branches’ – a legendary incumbent (female or male, Bantu
languages do not differentiate gender) of the kingship who built a tower in
order to steal the moon, which was intended as a royal pendant on the breast
of the heir apparent; like in Genesis 12 and in many other versions
throughout Eurasia and the Pacific, the tower collapsed and
ethnico-linguistic diversity then came into the world. In my analyses of
Nkoya myths[1]
I have come closer and closer to an appreciation of the South Asian strands
in this story, e.g. deriving kapesh (without
convincing Bantu etymology) from the proto-Indo-Aryan *ghabasti, ‘carriage beam, forked pole’; and interpreting the
Kale alias of the Kahare kingship of the Nkoya, as an indication of Gypsy /
Roman connections, which have been recognised to ramify to East Africa in the
course of the second millennium. (The (nick-)name Kalu is used in present-day Sinhalese to denote persons with high
skin pigmentation.) A century ago, the classicist / anthropologist Frazer has
interpreted this kind of story as a quest of immortality, of which the moon
(being reborn every month) is a widespread symbol (van Binsbergen 2010, o.c.). The history of the Sigiriya
rock fortress, a volcanic chimney rising a perpendicular 200 meters above the plains of Central Sri Lanka,
added a serendipity to this analysis – after all, the very word serendipity
derives, via Jonathan Swift from Serendip, an ancient name for Ceylon/Sri
Lanka. Having killed his father, prince Kasyapa usurped the throne of
Anuradhapura but took refuge on the Sigiriya rock, where he built a fabulous
palace. His brother exiled himself to Southern India, but after some 12 years
came back with an invasion army. Instead of confidently awaiting the enemy in
his impenetrable Sigiriya fortress, Kasyapa ventured into the plain, his war
elephant made an unexpected move which his army interpreted as a sign of
retreat, the Kasyapa was defeated and killed. Many of the elements of the
Kapesh legend are here: the hubris and transgression, the strong vertical
element reminiscent of a tower, the collapse and dispersion, even the name of
the protagonist (Kapesh <? Kasyapa). If the echoes of Kasyapa’s historical
fate were transmitted across the Indian Ocean, they may well have been
distorted into something like the Kapesh story – especially in an environment
that already had the Flood and Tower complex on the basis of a historical
substrate going back at least to 3000 BCE. Kasyapa’s rival was hiding with the
Tamil Cholas, who have a long history of invading Sri Lanka in a bid to
reconvert it to Hinduism. If many kingships in South Central Africa trace
their origin to a legendary land ‘Kola’, it may be this Tamil context –
especially since other Tamil elements may be detected in the kingship of
Kahare. The vicissitudes of kingship in Sri Lanka over the past millennium,
full of dynastic and ethnic (Tamil-Sinhalese) strife and mercantile /
colonial encroachment, have constituted a likely context from which dynastic
fissions would hive off and try their luck overseas. The Nkoya kings’ royal
orchestra, to be played every morning and evening as sign that the king is
all right, has a counterpart in similar musical routine recorded for
historical royal courts in South Asia under Buddhism. |
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The Nkoya myth of Kapesh Kamunungampanda |
material
culture and cults of affliction:
the paraphernalia of ritual dancers (e.g.
