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A work of fiction around a series of factual happenings
Cousins by Chitra Fernando. Published by Sarasavi Publishers. Price Rs. 250. Reviewed by Anthea Senaratna.
Cousins was Chitra Fernando's only novel, completed before her untimely demise in 1998. Born and educated in Sri Lanka, she left for postgraduate studies in Australia and later took up an academic appointment at Macquarie University. In the Introduction, Dr. Yasmine Gooneratne gives a detailed background on how this book came to be published and makes some touching references to the author who was her colleague and friend.

Cousins is a book about change. The protagonist is one of the 'cousins', Amitha, from whose viewpoint the tale unfolds. The story spans four and a half decades of her life.

Amitha's childhood involves a closed circle, her immediate family and those who worked in the house. Her life is a cocoon of happiness and security until her father dies, which is her first experience of harsh reality. Next we move to Amitha's University days at Peradeniya, where her social circle now includes fellow students and teachers. It is here that Amitha becomes aware of the social differences between the 'Colombo' students and the 'outstation' students. She notices that the 'Colombo' students live by a different set of rules as against the 'outstation' students - the dress codes, choice of food and drink, toilet habits and even games they play (tennis for instance) are worlds apart. Amitha and her crowd were people 'whose parents never worried over bills, persons who knew where they stood in the scheme of things.'

The third phase shows her as a young adult, out in the 'real' world, a working woman. Amitha with her 'terrible temptation to do good' shows great sympathy towards the downtrodden and oppressed. She is constantly helping others to better themselves. She discovers that people have changed. Her cousins, who were so close to her in her childhood, now seem to function on a different wavelength. Veerani for instance, is totally preoccupied with her "Kenwood cake mixer, blender and coloured Pyrex kitchenware' and cannot stop talking about her surgeon husband's work, her social obligations and the progress of her children. Veerani's greatest delight in life is to go for 'a sari sale at Chandirams' and often ropes in Amitha to join her. Like all groups of friends, Amitha's group also drifts apart - some get married, some move abroad but Amitha stays on and makes close observations on the social changes that are taking place in the country.

In Cousins the reader travels along with Amitha on her journey through life. We feel with her the personal heartbreak of unrequited love, and the constant badgering (common in our society) that marriage makes the complete woman - as in her cousin Lika's words "A home, a husband, children - that's the only real life for a woman. Anything else is only half a life."

Running parallel to Amitha's personal experiences, there is the broader storyline of brewing social and political unrest. The struggle between the underprivileged classes and the elite, the frustration of the university educated unemployed, culminates in a bloody revolution which takes place in the country in the early 70s and surfaces again a decade later. Amitha as a History graduate, looks into the 'abyss of grinding poverty, social injustice, despair and revolt' and although she abhors the violence, she does have sympathetic leanings towards the cause itself. She strives to understand the vicious cycle of poverty where children are not sent to school but to work and end up being as poor as their parents.

Cousins is a book every one should read not only for its narrative value but also for the insight drawn by the author into the uprisings during that period. For those who lived through those turbulent times it would be a reminder of the terror, the killings, and the total disruption of day to day life and for those who are too young to remember, they could learn.

Chitra Fernando has cleverly woven a work of fiction around a series of factual happenings from post-independence times through the uprising in the ‘70s and extends the plot to the early 1990s. Her fluid style is easy to read and understand, but by no means are the contents of this book slight. Cousins weighs with potent meaning showing changes that can take place in human beings when their own circumstances alter either for better or for worse. Change is something we all have to deal with constantly in our own lives.

Writings from the past
The Institutions of Ancient Ceylon from Inscriptions (from 831-1016 AD) Volume II, Part I - Political Institutions by Lakshman Susantha Perera. Published by the International Centre for Ethnic Studies, Kandy. Reviewed by Professor K. N. O. Dharmadasa.
Lakshman S. Perera's pioneering study of the institutions of ancient Sri Lanka as depicted in the inscriptions is being published in parts by the International Centre for Ethnic Studies, Kandy. The first volume in the series The Institutions of Ancient Ceylon from Inscriptions dealt with the period 3 BC to 830 AC. Now we have the sequel to that volume dealing with the period 831 AC to 1016 AC. This volume, the 2nd in the series, is titled Political Institutions, and deals with kingship, the king's responsibilities and duties, the grants made by the king, the official hierarchy of the central government and the system of administration, and the law and the system of judicial administration. The third volume will cover the same period, but focus on religious and economic institutions.

