FACTORES MÁS IMPORTANTES EN LA PRODUCCION DE QUINUA CONVENCIONAL 18

Daniel (1989) suggests there is a m ajor difference b etween the propensities of Sinhalese Buddhist and Tamil Hindu conceptions of history. The former is characterised by its emphasis on concrete history, the latter by its emphasis on heritage (ibid:22). Buddhism, Daniel argues, emphasises historical time through recognising the moments of the Buddha's birth, enlightenment and death. Such a recognition establishes a periodicity that informs a subsequent historicity. Buddhism can thus be likened to other world religions, such as Islam and Christianity, which have calendars based on a diary of events relating to the life of their genitors (ibid:26). Sinhalese Buddhism, for example, charts the history of the state with the history of the religion. The Mahavamsa ("Great Lineage")

describes the founder of the state, Vijaya, arriving on the island on the day the Buddha died. Hinduism, on the other hand, without a calendar lacks an objectivist historical view and, therefore, does not produce chronicles such as the Mahavamsa. Tamil Hindus share a consciousness of the

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present, a sense for a present heritage w hich links to a primordial past in a non-linear way (ibid:2 8 ) ^ .

The distinction Daniel draws between the fundamental Tamil Hindu and Sinhalese Buddhist v i e w echoes an older anthropological distinction between myth and history. But rather than fall into the rigid categorisation this distinction usually entails, a categorisation that has generated arguments such as whether myth is an historical charter, Daniel seeks to describe forms pf historical consciousness. Importantly, Daniel argues that he is describing propensities, not fixed moral orders that categorise all Tamil Hindu and Sinhalese Buddhist views of the past.

I am largely in agreement with Daniel's argument, though I think his explanation for Buddhist historicity is too simple. Instead of simply noting the importance of Buddhism's diary of events, I wish to emphasise how the value placed on the Buddha's enlightenment and death is a function of the value Buddhism places on society and on agency. Buddhism derives its reasoned coherence from the actions of the Buddha, from his renunciation. It is, therefore, not simply that the Buddha died on a certain date, but that Sinhalese Buddhists ascribe the same date to

the arrival of Vijaya in Sri Lanka. The centrality of the state in Buddhist thought creates the conditions for a particular historicity. This point is revealed in the Sinhalese Buddhist origin myth of the Munnesvaram temple. I take this myth in contrast to the Hindu myth as m y starting point as it establishes the discursive field of the Munnesvaram temples' religious significance.

The history of the Chilaw area is then described to elaborate the question of historicity and religious significance. The marginal position of C h ilaw as a port of fluctuating relevance to the Sinhalese kingdoms during the medieval and colonial periods is emphasised. In the b r e a k ­ up of a unified Sri Lanka from the late 14th century into small trading kingdoms, Chilaw port acquired an interstitial location between Tamil Hindu kingdoms in the north and Sinhalese Buddhist kingdoms in the south-west. The Portuguese conquest of the littoral in the 16th century extended this aspect, as did the period of Dutch rule in the late 17th and 18th centuries. It was in a brief period of Kandyan Sinhalese control in the mid-18th century that Munnesvaram temple was rebuilt. In the British period, the complexion of Chilaw altered with the development of coconut p l a n t a t i o n s . This changed the demand for land and was critical to the re-establishment of Munnesvaram in the 1 8 7 0 's. Chilaw's relative isolation from political and economic centres, however, was reproduced. Though taking different forms in time, this marginal isolation is important for the religious significance of the modern Munnesvaram t e m p l e s .

The historiography I develop is undeniably m y interpretation of historical events; yet it is not to be relativised to the Buddhist and Hindu historicities because it is one which seeks to account for these historicities in the formation of modern Sri Lanka and to account for the place of the Munnesvaram temple in this formation. That is, I privelege m y historical account as I interpret the constructions of historical c o n s c i o u s n e s s . The Buddhist and Hindu histories of Munnesvaram direct m y historical gaze which is at the same time a critical g a z e ^ .

From the history of the Chilaw area in the colonial period, the emergence of religious revivalism in the late colonial period is analysed. Munnesvaram cannot be understood apart from these national developments because they structured the two religions in a special relationship. Hindu and Buddhist revivalism are critical to the formation of Munnesvaram's significance. They developed in the late colonial context and elaborated a dominant rationalist ideology in hand with changes taking place in the Sri Lankan social order of caste, class and ethnicity. In this development the new forms of Hinduism and Buddhism, as they both sought to establish the criteria of their pristine purity, were placed in a special relation, one that resonated with the original hierarchical relation between them. In particular, modern Buddhism identified the so called folk practices of Sinhalese Buddhism with their apparent Hindu r o o t s . Such practices were seen as corruptions of the pristine order. At the same time, modern Hinduism asserted its own pristine order, removing what its

protagonists saw as folk corruptions, and became more exclusively and visibly Hindu. The two religions grew apart as distinct religions, but in a symbiosis which dealt critically with an ideology of power - its nature, source, and fields of expression. As modern Buddhism defined its corrupting chaotic influences, it empowered them as the source of order from w hich an ideal Buddhist society could e m e r g e .

