Sudasien: SRI LANKA'S PORTUGUESE LINKS, 500 YEARS LATER Flores, Jorge (Hg.): Re-exploring the Links. History and Constructed Histories between Portugal and Sri Lanka. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2007. xv, 359 S. Abb. 8o = Maritime Asia, 18. Hartbd. Euro 68.00. ISBN 978-3-447-05490-4.
=============================================== Discussed by Shihan de Silva Jayasuriya, London shihan.desi...@sas.ac.uk =============================================== An international conference "Portugal-Sri Lanka: 500 Years" at the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation (Paris) from December 15 to 17, 2005 marked the quincentennial anniversary of the Portuguese encounter with Sri Lankans.[1] The arrival of the Portuguese in Sri Lanka is particularly significant as it set in motion changes not only to trading patterns but also to the religious and cultural life of Sri Lankans, thus marking the beginning of a new era. The editor Jorge Flores is to be congratulated for compiling this book, which is, according to him, not celebratory (p. xii), but intends to bring the historical accounts surrounding the Portuguese period of Sri Lanka up to date. Due to the recent ethnic conflict of almost thirty years that ended in 2009, the history of the island has become ever more important. Historical conflict omits the true vital aims of post-colonialism and the nature of historical thinking. In a world which has had to recognise oppositional binaries, we can no longer take the heroic view of colonial explorers. Flores quotes Jorge Canizares-Esguerra[2] to the effect that "the emphasis in traditional historiography on identities as oppositional binaries (i.e. colonized-colonizers; Amerindian-European) misses many of the actual interactions ("hybridities") that characterize colonial situations" (p. xii). Setting aside naturalist models and the rhetoric both of disarray and aggression, Flores seeks no less than to reinvent an account described as being independent of any political agenda and concerning a history both Portuguese and Sri Lankan (p. xiii). This ambitious multiauthor book sets out to re-explore the links in histories and constructed histories between Portugal and Sri Lanka. Its fifteen papers have for their common theme the Portuguese encounter in Sri Lanka from the early sixteenth to the mid-seventeenth century. But the period of domination was just over sixty years, from 1597 to 1658; the Dutch ousted the Portuguese after a twenty-year struggle for control. The contributions are arranged under four topics: "Political Realities and Cultural Imagination", "Religion: Conflict and Interaction", "Space and Heritage: Construction, Representation" and "Language and Ethnicity, Identity and Memory". As is inevitable in a multi-author book, the papers do not totally gel together within these categories. They are prefaced by an introductory essay by Chandra de Silva, the main spokesman for the new directions Portuguese colonial history might take. In his "Portugal and Sri Lanka: Recent Trends in Historiography", de Silva suggests that culture and arts, where there have been fruitful interchanges, might provide future productive writings (p. 18).3 He includes useful appendices to reconcile the discrepancies in the papers that follow with respect to controversies associated with the date of the first encounter (1501, 1505 or 1506), the ruler of Kotte at that time (Vīra Parākramabāhu or Dharma Parākramabāhu), where the first encounter occurred (Galle or Kotte) and how the relationship was consolidated (whether through gifts or a treaty).[4] Three successive European powers colonised Sri Lanka; the Dutch and the British followed the Portuguese. The European presence lasted about 450 years (1505-1948). By a historical accident, the Portuguese, Dutch and British eras were about 150 years each,[5] but the area controlled, the nature of interactions and the impressions left behind differ. The British legacy is felt through the island's administration, language, transport network, plantation industry and education, whilst the Roman Dutch law and the canal system are the main Dutch relics. The Portuguese legacy is associated with the Catholic Church, which survived the rough-and-tumble of the Dutch regime and was revived by Goan priests. What differentiates the Portuguese era from the Dutch and British periods is its association with religious turmoil, conversions and destructions of both Buddhist and Hindu temples, reflecting the dominance of religious identity in pre-modern Sri Lanka. Historian S.D. Saparamadu nevertheless states that the Portuguese intervention indirectly protected the Buddhist-Hindu culture by thwarting the wave of Islam then sweeping over South Asia and Southeast Asia. Five papers have been arranged under "Political Realities and Cultural Imagination". In "The Portuguese in Northeast Sri Lanka (1543-1658): An Assessment of Impressions Recorded in Tamil Chronicles and Poems", S.Pathmanathan asserts that Tamil sources reveal the untenability of a nationalist approach in understanding Sri Lanka's history in the seventeenth century (p.47). Arguing that the confluence of the notions of