Lakshman S. Perera is one of the most distinguished scholars produced by the University of Ceylon during its halcyon days. Jennings was at the helm of affairs and the University rapidly emerged as one of the leading seats of learning this side of the Suez. The credit for that institutional stature should go to academics such as L.S. Perera who, working under severe handicaps, and almost on his own, with no models to emulate, dared to cover un-cleared terrain and managed to produce monumental works such as the three-volume and 1,500 page PhD dissertation The Institutions of Ancient Ceylon from Inscriptions. This work was awarded the first PhD by the University of Ceylon. The manuscript since that day was in the permanent reference section in the Ceylon Room of the Peradeniya Library and remained a fountain of knowledge to generations of students for over half a century. I am sure all those who have benefited time and again from this magnum opus will be happy to see it being made available to the general readership thanks to the International Centre for Ethnic Studies (Kandy) and its Executive Director Professor K.M. de Silva.

Sources
As the author has stated several years after the completion of this study "sources are the raw material of history, without which the record of the past would be irrevocably lost. They are the windows through which we of the present look into the past. The history produced by each generation of historians is the product of their attempts to look into the past through these sources." (‘Sources’ in The University of Ceylon: History of Ceylon, Vol. I, Part I, 1959). Of the three main physical sources available to historians, namely, literary, epigraphical and archaeological; epigraphical sources assume a singular significance because they remain as living witnesses of past events, hardly undergoing change (except damage) in the course of time. The author notes that the sources "not only form the material but also determine the scope and extent of that history, set the framework of its writing and even influence the attitudes which historians adopt."

If we examine the author’s own study with those remarks in mind the first thing that strikes us is the fact that the author himself has decided to limit the scope of the study to the administrative, judicial and religious institutions of the emergent Sri Lankan (Sinhala) state, from its formative years to its magnificent fruition at the end of the Anuradhapura period. Also, the author is conscious of the limitations of the inscriptional sources. Thus he delves deeply into the literary sources to supplement the facts presented in the inscriptions. For example, it is impossible to identify correctly most of the kings depicted in the inscriptions solely by the way they are referred to in the inscriptions. A king is referred to by a viruda, such as Abha Salamevan, Sirisangabo Abha and personal names such as Sena, Mahinda or Udaya are left out.

Here, the literary source, the Mahavamsa, comes to the rescue. To give one example, referring to the Kivulekada pillar inscription, the author says, "The name of the king is Salamevan-raj and the identification is placed beyond all possibility of doubt because he is called Ritigal-aram-karu (the founder of Ritigala-aram or Arittha-pabbatarama). The Mahavamsa has it that Sena I built this particular vihara." Every case, however, is not that simple. The Iripinniyava and the Rambava pillar inscriptions which have the identical text are cases in point. The king referred to in these inscriptions is "Abhaya Salamevan Mapurmuka." Contemporaries, for whose benefit the inscriptions were installed, would have known who this king was. But the historian, working about a thousand years later has to look for other evidence using his own ingenuity and judgement to identify the specific king in our history.

The author’s handling of this problem is illustrative of the soundness of his scholarship. Firstly he obtains a rough idea of the period to which the script in which the inscription could be assigned. He sees the period as "anterior to the Kiribat vehera pillar inscription of the 14th year of Kassapa IV," which roughly is about the latter part of the 9th century. Going to the text of the inscription he singles out the reference to "Sen-Senevirad-pirivena which had been constructed by Kuttha Seneviradanan." Here is a valuable piece of evidence because the Mahavamsa specifically refers to Kuttha as a Senapati under Sena II (853-887). As the two inscriptions record the grant of immunities to lands attached to the pirivena the record should be after the regnal period of Sena II. The author next draws our attention to the fact that both Sena II and Kassapa IV used the Viruda "Sirisamboy," and as the kings of this period were using the two virudas "Sirisamboy" and "Aba Salamevan" alternatively, the king referred to in the inscription should be the one who came in between Sena II and Kassapa IV, and that is Udaya I. (We should digress here to point out that there is some confusion among historians about the identity of Udaya I and Udaya II. The author's stand on the issue is given in fn.4 on page 7).

Deductions
To come back to the question of identifying rulers who are referred to only by the viruda in the inscriptions, another clue used by the author is the reference to the regnal year. In this case too he has to depend on the Mahavamsa because it is only in that source that we have specific information on the number of years a king ruled. Thus, for example, the Kiribat Vehera pillar inscription is dated in the 14th year of a king called Sirisangbo Mapurmuka. "This must be Kassapa IV," states the author, "because no other king of this viruda within the period defined by the script, ruled for more than fourteen years" (p.a.).

The author’s skill as a historian is displayed when he brings out fresh information from the comparisons he makes between the lithic records and the Mahavamsa. Crucial to the identification of a particular king is the genealogical information provided by the Mahavamsa as well as by the inscriptions. The author has found that while "The inscriptions hardly contradict the Mahavamsa," they also, "add to what we know of the genealogical tree." The long discussion (pages 66 to 74) on the genealogy of the kings from Sena I (833-853) to Mahinda V (982-1029), the last king of Anuradhapura, who dies a prisoner in Chola hands, displays the author's careful scrutiny of the sources and the information they provide, in order to establish the relationships among the 14 kings who ruled during this period of 80 years.