The discussion narrows then to the priests of the principal temples highlighting how each group came to control their respective temples. Different conceptions of what the temples are coexist and inform the development of the temple aesthetic by the priests. Following a consideration of the hierarchical relations between them, I turn to the worshippers who fall into two groups: locals and outsiders. Both the locals and the outsiders are composed of Tamil Hindus and Sinhalese B u d d h i s t s . Among the group of locals, a number of factors produce different forms of engagement with the t e m p l e s . For the most part locals do not go to the Bathrakali temple, but their involvement in the Munnesvaram temple is not uniform. It is conditioned by class, caste, and ethnic factors that are to be understood in relation to the history of the Chilaw economy and the history of religious revivalism and ethnic nationalism. Similar historical factors underlie the participation by outsiders, both Tamil and Sinhalese, but their involvement is largely a consequence of the Munnesvaram temples being remote from their everyday situations, while for locals, the Munnesvaram temple has

historical significance as a centre.

The discussion of the composition of temple worshippers concludes the first part of the thesis, the part most closely directed toward the sociology and social history of the temples. Temple aesthetics are analysed more closely in the second part of the w ork as I take up the issue of what people do when they attend the t e m p l e s . My focus is on temple design and on temple ritual in order to demonstrate the importance of hierarchy as the structure of the temple form. In the diversity of temple practices by Hindus and Buddhists, however, different hierarchical forms emerge. These extend from the different notions of power and history already described and they reveal the dynamic interaction of the two religions and two ethnic groups in the Munnesvaram and, therefore, Sri Lankan context.

Having described how Munnesvaram temple is a Hindu temple, I stress how Sinhalese Buddhist practice in the temple departs from Hindu orthopraxy, orthopraxy which has been shaped in modern circumstances. In particular, the nature of the Hindu and Buddhist interaction stresses the "magical side of Brahmanism", the links Brahmanism has with cosmic forces, especially malevolent forces. These relate particularly to forces embodied by female Hindu deities who are the most important deities at Munnesvaram. They are Ambal who is the main goddess of the Munnesvaram temple and Bathrakali whose temple is the other important temple in the complex. These two temples are the central objects of my analysis as they are much more important than any of the

What manifests is a powerful arena for the expression of sorcery practice, both the undertaking of it, and the alleviation from it. The Tamil Hindu Munnesvaram is a locus for the demonic, as the demonic embodies the chaos out of which cosmos is achieved. In this locus, the worship of female deities becomes paramount, especially the worship of Bathrakali. What has happened is that a temple at the juncture of the rapidly reifying Tamil and Sinhalese ethnicities, with a history of marginality and with an expanding orthodox Hindu aesthetic, has become a potent arena in which modern ethnic tensions between Tamils and Sinhalese are both created and expressed.

Having stressed contrasts between Hindu and Buddhist interaction with Munnesvaram, I conclude with a discussion of the major annual temple festival. This demonstrates the mo dernity of hierarchy as hierarchy creates the Hindu/Buddhist dialogue as a permanent fixture of the Munnesvaram aesthetic. The festival encompasses the diversity of levels operating in the temple creating an overarching unity in w h ich difference can manifest. Not surprisingly the form this festival takes is continually changing as the discursive structure seeks to embrace difference in its totalising logic.

Chapter 2, Myths of Munnesvaram

There are several myths associated w i t h Munnesvaram temple and the surrounding area that are variants of myths found elsewhere in Sri Lanka and South India. In the following, I shall consider two myths that recount the origin of the temple, one ostensibly popular with Tamil Hindus, the other with Sinhalese Buddhists. Comparison and contrast of these myths establishes the different conceptions of Munnesvaram held by each group.

Rama at Munnesvaram

The well known account of Rama's epic battle w ith Ravana, the demon king of Lanka, exists in oral and textual traditions throughout Asia, but especially in South India and Sri Lanka. The story is partly set in Sri Lanka and Sri Lankan oral versions describe a sacred geography, identifying evidence of the myth in the physical features of the countryside*. For example, in the southern hills stands a rock pinnacle named after Ravana that is understood to have been Ravana's fortress. Another fortress stands at Arugam Bay in the south-east. A devotee of Siva, Ravana is thought to have worshipped at Konesvaram, Trincomalee. Swamy Rock, on which Konesvaram was built, is thought to have been cleft by Ravana at the request of his mother. Other places are the site of Ravana and Rama's great battle, and the place where Rama's wife, Sita, was kept captive. The islands off the Jaffna Peninsula are said to have been created by Rama's ally, Hanuman, as stepping stones to facilitate his journey from India.