those associated with the central town of Kandy, the last surviving kingdom
surrendered to the British in the early 19th century) are
reminiscent of those of the cults of affliction of South Central and Southern
Africa: red-white-black sacred cloths, and dancing rattles |
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irrigated rice cultivation – invitation to
participant observation, but also possible continuity between South Asia and
Westernmost Africa
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One cannot appreciate a local religion
without attention to the local society’s productive activities; irrigated
rice cultivation creates a landscape reminiscent, at times of Holland, but
especially of the rice cultivation in South Senegal and Guinea Bissau – and
perhaps for reasons of transcontinental transmission, even though the West
African crop varieties are claimed to be local |
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Manjak irrigated rice cultivation,
Calequisse, Guinea Bissau |
Lankan long-range connections other than with Africa
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the shell trumpet is recorded from numerous
contexts between Ovid’s Metamorphoses
and the Pacific, especially as a Buddhist ritual attribute, but seems to have
no African counterpart |
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these reed instruments likewise are without
obvious African counterparts |
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this display of curved daggers at the Colombo
National Museum has Indonesian connotations, but no African ones |
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flat round fans, as displayed here at the
Colombo Museum, have functions overlapping with those of the flywhisks in
Africa. On a larger scale, they are found in NE Africa (Ancient Egypt, Nubia)
and perhaps occasionally in West Africa, where however the umbrellas are more
conspicuous as regalia. |
Early-modern European presence
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stadswacht [Dutch: ‘municipal guard’ ] 1702’
– such stone tokens of Dutch presence abound in Sri Lanka and remind us of
the fact that some of the African-Asian connections (e.g. the transmission of
slaves and cowries) may have involved a European agents as a third factor,
from early modern times on |
board games
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Mankala forms an interesting and
transcontinentally widespread family of board games. Following intricate
rules, tokens (stones, shells, nut kernels) are moved along two or more
parallel rows of cups in a rectangular board, to be captured by one of the
players – often to be kept in a bank constituting of a larger cup. Mankala,
in many varieties, is so ubiquitous in Africa that it was considered, by the
early analyst Culin, to be ‘Africa’s national game’ (Culin, S., 1896,
‘Mankala, the national game of Africa’, in: The Director, ed., US National Museum Annual Report, Washington:
United States National Museum, pp. 595-607). Yet the oldest documentary
evidence on the game is from an Arabic MS from the late first millennium CE, Kitab al-Aghani, whereas the oldest
archaeological evidence derives from the West Asian Neolithic. The game is
discussed as locally Lankan in Parker’s classic description of Sri Lanka
(Ceylon, 1909), where he makes the connection (perhaps spurious) with one
Ancient Egyptian apparent attestation. All this would render mankala an
interesting case for the study of African-Asian continuities. Unfortunately,
in the course of this fieldwork it proved virtually impossible to find
mankala boards, except a handful in the Colombo Museum, where (in line with
Parker) the game is identified as ‘Colombo olinda’. The very name olinda proved misleading, for to many
Sri Lankans this appears simply the name for a type of seeds, or for a shrub
producing them. A testimonial from the one informant who knew the game well,
suggested that the game had died out in the course of the 20th
century, but before that time was known in Sinhalese under a name meaning
‘making the time last longer’ – to be played during the introductory phase of
weddings, which could not proceed before the game had a winner. Such an
intercalary situation outside time (the wedding mythically referring to the
cosmogonic union of Heaven and Earth, before time) reminds us of the use of
the game according to Parker, in New Year celebrations (in Sri Lanka there is
normally an intercalary period of a few hours, not as in Ancient Egypt five
days, between the end of the Old and the beginning of the New Year;
female-played drums, board games, and the eating of ceremonial fat cakes fill
this vacuum in time, and help to bring the New Year forth). I am now in two
minds about the origin of Sri Lankan mankala. (a) It could very well be part
of the Pelasgian heritage, and in that case share a common West Asian origin
with African mankala. (b) Meanwhile, given the facts of a transcontinental
maritime trading network since the Bronze Age, and of African slaves in the
Indian Ocean (even though this fact is played down in present-day Lankan
public representations including museums) the specific African forms of the
game could be brought to the island in the course of the last two millennia,
by Africans. A similar suggestion of being an African import was made for
Indonesia, where the mankala game is likewise not totally absent, yet very
rare. |
astrology as a major form of divination
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A well-established astrologer at work in the
outskirts of the town of Galle. Although undoubtedly knowledgeable also on
the more esoteric and sinister aspects of Lankan divination and spiritual
intervention, I was disappointed by the unsophisticated, aggregated,
essentially North Atlantic popular form of astrology that he had to offer –
merely guided by the nature and the conventional symbolic associations of the
ascendant – the rising zodiacal sign at the time of birth. This kind of
adulterated astrology is also massively represented in Sinhalese, Tamil and
English bookshops in the major cities. That the North Atlantic and the South
Asian astrological traditions easily combine and merge is to be explained
from the fact both are mainly indebted to the Graeco-Roman astrology of
Hellenistic times, from which Arabic and Indian astrology largely derive – as
demonstrated in recent historical studies e.g. the work of David Pingree.[2] |
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In the same region (Galle) however also more
traditional and sophisticated horoscopes were circulating, typically written on
narrow strips of paper that may be over a metre long. This is the horoscope
for the erection of the major shrine of the priest’s Kirthi |
herbalism:
The
South Asian tradition of Ayurvedic medicine is highly conspicuous in
present-day Sri Lanka, where it is an integral part of official,
state-controlled health care. Considered to be aided by Hindu gods such as
Ganesha, Kataragama and Parvati, here again in Sinhalese context the
overlordship of the Buddha is indicated. Ever since Buddhism was introduced to
the island over 2000 years ago, Buddhist monasteries have cared for the sick,
sometimes within large and specialised hospitals. Few of the specific medical
instruments used in this context seem to have ready counterparts in Africa.
