The Cave of the Golden Rock, Dambula, Ceylon.

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Martin Austin
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1 The Cave of the Golden Rock, Dambula, Ceylon. by T. W. Rhys Davids, C.C.S., Anurādhapura SIR EMERSON TENNENT has eloquently and yet very justly described this wonderful hill of stone underneath which the temple has been hollowed out, which from its antiquity, its magnitude, and the richness of its decorations, is by far the most renowned in Ceylon. 1 He has given two woodcuts which afford a good idea of its front and its entrance, but fail altogether to do justice to the effect created by its enormous size: and he has all the more strongly, because inadvertently, testified to the curious success of the paintings within, when he states that the ceiling of this gloomy vault is concealed with painted cloths, for what seemed, even to so educated an observer, to be cloths is, in reality, the rock painted in fresco, and this is the more remarkable as those paintings were undoubtedly executed hundreds of years ago. 2 Sir Emerson Tennent mentions one inscription which was translated for Turnour by Mr. Armour, 3 but I have discovered eleven others, and believe that still more would reward a careful search, and I venture to submit the oldest and for some reasons the most interesting. From this inscription it may be considered proved that the temple was originally founded, not by Walagam Bâhu about 86 B.C., as stated by Tennent, 4 but in the time of Dewânampiya Tissa (B.C. 246) 5 the ally of Asoka and the friend and patron of Mahindu who introduced Buddhism into Ceylon. It is possible that Walagam Bâhu repaired the temple, and it is certain that he built the Soma dâgoba, in honour of his queen, 6 in the plain to the south of the sacred hill; but the authority adduced by Tennent for his statement that that king first endowed it is of little value, being merely Upham s translation of the Râja 1 Sir E. Tennent, Ceylon, Vol. II. pp , 2nd edition. A detailed account of the Dambulla temple is given in Forbes s Eleven Years in Ceylon, vol. I. ch. xvi. pp ; and by Mr. Knighton, Jour. As. Soc. Ben. vol. XVI. (1847) pt. i. pp Ed. 2 The, engraving in Forbes s Eleven Years in Ceylon, Frontispiece, Vol. II. is a striking but inaccurate view of one of the interiors. 3 Appendix: to Turnour s Epitome, p. 95 and Forbes Ceylon, Vol. II. pp. 327, Loc cit. p I have ventured to substitute this date for B.C. 306 according to the Sinhalese chronology, by whieh Aśoka is placed 60 years before the date usually assigned to him ED 6 This building is mentioned in Mahâwanso 206-8, but it has not been previously known where the dagoba was: the Revd. C. Alwis writes to me that it is supposed to contain the left canine tooth of Buddha, and to be somewhere near Trinkomali.

2 Ratnâkari, a grossly inaccurate translation of a very useful but late and unreliable work. The ignorance of the translators having been so cruelly exposed by Turnour, 7 I quote the words of the original on the point in question. Upham 8 says:- He (Waṭṭagâmini, in Sinhalese Walagam Bâhu) afterwards caused to be built the temple Dambooloo, and a monument 140 cubits high, and five temples: he also caused many hundreds of stone houses to be built, and did many other things of public utility. The original words are næwata Dambulu wihâraya da karawâ, næwata Soma nam ek siya hatalis riyan maha weherak karawâ, næwata pas maha wihârayak da karawâ, boho siya ganan gal-lenawal kaṭâra koṭawâ, anik udu boho sâsanopakarî wûseka: which literally translated is And furthermore having made the Dambuḷu wihâra, and also having made the great Dâhgoba 140 cubits high called Soma, and also having made five large wihâras, and having cut ledges in many hundred stone caves, he was of great assistance in other ways also to the Doctrine. It is difficult to find the source from which Abhayarâja, the author of Rāja Ratnākara, derived the first statement, for nothing is said either in the Mahāwanso or in the Dipawansa about Dambula Wihâra being made by Waṭṭagamini although in the former 10 the names of five, and in the latter 11 the names of seven comparatively unimportant ones, made by his eight strong men, are given: but nothing is said about it in Rājawaliya, although a comparatively large space is devoted to that king s reign. The inscription referred to is cut in the face of the rock, in one line, under the ledge or caves called kaṭâra. in Ceylon formed to cause the rain to drop off instead of trickling down into the cave. Owing to this position the inscription is in perfect preservation, and is only difficult to read from its great height above the ground, the kaṭâra being half way up a precipice 200 feet high. My copy is therefore only an eye copy taken with an opera glass: but the characters being so simple it may, I think, be relied upon. The letters are a slight variation of the old Pâli alphabet deciphered by Prinsep. The first sign is a symbol consisting of the swastika and another symbol joined then follows: 7 Mahāwanso pp. v. seqq. 8 Sacred and Historical Books, Vol. II. p From the MS. in my possession, verse Page 206, Verses l142 and 1143 of the MS. in my possession.

