Making history

Only a few countries have a written history, and one goes back over 2,000 years. Sri Lanka, Greece, Italy, India (and the wider region), Egypt, and Libya are among a handful of countries whose history stretches back millennia. However, the history of most countries has been written by travelers and explorers who visited those countries. But Sri Lanka is perhaps unique in having a native document that has told its story. This is called the Mahawamsa (Great Chronicle) which is actually a work in progress as it is still being written and updated even as you are reading this article. However, for most scholarly purposes, the era described by Mahawamsa falls between the 6th century BCE. C. and 1815, when the British seized all of Ceylon. The events that occurred afterwards are well known in any case.

Eight UNESCO World Heritage Sites

Sri Lanka, despite being a small island, has eight UNESCO World Heritage Sites, which compares quite favorably with much larger countries like Italy and Spain. But world heritage is not just about cultural or natural attractions per se. In recognition of this fact, UNESCO has a category called “documentary heritage” which mainly covers literature, the arts, historical accounts, etc. This is also called the “Memory of the World Register” as it means the collective memory of humanity.

UNESCO has now added the ancient original copy of the Ola sheet of the “Mahavamsa” (Great Chronicle) currently kept in the Peradeniya University Library, to its Memory of the World Register among the 64 new items of documentary heritage. added to the list this year.

The Memory of the World Register lists documentary heritage that has been recommended by the International Advisory Committee and endorsed by the Director-General of UNESCO as corresponding to the selection criteria with respect to global importance and outstanding universal value.

Mature historiographical tradition

According to the description cited in the UNESCO Memory of the World Register, Mahawamsa, one of the world’s longest unbroken historical accounts, is the first of its kind in South Asia, initiating a mature historiographical tradition, presenting the history from Sri Lanka in a chronological order from the 6th century BCE.

The authenticity of the facts provided in the document has been confirmed through archaeological investigations conducted in Sri Lanka, India and Nepal. It is an important historical source in South Asia containing crucial information about the life of the Buddha, Emperor Asoka, and the rise of Buddhism as a world religion.

The document played an important role in popularizing Buddhism in Southeast Asia and uniquely contributed to Emperor Asoka’s identity in Indian history. The monuments he built still stand in India and Nepal. He was also instrumental in spreading the message of Buddhism in Sri Lanka, which Buddha once described as the country where Buddhism will survive in its purest form.

Since the Mahawamsa has been written in Pali on Ola sheets, it was initially extremely difficult to decipher its contents. In fact, elsewhere in this newspaper we published an article about an Englishman who spent much of his life translating several volumes of the Mahawamsa into English. It was an arduous exercise, but the results were well worth it, as the world was awed by the richness of Sri Lankan history from those who have lived and breathed it. In fact, the translations breathed new life into the Mahawamsa, which might otherwise have faded into obscurity. It also stimulated a new generation of monks and laymen to study Pali, courses now regularly offered at universities in Sri Lanka and India. India’s new Nalanda University, built near the ruins of the old Nalanda University, is expected to be a focal point for these studies.

As UNESCO says, “the existence of a number of manuscripts of the Mahavamsa in various countries, as well as the transliteration and translation of the text into various Southeast Asian and European languages, testify to its immense historical, cultural, literal, linguistic and academics”. .

The new recognition the Mahawamsa has gained will no doubt spur scholars around the world to peruse it and it is likely that more will come forward to translate it into other languages, including more Asian languages ​​such as Chinese, Japanese and Korean. The number of fluent English speakers is low in many Asian countries and this will help spread the pre-colonial history of Sri Lanka.

History, a fascinating subject

Henry Ford said that “history is nonsense” (although he later opened a museum), but a country’s place in the world is more or less defined by its history. It’s a fascinating subject: we will know more about ourselves if we know more about our collective past. There are calls to remove the subject of history from school and university curricula, which is a dangerous move. A future generation that does not know the past will not know how to face the future. But this does not mean that we should obsess over it either. In fact, some of the most developed countries in the world have only a few hundred years of history.

Thus, a thousand-year history does not always guarantee success in the modern world. Furthermore, no attempt should be made to erase any dark chapter in history: we must accept the past in order to deal with the present and the future.

This recognition should also give a boost to the study of archeology in Sri Lanka, as it is the only science that can support the claims made by historians in their books. So many intricate details of our history, from the magnificent Stupas of Anuradhapura to the complex waterworks of Sigiriya, would have been lost to the sands of time were it not for the tireless work of archaeologists. These are the professionals who bring history to life for others to experience. But history will always be open to various interpretations and debates will rage about certain aspects of history and historical figures such as kings and queens. In this context, the study of history, facilitated by people like Mahawamsa, is part time travel and part self-discovery.