Yet there appears to be considerable overlap between the Lankan pharmacopoeia
and that found among herbalists (including sangomas) in Southern Africa. |
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red-and-black seeds, on display in an
Ayurvedic establishment, and also part of the pharmacopoeia of Botswana
herbalists |
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a modern Ayurvedic device for the
administration of herbal steam baths. Steam baths and fumigation, but without
the formal apparatus (a blanket is used instead) is also a prominent
therapeutic technique among Southern African sangomas. However, these techniques
have a very wide global distribution and cannot be taken as proof of
African-Asian connections |
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a medieval Ayurvedic apparatus |
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a medieval Buddhist hospital |
Buddhist
temple complexes in the Great Tradition
also cater for the cult of gods that are
dominant in popular, ecstatic Lankan religion. The principle divine beings of
the island, often represented together on temple facades in various
combinations, include Buddha, Shiva, Vishnu, Kataragama (Skanda – God of war,
brother of Ganesha, and probably the origin of the royal name Shikanda among
the Nkoya of Zambia), Ganesha, Parvati / Durgā / Kali (whom I have
elsewhere claimed to be identical to the Southern African god Mwali), Saniya
(?) and Suriya. When the Hindu / Tamil gods are displayed in a Buddhist
/Sinhalese context, they appear under the hegemony of Buddha, e.g. with
Buddha as the ultimate legitimating existence, in the background and behind a
curtain, of any of the other gods. The Buddha may also appear alone, often in
multiples, or accompanied by specifically Buddhist divine beings such as Tara
and Avalokitesvara and Boddhisatvas. This is our second trip to a present-day
predominantly Buddhist country (not counting China and Japan as such), an we
have become somewhat aware not only of the links between Buddhism and the
state, and that world religion’s impact in the fields of education and health
care, but also of the practical ethical codes to which Buddhists of all walks
of life often refer in explanation and justification of their conduct, and
which, in our experience, is of considerable influence on everyday life. If,
as I suggest, there were Buddhist(-derived) kingdoms on African soil, and if
there are particularly Buddhist strands in the South Central African
societies associated with the Lunda tradition (the Musumba Lunda capital on
the Lualaba river in South Congo, the ethnic groups of the Ndembu, Lozi,
Nkoya, Luvale, and in fact many of the kingdoms of N.E. Angola, Zambia, even
Zimbabwe and Malawi), this may well have had an impact on the ethical codes
embedded in the cultures of these societies. By the same token, if such
Buddhist influence reached all the way to West Africa, as I am also
suggesting, one would expect similar ethical traces there. That means that
both in Africa, and in South Asia, the problem arises of how to reconcile the
high ethical demands of Buddhism with the violent practices of statehood.