3 Dawanâ piya maha rājasa Gamini Tisaśa maha lene agata anâgata chatu disa śagasa dine. Taking each word separately the first da may possibly be di: but we should expect neither, déwânam being the Pāli form, and deweni the Sinhalese; the third letter nâ may possibly be ± no, but what appears to be the vowel stroke before the upright is probably a natural mark in the rock. Even in regular Pāli the m at the end of genitive plurals being often dropt, its absence here needs no remark; and possibly the long vowel nâ is in compensation for the loss of the nasal. Tho y of piya is, at least in Ceylon, an older form than which also occurs here, and is the only form given in Thomas s edition of Prinsep. The word râja is remarkable. In the first place râja is the more usual form in the dialect of Ceylon cave inscriptions in which the vowel is seldom, I believe never, written separately as it is here, and the j is the sign given by Prinsep for the mâprāna jh : but there is not the slightest doubt about the reading. In Gamini Tisa the first letter may possibly; be gu instead of ga. The Sinhalese form of the Pāli name Gâmiṇi is Gemunu (e to be pronounced like English a in hat, gap, &c). The name Tissa, so common in Pāli, is now unknown, except among a low caste of tom-tom beaters (berawo), and among them only in the Anurâdhapura district, and only in the form Tisarâ, which is probably derived immediately from the Sanskrit Tiśya. Who this Gâmiṇi Tissa was is not mentioned in the books. He must be some relation to Dewânampiya Tissa, or the use of the genitive would be inexplicable, but it is expressly stated in Mahâwanso 12 that the king left no son: as, however, he reigned for 40 years, it is possible that he had a son who may have been sub-king of the Dambula district. Duṭṭha Gâmiṇi, Siṅhalese Duṭu Gemuṇu, calls himself in inscriptions Gâmiṇi Abhaya; and uses a later form of the alphabet. The sa of the genitive in this word is most remarkable, and was one of the greatest obstacles to a decipherment of the inscription: it is not given by Prinsep, and has not I think been found in India, but I have since found it in many places in Ceylon, and there can be no doubt about the meaning of the sign. There is a slight mark at the bottom of the letter which may be a vowel mark for u, if so, Sumaha Lene must be taken as the name of the cave. For the expression agata anâgata, one would expect āgatānāgata, but I have subsequently found it in many places, and it is usually agata anâgata the Sinhalese understand the corresponding expression āwāwū nāwāwū in the sense of all those who have come to this place, and those who have not come, but it may also mean all in the sense of present and future. 12 Turnour, Mahâwanso, p. 124.

4 The expression is not noticed either in Böhtlingk-Roth or in Mr. Childers Pâli Dictionary. Āgatāgatā in Fausböll s Dasaratha Jātaka, p. 31, means passersby. 13 Chatudisa is the form always found on the caves for chatuddisa translated by Turnour 14 who had come from the four quarters of the globe, but it seems that the idea who had come is not contained in the word, for in the Wæligama Inscription the corresponding Sinhalese expression is satara digin waḍana (sanghaya wahanse) which gives a present sense. In sayasa the first sa is the same as the genitive of Tisa noticed above, and the genitive case sa is expressed by the letter given by Prinsep. These two characters are therefore interchangeable, and do not represent and. The more usual sign of the genitive is ha, and in the double inscription at Mânâ Kanda at the Mahânâma Pirievena (built by Agra Bodhi I. about A. D. 600) sa occurs on one and ha on the other side of the cave. There is no sign whatever for the nasal, and I have not found either the nasal or the aspirate expressed anywhere, either in the cave dialect, or in the later flat rock inscriptions of Ceylon. At first I thought that sagho in the Mahâwanso 15 might be a transitional form, but it must be merely a misprint, for two MSS. in my possession, one belonging to Yâtrâmulla Unnânse, 16 and the one in the newly formed Government Library at Colombo all read saṅgho. It is not easy to state with certainty what part of the Pāli verb is represented by dine, but it is probable the p.p.p. In a double inscription at Diwulwewa in Anurâdhapura district, dine in one case is distinctly dini on the other. In a cave inscription at Embulambe near Dmnbula dina is found, and at Koratoḷa in the Colombo, Tonigula in the Puttalam, and Mihintale in the Anurâhapura districts, niyate which looks like the third person singular present ātmanepadam, is the corresponding word. If dine be taken as a nominative to agree with lene the translation will be The great cave of Gamini Tisa (son) of Devanâpiya Tisa is given to the priesthood present and future of the four quarters (of the world). It is an interesting circumstance that the courteous and much respected chief priest of the temple, Girânagama Unnânse, was one of the leaders in the rebellion of 1848, but after being many years in hiding, is now a loyal though perhaps regretful subject of the English Government. Anurâdhapura, 26th Feb Mahâwanso, Journal of Ceylon As. Soc , p. 21; and vide ante p Page 207, Whose recent death is an irreparable loss to Oriental literature, seep. 162.

Quarterly Tours. Jayatissa Herath. National Trust Sri Lanka

Quarterly Tours. Jayatissa Herath. National Trust Sri Lanka Quarterly Tours Jayatissa Herath National Trust Sri Lanka 10 th September 2016 THIRD QUARTERLY TOUR 2016 SATURDAY 10TH SEPTEMBER TO MIHINTALE Third tour of the National Trust is to visit monastic sites