Thus the island contains an elaborate sacred geography- explaining how the deeds of gods shaped the world of men. The ebb and flow of the conflict between divine and demonic is to be seen in the form the world t a k e s . Other g o d s , especially Murugan whose battle with the demonic asuras and love affair with the vaddah princess, Valli, also helped form the physical landscape and produce the sites of several east coast Hindu temples (Arumugam i b i d ) . Buddha too shaped the land in his three visits to the island. One of these sites, Sri Pada, where Buddha left his footprint, being venerated by Hindus as being Siva's footprint, and by Muslims as the site of Adam's descent from Eden (hence, Adam's Peak). So it is not exclusively a Tamil Hindu practice to perceive the land in such a way, rather than something shared with other g r o u p s .

Munnesvaram is regarded by Hindus as having been made a sacred ground by Rama.

After vanquishing Ravana, Rama stopped at Munnesvaram because he sensed a need to worship Siva there and gain some peace after his bloody conflict with the demon abductor of his wife. Despatching Hanuman to India to fetch a sival i n q a m , Rama waited on the site, already feeling pacified. Hanuman, however, dallied in his errand and, losing patience, Rama fashioned a linqam from sand and began to perform p u j a . W hen Hanuman

finally brought the Indian l i n q a m , Rama angrily threw it away, back in the direction from where it had come. The original sand linqam is the foundation Jor the

Munnesvaram temple that was built later .

Hanuman's Indian stone linqam was found in the 19th century by an Indian trader while he was clearing a piece of land north of Chilaw on the other side of the River Dedura at a place called Manuweriya. He then built a temple

for the linqam that is still owned by his d e s c e n d a n t s . They described its structure to me as having been built in a North Indian style to reflect the origin of its l i n q a m . Not far from the river where the Munnesvaram festival bathing rite (tirtham) is held, the temple was patronised by Jaffna Tamils returning from the annual f e s t i v a l . Other inhabitants, who dispute the authenticity of the Manuweriya l i n q a m , claim that the river was the landing place. The river's capacity for flash flooding is seen as a reflection

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of Rama's anger .

The sand linqam myth is also the origin myth of the Maamangam Pillaiyar temple near Batticaloa on the east coast, as well as of the Irameccuram temple in South India

(Shulman 1980). These other myths include variations from the Munnesvaram myth. At Maamangam, Hanuman, angry at Rama's rejection of the linqam he brought, tries to destroy the sand l i n q a m . Wrapping his tail around the sand l i n q a m , Hanuman wrenches his tail violently in order to fragment the grains gathered up by Rama. But he only succeeds in setting fire to his tail, so he rushes to the nearby pond and extinguishes the flames. The temple is named after the pond which is said to magically fill with sandalwood on the tirtham day of its festival. This version echoes the story in the Ramayana of how Hanuman has his tail set alight when a captive of Ravana.

M y informant, a temple trustee, added that the sand linqam still sits in the ground under the temple's inner sanctum. He claimed that efforts were once made to excavate

to its base, but at a depth of 10m the digging was stopped.

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It was concluded that the linqam is endless . The presence of the linqam leads to the temple being jointly for

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Pillaiyar and Siva.

The Irameccuram myth recorded by Shulman has the same story of Rama's impatience with Hanuman; but instead of Rama, the linqam is fashioned by Sita. Shulman interprets this as the cthonic power of Tamil Hindu goddesses providing a "firm ground of stability" for the god (ibid:51). I shall not discuss this argument here but refer to it again in Chapter 7. What I note here is that in the Munnesvaram version, the fashioning by Rama directly relates the act of temple construction to the god who is also a king.

The widespread nature of a single myth indicates the way Tamil Hindus articulate themselves into their cosmology through their temples. Each temple is regarded as a special instance of divine action shaping the world.

Rama is a king. An avatar of Visnu, Rama embodies the order of the Hindu state. The connection between Munnesvaram and Rama the king is highlighted by the Munnesvaram Brahmins as the origin of Munnesvaram's being a royal (p l t h a m ) temple. The temple's history is viewed as a dynamic relation between temple and state, embodying an interaction between the king and the deity in continuity with Rama's association. In the Rama myth, this deity is

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