When, two decades ago, I looked into this problem[3] from a Nkoya perspective
(where, far outside any conscious association with Buddhism, it poses itself
as the great tension between pacifist, reincarnation-centred village
communities, and violent, dynastic royal capitals), I could not solve it by
reference to local African conditions alone, and I was propelled on a path
towards transregional, ultimately transcontinental historical comparison,
including the present research. |
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Ganesha dominating a Tamil Hindu temple in
the tea region; conditions at the (largely state-owned) plantations are
appalling, but the management does provide temples, cheap housing and free
education |
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Kataragama’s tridents overlook this walled
burning (cremation?) place in the famous Buddhist temple complex of the Yatagala Rajamaha Viharaya
temple |
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At the same complex, a minor temple contains
rooms for each of the major deities beside Buddha; this is Kali, under whose
red cloak a black lion devours a white-skinned, black-haired human; not the
coconut offering |
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Kataragama, riding his peacock mount; a cult
of the peacock god is also recorded for Kurdistan and for the Mandaeans of
Southern Iraq, which is well compatible with the Sinhalese’s claimed origin
from Northern India |
shrine
cults and pilgrimage:
shrines as foci of local and regional
pilgrimage structures occur throughout the Old World, although relatively
sparingly in sub-Saharan Africa. The shrine cult imposes upon the landscape a
structure of differentiation and integration, reinforcing and transcending
non-religious societal segmentation at the same time. There are striking
parallels between the Lankan arrangements and that of West Asia and North
Africa. While in the North African shrine cult that I studied in the late
1960s home-made small earthenware as by-products of the production of
cooking-pots (mosba – ‘candlestick’
and tassca ‘saucer’)
played an important role as offerings, very similar earthenware appears in
Lankan shrine contexts – as containers for oil or wicked stearin lamps. Also
textile ribbons are, in both context, the standard items to bring home from
such pilgrimage sites. Again a problem of layered historical interpretation:
the extension of the Pelasgian realm in the Late Bronze Age suggests a common
origin for the North African and South Asian arrangements. Neolithic and
Bronze Age ceramics associated with contemporary, megalithic shrines and
similar to present-day mosba and tassca have been revealed
by modern archaeological research in North Africa, e.g. by Camps; shrine and
pilgrimage structures already existed in Ancient Egypt, and some details of
the North African cult were described by St Augustine c. 400 CE. However, it
is not impossible that in more recent periods (notably during Hellenist,
Imperial and Late Antiquity, when Buddhist influence in the Mediterranean may
have been considerable (Theravada as a branch of Buddhism / Greek Thērapeutēs,
Buddhist/Christian parallels, an Ethiopian translation of Buddhist text, a
considerable Hellenist literature on India, etc.) specific transmission from
South Asia to West Asia and North Africa took place. |
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ecstatic
cults of affliction and popular Buddhism
As the undercurrent of Little Traditions
under the Great Tradition of Buddhism, Sri Lanka has long been known for its
ecstatic cults. Since ecstatic cults in South Central Africa are locally
considered to hail from the Indian Ocean coast and therefore may well have
transcontinental origin, e.g. in South Asia, and since the comparative study
of ecstatic cults has played an important role throughout my career. My
fieldwork focussed on the identification and exploration of such cults in the
island. Our first introduction (later we had informants tell us about similar
priestesses elsewhere in the island, and in the end we had the great good
fortune of associating somewhat closely with her male counterpart in the Galle
region) was in the rural outskirts of Polonnaruwa, where we found a small
temple (with Ganesha and Kataragama as principal deities), administered by a
priestess Roshana (ps.) who takes her clients through a short ritual of
offering, divination (for which she goes into trance and speaks in tongues),
a cathartic rite during which a fruit (lime) is split over the head of the
client, and acknowledgement of the sacrifice by tying strands of coloured
cotton around the wrist. Despite the overall similarities there were too many
specific differences than that we could suggest historical continuity between
the Southern African sangoma ecstatic cult, whose transcontinental
connotations I have reviewed elsewhere. However, this encounter plunged me
back into my earlier research of Zambian cults of affliction, with which
there appeared to be many points of resemblance. Also the gaudy, informal
shrines and the trance divination brought to mind the many shrines of the
West African coast, for which South Asian connections have been argued
before. |
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Like in the sangoma cult of Southern Africa, every
sacrifice at a Buddhist or Hindu temple in South and South East Asia yields
the sacrificer another bracelet, often in the characteristic colour sacred to
the god in question
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popular
Buddhism as a cult of affliction: the ministry of the priest Kirthi near the
town of Galle
After our introduction to Roshana’s cult near
Polonnaruwa, we identified, in the outskirts of the town of Galle, an
elaborate cultic complex administered by the young male priest Kirthi (age
32), vigorous dedication to extensive daily ritual performance before a large
congregation and with the aid of a handful of acolytes, offered the best
opportunity to study the ecstatic undercurrent of Lankan Buddhism during the
short time available, and whose cosmopolitan and modernist orientation in
life created excellent conditions for such a brief studies, even though
Kirthi and his relatives and helpers, with one exception, were just as unable
to speak English as we were to speak Sinhalese
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modernity and Great Tradition: priest Kirthi
on his motor cycle, with his acolyte Ashan in the backseat, leading us to
Kirthi’s favourite Buddhist temple near Galle |
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the shrines in front of Kirthi’s
well-appointed middle-class bungalow |
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Superficial incisions with a sharp sword form
part of Kirthi’s weekly ritual routine before a large congregation, in honour
of the goddess Kali. The blood is smeared onto fruit sacrifices (especially
coconuts) and onto the main shrine. This sacrifice brings about the presence
of the goddess as a condition for effective healing. The cuts heal during the
week, in time for the next occasion. In the background two tridents sacred to
the god Kataragama, who is venerated on Thursdays, while Friday is Kali’s day
– interestingly, because she is more or less equivalent to Graeco-Roman Venus
/ Aphrodite, and Nordic Freya, after which the Friday is named in Europe.