transcendence in both Christianity and Hinduism adds a new dimension to understanding the encounter between Europe and South Asia through Christianity, he draws attention to five published Tamil works. Translations are given of only two titles commissioned by the Dutch, to whom a knowledge of the history and institutions of Sri Lanka was necessary for administering the maritime areas under their control: Yāḻppāṇa vaipavamālai (“A Chronicle of Events in Jaffna”) and Maṭṭakkaḷappu pūrva- carittiram (“The Ancient History of Batticaloa”). The Tiri- kōṇācala purāṇam, a “temple chronicle”, captures the Hindu society’s reflections of the Portuguese. Whilst the Ñāṉapaḷḷu and Cantiyāku māyōr ammāṉai are earlier works (seventeenth century), Yāḻppāṇa vaipavamālai, Maṭṭakkaḷappu pūrvacarittiram and Tirikōṇācala purā- ṇam are eighteenth century works. Sinhala, English and Portuguese translations of these works would add to the database available to scholars worldwide. Rohini Paranavitana highlights the local resistance through "Sinhalese War Poems and the Portuguese". The poets' narratives add an extra dimension to the encounter as they capture heroic achievements, place names, names of commanders and chieftains, routes of campaigns and strategies adopted by the forces. Paranavitana emphasises that these poems describe the resistance movement. Translations of these seventeenth century haṭan· kāvya (war poems) -- Sītāvaka haṭana (“War of Sitawaka”), Kustantinu haṭana (“War of Constantino”), Paraṃgi haṭana (“War of the Portuguese”), Mahā haṭana (“The Great War”) and Rajasiha haṭana (“War of Rājasiṃ- ha”) -- into not only English, but also Portuguese would be valuable sources for future scholarship. In "The Portuguese Tombos as a Source of Sixteenth and Seventeenth-Century Sri Lankan History", Karunasena Dias Paranavitana cautions that tombos are not merely "registers of lands". Pointing out that compilation of land registers was a means of establishing a legal basis for entrenching Portuguese power in Sri Lanka, he (p. 78) also lists a few aspects of sociocultural transformation which began in the Portuguese era: registering names of individuals and marriages, and also building houses with more durable materials. Indeed, the Portuguese encounter set in train several transformations which require scholarly attention. Some changes can be traced through language contact studies and lexical borrowings.[6] Rui Manuel Loureiro in "The Matter of Ceylon in Diogo do Couto's Decadas da Asia" reveals methods adopted by Portuguese chroniclers, and their incisive enquiries. He identifies a weakness in Diogo do Couto's treatment of his sources, particularly those of Agostinho de Azevedo's Estado da India published recently (1960-1967). Loureiro highlights similarities in the two works but is of divided opinion; he acknowledges Couto's contribution in salvaging a significant part of the history of Portuguese Asia. The documents examined in "A `Tale of Two Cities', a `Veteran Soldier' or the Struggle for Endangered Nobilities: The Two Jornadas de Huva (1633, 1635) Revisited", by Jorge Flores and Maria Augusta Lima Cruz, coincide with a period when Portuguese power in Sri Lanka reached a zenith and then began to decline. Associated with this change in fate are the unfortunate circumstances which led to the death of the Captain-General, Constantino de Sa de Noronha. By comparing writings of an anonymous Portuguese author with that of a Sinhalese Catholic, Dom Felipe Botelho, Flores and Cruz emphasise the unreliability of documented history. They underscore the need to explore alternative methods to read into the past. Four papers are grouped under "Religion: Conflict and Interaction", and concern an area that has fired popular imagination of the encounter. In "The Conversion of Rulers in Portuguese-Era Sri Lanka", Alan Strathern discusses the "top-down" process of conversion where the upper crust set a trend for others to follow. The title of the paper might be misleading as all Sri Lankan rulers did not convert. But the resistance of Bhuvanekabhu VII, King of Kotte, the most powerful kingdom, was negated by the conversion of his grandson and heir to the throne, Dharmapla, which provided the platform for Portuguese rule. In "Buddhist Rebuttals: The Changing of the Gods and Royal (Re)legitimization in Sixteenth and Seventeenth-Century Sri Lanka", John Clifford Holt draws attention to the conversion of Sri Lankan rulers to Hinduism as well as to Catholicism. Such conversions challenge the significance of religious identity to kingship. He asserts that the cultural consequences of religious conversion may transcend the original political rationale. In South Asia, caste and class can override religious identity, and Katriyas married across geographical borders, extending their networks within the region. Inez G. Zupanov's "Goan Brahmins in the Land of Promise: Missionaries, Spies and Gentiles in Seventeenth and Eighteenth-Century Sri Lanka" concerns high-risk missionary work among the abandoned Christians of Sri Lanka. She argues that the Goan Catholic Brahmin priests broke through the mirror of ready-made exoticism. Being familiar with Sri Lankan