Interestingly, he has brought to our attention Kassapa Mahadipada who is mentioned in the Mahavamsa as the younger brother of Sena I. Kassapa Mahadipada who was heir-apparent to Sena I, died before he could ascend the throne and he is not mentioned in any inscription, although all the kings who ascended the throne subsequently were descended from him. His sons Sena II, Mahinda Mahadipada, Udaya I and Kassapa IV never mention who their father was. "The only bit of information we have of their relationship is that Udaya I and Kassapa IV were brothers," says the author, and adds, "this unusual relationship is given in the inscriptions (while) normally it is the father's name that is mentioned, not the brother’s," (p 66). Here we get a glimpse of a feature of the dynastic politics of the time.

Another interesting feature of the dynastic politics brought out by the author is the importance attached to queens and consorts of the kings and even of heirs-apparent. "This is a new feature," adds the author, "and is probably due to an emphasis on the purity of descent even from the maternal side," (p 72). The author has observed earlier that a feature of special significance for this period is the great emphasis placed on the lineage of the king. That is; "the clan and caste of the whole line of kings and with the origins of the dynasty" (p 46). Interestingly, the idea of ksatriya descent, most probably current in society for some time appears for the first time in the inscriptions only in this period. The kings repeat time and again that they belong to the ksatriya caste descended from the Okkaka dynasty. Sometimes the descent through the ksatriya clan was further narrowed to claim that the Sinhala dynasty was descended from the Sakya line (p 48). To be more specific about the relationship to the Buddha, it was even claimed that the descent was connected to the great king Suddhodana (sudovun maharajhu anvayen) (p 48).

The present volume of the author’s study contains a great deal of information on the machinery of administration in all its complexity. Again, the author has been able to wade through the sources, inscriptional and literary, to bring out the system of taxation, the officials involved and the procedures followed etc. For example, under the heading ‘Grants by the King,’ the author has covered a vast territory pertaining not only to physical material (such as a tank, an extent of land or an amount of revenue) but also intangible factors of advantage such as immunities, privileges, concessions and the like. Apart from unconditional "grants" there were other grants which were conditional to the performance of certain duties, like the supply of requisites for the Sangha. Highly significant for a study of institutions are the procedures followed in the institutional framework. The author has drawn our attention to the fact that there was an array of procedures to be followed in making a grant. The officials involved had to sit in Council (ek tan samiya) draft the wordings and make the proclamation while putting up the "Council pillar" (samvata pahana). While going through these procedures, the author has found that these grants were more often effected during the period of the waxing moon (the dating was done according to the lunar calendar). We should be grateful to the author for bringing out such little details which give us a glimpse into the popular mind of those bygone days.

Records
The inscriptions provide an accurate and truthful picture of the institutions of a society. At the same time a perceptive observer can notice institutional decay as well when he goes through the records extending to a long period. The author was perhaps one of the earliest historians to notice how the lithic records of the late Anuradhapura period are sometimes indicative of "a gradual erosion of the king's influence and a gradual decline in the stability of the administration." To cite a few examples given by him: There are three inscriptions belonging to the reign of Sena II (853-87), namely Viyaulpota, Negama and Kaludiyapokuna, which have been studied by the author in this volume. King Sena not only had a long reign of 34 years but also made it highly eventful.

He invaded the Pandya kingdom and sacked its capital Madurai, and this fact is recorded in the Negama pillar inscription as "Madura dunu" (having vanquished Madurai). Unfortunately D.M. de Z. Wickremasinghe who edited and translated this inscription for volume two of Epigraphia Zeylanica (1912-1927) translated the phrase as "born of the mayura (pea-hen)" and the author followed that translation, missing the full significance of the event, a glorious achievement which the contemporary record wished to mention. Two other illustrious rulers of the period were Kassapa V (914-23), who was the son of Sena II and Mahinda IV (956-72). Kassapa was, apart from his achievements as a ruler, a great Buddhist scholar and the author of Dhampia Atuva Getapadaya, a masterly exegetical work which survives to this day. Again the munificence of Mahinda IV as a patron of Buddhism is amply illustrated in the Mahavamsa. Four inscriptions of Kassapa's reign (Medirigiriya pillar, Anuradhapura slab, Bilibeva pillar and Mayilagastota pillar) have been studied by the author and similarly five inscriptions of Mahinda IV have been studied (Rajamaligava pillar, Jetavanarama slab, Vessagiri slab, Mihintale tablets and Anuradhapura slab).