There appears to be a planetary / astrological background to the weekly cycle
of rites which invites further research |
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Kirthi also divines not only by trance but
also by means of the pendulum, and in fact his first act when I came to his
yard was doing just that; the outcome was not communicated to me, but
apparently it was positive, for he showed himself an excellent host and
infatigable informant during half a week |
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the greenhouse East of Kirthi’s house; here
many of the herbs are cultivated that feature in the daily rites; here and in
other temples, these herbs are suspended from the porch of the main shrine,
where the are drying |
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Part of the living room of the house where
Kirthi lives with his mother, married brother, and younger relatives. The
expensive stereo installation is toped by a model airplane; the installation
is used to play videos, aptly recorded by the elder brother, of Kirthi in
ritual action (including blood sacrifice and extensive contact with a bed of
barber wire, and concluded by trance healing) before a huge audience, with
public address system and orchestra |
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Kirthi’s ecstatic and bloody ministry does
not prevent him from identifying with modern middle-class life; here we see
him in his prospective parents’-in-law home, looking through the wedding
album of his prospective sister-in-law with his fiancée (right) and my wife
(middle) and prospective sister-in-law (standing). Kirthi’s own wedding (with
hundreds of invitees, in an expensive hotel) was scheduled for two weeks
later. Proudly he showed me the jeweller’s bill to the amount of US$1000. |
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just before the Friday rites, the member of
the congregation crowd around the house preparing their offerings |
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just before the Friday rites, the drummer
tunes his instrument in Kirthi’s lounge, using pegs, not a hammer (like
elsewhere in South Asia), nor the heat of a fire (like in Africa). A little
later, some of the members of the congregation will enter the room to
introduce their suffering relatives. Many keep their monetary offerings (c.
Rp 150 each, = EUR1) ready, often folded in booklets that look like Post
Office Savings books and that appear to be subscriptions for ritual
prestations within Kirthi’s cult. Elsewhere in the lounge, Kirthi’s
sister-in-law keeps records of names and dates of birth of some of the
members of the congregation, presumably those who are in need of special
healing, or other special request from the day god |
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attentively lining up with offerings ready at
hand |
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sacrifices at Kali’s shrine immediately East
of the main shrine |
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contrary to the sangoma sessions in Botswana,
the congregation takes an active part in the proceedings, praying and
chanting, adopting gestures of adoration and in general displaying a
remarkably pious state of mind |
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tucked away between new sacrificial prayers
at Kali’s shrine, the sword that will draw the priest’s blood |
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Kirthi standing – in a characteristic stance
– behind the drummer who, during the sacrificial phase of the session, will
be drumming incessantly in front of the shrine while the bells in the porch
of the shrine will be sounded continuously. Note the various bells and
dancing rattles in Kirthi’s hands |
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Like among the Southern African sangomas, the
rite for the day gods is at the same time an ancestral rite: purple cloths
have been draped on Kirthi’s father’s grave, who was his predecessor as a
shrine priest. In the final stage of the session, nearly the entire
congregation will adjourn to the graveside, where most of the healing is to
take place, explicitly within eyesight of Kali in her shrine |
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after the conclusion of the offering phase,
Kirthi brandishing two burning torches, one of which he will soon angrily
throw into the congregation – then he is already in trance, representing or
incarnating one of the day gods, perhaps Surya, ‘Sun’ – |
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Kirthi has emerged from the shrine crawling
on his belly, holding his right hand in a shape representing another day god,
‘Cobra’ (Sinhalese: naya), perhaps
to be identified with Sani(ya) / Saturn, although both Shiva and Vishnu are
associated with the cobra in South Asian mythology. Historically and
ethnically, snake worship is a complex subject in Sri Lanka, in that the
earliest, pre-Sinhalese and pre-Buddhist inhabitants are called by the same
name and considered to have been snake worshipers. |
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In ‘Cobra’ state Kirthi dances on his knees –
a stance highly reminiscent of the cultic movements peculiar to the cult of
affliction mwendapanci recorded in
Western Zambia in the course of the 20th century. (‘you are going