culture, they indigenised the Church through translations of religious texts into Sinhala and Tamil. Goan Oratorians were rewarded for reviving the Catholic Church, whose devotees today outweigh those of other Christian denominations. The "saintliness" of Father Jose' Vaz, the "Apostle of Ceylon", was acknowledged in 1995 when the Pope publicly beatified him in Colombo. Jurrien van Goor's title "State and Religion under the Dutch in Ceylon, c.1640-1796" signals a departure from the overall theme of the book. But the overlapping nature of empires and cultural continuities links this paper to the encounter. Portuguese flows continued into the Dutch period and beyond. Van Goor highlights Dutch religious policies; Buddhism and Hinduism were tolerated but not Catholicism due to the fear of a Catholic nation, namely a takeover by the French. The third section, "Space and Heritage: Construction, Representation", begins with Zoltan Biedermann's paper "Perceptions and Representations of the Sri Lankan Space in Sixteenth-Century Portuguese Texts and Maps". He concludes that the Portuguese could have engaged in dialogue to achieve a negotiated settlement of power relations. But though this would have been favourable to them, given the socio-political climate at that time it did not seem feasible. The King of Kandy, Rajasimha II, befriended the Dutch to drive out the Portuguese. Controlling intentions of the Dutch were realised too late to retract from his bad bargain. The Sinhala proverb imguru dila miris gaththa ("we gave ginger and took chilli") summarises the King's folly.[7] Helder Carita's "Portuguese-influenced Religious Architecture in Ceylon: Creation, Types and Continuity" draws attention to numerous churches on the island and the inevitable impact of Indo-Portuguese architecture from Goa due to the resuscitation of the Sri Lankan Catholic Church by the Goan Oratorian mission established in the eighteenth century. Carita comments on the influence of southern Indian architecture on early Sri Lankan churches. This is understandable given geographical and cultural proximity, and also the central role of Cochin in administering religious affairs during the Portuguese era. Nuno Vassallo e Silva's "An Art for Export: Sinhalese Ivory and Crystal in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries" concerns objects symbolising alliances between the Portuguese and the Sinhalese. Whilst some museums classify these objects as Indo-Portuguese, or more specifically cingalo-portugues (Sinhalese-Portuguese), Silva regards them as Sinhalese objects decorated with European motifs; however, not all decorations on objects are European. Silva argues, convincingly, that Sinhalese ivory objects were produced for Portugal when the production centre shifted from West Africa to South Asia (p. 294). Concurrent with the changing regional political scenario, the centre then shifted to Goa which was established as a market for oriental goods. Ivory carving was known in ancient Sri Lanka, and luxury ivory objects were produced before the Portuguese arrived, and continued to be crafted after their period. In "Singelle Nona/Jinggli Nona: A Traveling Portuguese Burgher Muse", the first paper of the section "Language and Ethnicity, Identity and Memory", Kenneth David Jackson refers to a "traditional folk song of the Portuguese Burghers of Sri Lanka" described in the late nineteenth century by C.M. Fernando, a Sinhalese lawyer and pioneer researcher of Portuguese music in Sri Lanka, as "one of the most popular of Mechanic airs" (p. 299).[8] Jackson points out variants of Singelle Nona (also Singal(l)e Nona) in Malaysia and Indonesia in Creolised Portuguese, Tamil and Malay (pp. 313-314). In fact this and other Portuguese creole songs were sung by the Sinhalese at parties in Colombo in the twentieth century, and it therefore is not limited to the Burgher community. The Sinhala song Yamam Selo ("Let's go, Selo") is sung to its tune. Denis B. McGilvray's "The Portuguese Burghers of Eastern Sri Lanka in the Wake of Civil War and Tsunami" concerns the largest concentration of Portuguese Burghers who have held on to their Portuguese identity through economic and social pressures. He draws attention to Dutch and Portuguese intermarriages and flows of Creole Portuguese to Dutch descendants. Creole outlasted Portuguese rule and continues to be spoken to date mainly by the Portuguese Burghers in the Eastern Province, though some are shifting to the local languages. However, there are still mother-tongue, and even a few monolingual, speakers of Portuguese Creole,[9] mainly spoken in Batticaloa and Trincomalee.