As the two editors of this volume Professor Sirima Kiribamune and Dr. Piyatissa Senanayake observe, the 185 years covered in this study (i.e. from 831 to 1016 CE) witnessed "the high water-mark" of the Anuradhapura civilisation, and as for the institutions identified and described by the author are concerned, there was the same high stage of development "a somewhat finished product," if we are to quote his own words. What interests us here is that while portraying a magnificent institutional structure, the records also reflect in a subtle way the imminent collapse. Three of the most detailed and informative inscriptions on the institutions of the period fall within the last 70 years of this period, at the end of which the Anuradhapura kingdom fell prey to the advancing armies of the Chola empire.

Standing out
The most illustrious ruler of the last decades of the Anuradhapura kingdom was Mahinda IV. Five inscriptions of his reign have been utilised for the present study. Extremely valuable as sources for the study of institutions are the Mihintale tablets, which no visitor to Mihintale can miss as they stand on the very entrance to this massive monastery complex. We have a complex set of rules and regulations for the smooth functioning of this large institution, the largest in the kingdom apart from the three major monasteries in Anuradhapura.

The Jetavanarama slab inscription lays down the instructions necessary for keeping the monastery buildings in good repair, at the same time laying down rules for sharing certain profits, most probably from investments made in order to provide income for the upkeep of the monastery.

Interestingly, from the earlier period of history we do not have such detailed information from lithic records about the secular and religious institutions operant in the Sri Lankan society. Two of the most interesting secular records of the late Anuradhapura period are, the Badulla pillar inscription which describes the regulations governing a market-town named Hopitigama-padiya, which was situated near the Sorabora tank and the Vevalketiya inscription which gives us glimpses of the legal system and the administration of justice during the time.

The Badulla pillar, as the author says, "gives the most full and reliable data we have on local government." The reference here is to a well-developed market-town where the administrative machinery was special and was not normative for the larger part of the country, which would have consisted of villages. The author has drawn our attention to the fact that this inscription is the most informative contemporary record on the relationship between the royal officials and the semi-official landholders on the one hand and between each of them and the people at large. This whole record was the result of a complaint made to the king on the oppression suffered by the people and the merchants at the hands of the servants of the local officials. This record informs us that there was a practice by kings and their officials of going on circuit to remote parts of the kingdom at which time people were free to bring their grievances to his notice. Furthermore established custom hallowed by time (pere sirit) had strong validity and could not be transgressed (see pages 330-33).

The laws
Chapter 6 of the book deals with the legal system and the administration of justice and again we come to know that sirit or custom plays a major role. "Custom," says the author "seems to have set the pattern within which the lives of the people and society moved."

The Vevalketiya Inscription is a unique record which provides us considerable information on the crime and punishment situation in the late Anuradhapura period. The author draws our attention to the fact that the information provided here gives "an insight into the mind of the age". Interestingly some of the records refer to "the five great crimes," which were most probably the pancanantariya kamma referred to in Buddhist texts. The Sinhala term found in the inscriptions of the period is "pas maha savadda”. Royal officials on circuit were to inquire and judge cases involving those crimes. Murder (mini kota van), assault (kotavan), robbery with assault (kanda pala sorakam), theft or robbery (sorakam) helping in these crimes (at pa vahalat giya) and the effacing of brand marks (ana makuvan) had to be judged by the officials (dadanayaka) when they went on circuit, and the judgement placed on record.

Professor Perera brings to our notice that there were three levels in the administration of justice. At the bottom of the scale was the summary dealing with transgression of custom and law at the village level where petty crimes, thefts and the like were settled or punishments meted out (p 341). At the second level the legal system was put into effect by the local royal officials and semi-officials and landholders. The problems arising with regard to lands controlled by the viharas fell into this category (p 345). And, finally justice at the highest level was administered by the samdaruvan or the royal officials who represented the central administration (p 351). Also, it needs mention that there was the possibility of a final appeal to the king.

The above discussion deals with only a few aspects of the exhaustive study by Professor Lakshman S. Perera on the political institutions of the late Anuradhapura period. The next volume which we understand, is under preparation, will deal with the religious and economic institutions. It is a pleasure to read this pioneering study of the little known aspects of the Sri Lankan civilisation at its early stages. LSP with his methodical sifting of meagre evidence has brought before us a plausible picture of a society sustained by agriculture and nurtured by the tenets of Buddhism. Even over half a century of its completion many of the author's insights remain valid for our understanding of the institutions of the period. All scholars in Sri Lankan studies should be grateful to the ICES, Kandy and its Executive Director Professor K.M. de Silva for retrieving this masterpiece from near oblivion and bringing it out as a public document.

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