on the ground’. The latter name is not Nkoya – where it would have been ‑hanci, ‘on the ground’, but
presumably Lenje or Sala, for it is from these Easterly neighbours in Zambia
that many Nkoya cults of affliction are considered to derive. |
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Kirthi is still in trance, and one of his
acolytes attaches a leash around his waist so as to control the priest’s
occasionally violent movements |
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members of the congregation who are in need
of special healing (like this little boy) are dedicated before Kali’s shrine
with their typical offering, a coconut, held over their heads. Kirthi’s arm
is full of incisions, and with the swords he scraps off the blood in order to
apply it to the coconut and the shrine. The decisive cathartic act which,
through the presence and intercession of the day god is to bring about
healing, is the splitting of the sacrificial fruit. During the present
session, this usually was effected through Kirthi’s smashing the coconuts
onto the soil, where it burst open – at the end of the session, the graveside
was a junk yard of broken coconut shells. However, during the more massive
periodical (annual?) celebrations featuring Kirthi as the principal
officiant, he can be seen to split, when in trance, the sacrificial coconuts
against his forehead, in rapid succession; it is on this occasion that also the
barbed-wire bed is being used as further proof of divine election and
presence; however, during the present session the bed is openly sitting in
the yard as if it were frequently used |
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in trance, running with a burning firebrand
in one hand, a live chicken in the other |
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At various intervals during his trance
condition, Kirthi becomes totally catatonic, and his hands and whole body
need to be unlocked by his acolytes’ massaging |
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towards the healing stage, at the graveside,
Kirthi’s trance movements become more and more exuberant. Here his dancing
steps (putting his feet parallel to each other, and hopping on both at the
same time, while turning his body and feet 90 degrees) is indistinguishable
from that of North African ecstatic dancers at the moment of shatahi, ‘ecstatic paroxysm’ |
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to the left, an elderly man who was taken by
his nephew (right) and wife to Kirthi’s rites for the first time. The man had
recently had a stroke, and displayed signs of neurological decline. Like all
other members of the congregation during the offering stage, and all patients
during the healing stage, he received ample personal attention from Kirthi,
who at this stage was speaking in tongues or (in local terms) ‘gods’
language’, which was interpreted on the spot by Kirthi’s brother, who acted
as senior acolyte. Kirthi’s glossolalic messages concentrated on the origins
and conditions of each particular patient’s affliction, and paid much
attention to malice and sorcery. In this respect, rather by invoking the
general moral code that Buddhists are to recite daily in prayer, Kirthi’s
cult presents itself not just as a healing cult but also as a major force of
morality and social control. This part of the ritual proceedings is highly
reminiscent of the sangoma cult and other cults of affliction in South
Central and Southern Africa |
megalithic culture
There is a some literature, much of it rather
dated, on megalithic structures and cults in Sri Lanka. The island has been
claimed to be part of an intercontinental network of megalithic cultures,
stretching from the Atlantic coasts of Europe, and the Baltic, to West Africa
and the Mediterranean, Madagascar, South Asia, South East Asia, to Korea.
Megaliths featured centrally in diffusionist, transcontinental arguments en vogue in the early decades of the
20th century. Given the discrediting of classic diffusionism, and
the preference, during most of the 20th century, for narrowing,
fragmented regional horizons of analysis in the light of an overall
geopolitics that has no room for transcontinental continuities, modern
mainstream archaeology has grown to be highly suspicious of analysis in terms
of megalithic culture, and rejects the idea that they could form one coherent
nearly global network, going back to real contacts in the Bronze Age. In
recent work[4]
I am questioning this common wisdom, and go back to megalithic cultures as
essentially a Pelasgian trait diffused, not (like most other such traits)
overland over much of the Old World on the wings of horse-riding and chariot
technology, but by maritime means. Such an interpretation fits in a general
analytical framework proposing – on the basis of much more evidence than
megaliths alone – a transcontinental maritime network from the Bronze Age
onward. Meanwhile such a model receives some support from comparative
linguistics and from genetics – notably the Old World distribution of
thalassaemias and other genetic markers, often suggestive of coastal maritime
diffusion. Whatever the merits of these interpretations, megalithic elements
are highly conspicuous throughout Sri Lanka. Often they carry tell-tale
cupmarks, or more elaborate markings including snake-like representations.