[10] The contributors to this celebratory book, whilst inevitably continuing their areas of research, add to its overall theme which reflects current trends in scholarship, and the immense importance of heritage. But intangible heritage, excepting religion, receives little attention. The now marginalised creolised Portuguese and linguistic flows to other languages of the island (Sinhala, Tamil and Sri Lanka Malay) are unexplored. Musical flows to the population at large through the postcolonial genre baila also need to be recognised.11 Situations of conflict and warfare should be balanced against harmonious outcomes arising from non-aggressive interactions and miscegenation. The book would have benefitted from copy-editing. Typographical errors, missing characters in words, untranslated quotations from foreign languages, omission of diacritical marks, the absence of footnotes on the relevant page, lack of a glossary and inconsistent referencing of illustrations are unhelpful to the reader. The papers are followed by a useful general Index. A bibliography also would have added value, as the sources referred to are lost in the footnotes. The preoccupation with dates, important personalities and events tends to blur the image of the encounter. How could we get a glimpse of the Portuguese soldiers' day-to-day lives? How do we uncover this part of the past? If documented history is insufficient, then alternative means should be sought. How do we evaluate the flows from the Portuguese to the Sri Lankans and vice versa? These are issues future conferences on the encounter might wish to address. Do the papers offer a balanced view of the encounter? Though the encounter operated under an asymmetric power play, the Portuguese also expanded their cultural horizons. This aspect is not touched upon in the book. But an attempt has been made to incorporate local scholarship; four of the fifteen papers have been written by Sri Lankan academics. This is counterbalanced by four authors from Portugal. What alternative historiographies are available to scholars researching the Portuguese-Sri Lankan encounter? A conference was held at Colombo in 2005 on its quincentennial anniversary. Independently of this and the Paris conference, a multi-author book, *The Portuguese in the Orient. The Portuguese in India and Sri Lanka*, was published by the International Institute for Ethnic Studies, Kandy, Sri Lanka in 2010. These could be consulted to obtain a wider picture of the encounter. -- [1] An invitation to present a paper was also extended to me. [2] How to Write the History of the New World. Histories, Epistemologies, and Identities in the Eighteenth-Century Atlantic World. (Cultural Sitings.) Stanford: Stanford University Press 2001, p. 9. [3] See Shihan de Silva Jayasuriya: The Portuguese in the East. A Cultural History of a Maritime Trading Empire. (International Library of Colonial History 11.) London: I.B. Tauris & Co. 2008. [4] Key facts are uncertain within the historiography. For example, S. Pathmanathan quotes the ruler of Kotte as "Par\Lambda kkiramav\Lambda ku" from the Tamil chronicle on Jaffna (p. 40), deducing this to be "Dharma Par\Lambda kramab\Lambda hu" of the Sinhala historical chronicle R\Delta j\Delta valiya. Rohini Paranavitana refers to Dharma Par\Lambda kramab\Lambda hu IX (1489-1513) as the king of Kotte when the Portuguese arrived in Sri Lanka (p. 51). [5] In the intial phase (1505-1551) of the Portuguese period, they were allies of the Kings of Kotte, which was transformed into a protectorate in the next phase (1551-1597), finally ruling Kotte (expanding to the kingdom of Sitawaka) directly for about sixty years (1597-1658). [6] See Shihan de Silva Jayasuriya: Tagus to Taprobane. Portuguese Impact on the Socio-culture of Sri Lanka from 1505 AD. (Ceylon Historical Journal Monograph Series 20.) Dehiwala: Tisara Prakasakayo 2001; O. M. da Silva Cosme, Fidalgos in the Kingdom of Kotte, Sri Lanka 1505-1656. The Portuguese in Sri Lanka. Colombo: Harwood Publishers 1990; O.M. da Silva Cosme: Fidalgos in the Kingdom of Jafanapatam, Sri Lanka 1543-1658. The Portuguese in Jaffna. Colombo: Harwood Publishers 1994. [7] The Portuguese concentrated on the territorial unity of Sri Lanka, but failed to achieve their goal. Not only Sri Lanka's strategic position in the Indian Ocean, but also its location with respect to India made her a worthwhile possession. Bases on the island's eastern and western coasts allowed trading activities to continue with India throughout the northeast and southwest monsoons. The Portuguese and the Dutch were unable to control the whole island, but the British at their third attempt, in 1815, brought Sri Lanka under a single administration. [8] The Portuguese Burghers were called "Mechanics" by the British who mistranslated the Dutch appellation ambachtschleiden, referring to artisans, in recognition of their valuable skills. [9] Shihan de Silva Jayasuriya: "Survival Against All Odds: Longevity of Sri Lanka Portuguese Creole", in: Kelechukwu U Ihemere (ed.): Language Contact: A Multidimensional Perspective. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing 2013, pp. 208-230. [10] Cf., e.g., p. 4 of the "Introduction" in Hugo C. Cardoso, Alan N. Baxter, Ma'rio Pinharanda Nunes (eds.): Ibero-Asian Creoles: Comparative Perspectives. (Creole Language Library 46). Amsterdam: John Benjamins 2012. [11] See Shihan de Silva Jayasuriya: "Postcolonial Innovations in Sri Lankan Popular Music: Dynamics of Kaffrinha and Baila", International Journal of Ethnic and Social Studies 2,1 (2013): 1-29. NOTE: Some typos might have crept in the above while converting form PDF to plain-text. Kindly contact the author for a copy of the original if interested.