Several major Buddhist shrines (e.g. the Sigiriya complex, which for
centuries was monastery prior to Kasyapa’s eviction of the monks for the sake
of the construction of his own dazzling palace; or the Yatagala Rajamaha
Viharaya temple, near Galle) turn out to be built adjacent to, or upon,
megalithic complexes that may well be interpreted as Bronze Age temples. |
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A dolmen in the Colombo National Museum |
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a megalithic burial site excavated in Sri
Lanka |
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Yatagala Rajamaha Viharaya temple |
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Sigiriya |
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horned serpent as an instance of megalithic
rock art, below Sigiriya; as the next picture indicates this theme has
parallels in African rock art |
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Above, from left to right: horned serpent in
rock art discovered by Frobenius in Zimbabwe; b. horned serpent in undatable
Australian rock art; c. a horned serpent also features in Mesopotamian
iconography (from 2nd millennium BCE on) as Tiamat, the aquatic
female personalisation of primordial chaos that, according to the Enuma Elish mythological cycle, was
slain by the sun-god Marduk |
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Little Adam’s Peak, Ella; in the background
right (white building) the headquarters of the Finlay tea estate |
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conspicuous cupmarks on a boulder near a
dwelling-house on Rumassala Mountain dominating the
jutting coastal area between the bay of Unawatuna and, to the West, the bay
of Galle |
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Yatagala Rajamaha Viharaya temple; not only
the manifestly Buddhist representations, but also the rocks themselves are
subject to a cult, with the burning of oil lamps |
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Yatagala Rajamaha Viharaya temple |
the tree cult as an example of Eurasian, perhaps
general Old World, transcontinental connections
Even more than megalithic elements, the tree
cult is a near-universal constant of Old World cultures. There are several
indications that as a mythical theme, this goes back to humankind’s oldest
retrievable mythology, presumably part of ‘Pandora’s Box’, i.e. the cultural
(including mythological) repertoire developed by Anatomically Modern Humans
inside Africa from c. 200,000 Before Present on, and spread to other
continents, and subsequently transformed and innovated, from c. 60,000 BP.
Throughout Buddhist South and South East Asia, the tree cult is the constant
companion of shrine cults, and often the two complexes merge to such an
extent as to make one wonder whether the tree is the historical and
topological prototype of whatever temple or shrine – in such a way that the
tree’s sacrality seems to be communicated to the shrine, and to underpin its
sacrality, not to say that the shrine derives its sacrality from the tree
altogether. In much earlier work, I explored these relationship in connection
with the shrine cult in North African popular Islam, sub-Saharan shrines
especially at the village level, and (in association with Stephanus Djunatan)
the shrine cult of Nagara Padang in Western Java. Throughout Eurasia, its
continuities include the typing of strands of manmade thread or textile to
the tree in sign of a pledge or a request. An authoritative Nostratic /
Eurasiatic etymology of the Common Bantu word nganga, ‘diviner-healer’ (Niger-Congo is considered by some
comparative linguists as a branch of ‘Super-Nostratic’), is given by the
prominent comparative linguist Dolgopolsky in terms of a reconstructed root
meaning ‘knot, to tie’ – which may well refer to the same practice.
Especially the similarities between the North African and the Lankan tree cult
are so striking that sometimes the images they yield are
interchangeable. |
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Temple of the Tooth Relic, Kandy |
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Pilgrims on the steps towards the Maha Bodhi
(‘Big Bo tree) shrine at Anuradhapura – a Sacred Fig (Ficus religiosa) reputed to be a direct sapling from the tree in
the Ganges plain beneath which the Buddha reached illumination 2600 years
ago. Pilgrims present their offerings through the golden fence, and are
rewarded with strands of cotton – some of which are also tied to the fence. |
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tree shrine opposite the entrance of the
Dambulla Cave Temples |
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tree shrine opposite the entrance of the
Dambulla Cave Temples |
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shrine filled with sacred figurines, against
an old tree |
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tree shrine ushered in within the Great
Tradition by the erection of a Buddha image within its precinct; we
encountered several such cases, e.g. the revamping of, and erection of a
Buddha statue, the magnificent tree in front of the Colombo National Museum |
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tree shrine ushered in within the Great
Tradition by the erection of a niched circle of Buddha image within its
precinct |
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