Book Review - Mahavamsa, (as translated by Wilhelm Geiger)

 

Well, imagine waiting to read a book for more than 25 years, only to find it being a dud. I got to know about the book ‘Mahavamsa’ during my high-school summer holidays, while reading ‘Ponniyin Selvan’, the semi-fictional magnum opus of legendary Kalki Krishnamurthy. With the Sinhalese history being an indispensable part of that novel, and the mention of Mahavamsa therein, I was intrigued to learn more about the history of that beautiful island nation.

After almost a decade and more of searching for this book, mostly during the pre-e-commerce period, I gave up the search but not the desire. Then, fortunately, when a good friend of mine was on a visit to Sri Lanka, she thankfully fetched this book for me from there and gifted what I imagined to be a read of a lifetime. Alas, it wasn’t meant to be.

As I think of what I should write in my review, I see more cons than pros. First and foremost, the language. Mahavamsa was originally translated from Pali language to German by Wilhelm Geiger in the second decade of the 20th century, and then translated into English a little while later. While the translators have been true to the original, they haven’t been true to the readers, the result being archaic language that causes confusion often times. ‘He did this to him who said to him who was a good king’ was the kind of reading that puts of the serious readers and makes them resort to skimming.

This was a compilation of the chronicles maintained by the Buddhist monks at the Anuradhapura Maha Vihara and the resultant politico-religious tone of the book is hard to miss. The book begins with the beginning of Buddhism in India, the arrival of missionaries tasked by Ashoka with the spreading of Buddhist message to the farther shores, the arrival of the first person of royal lineage in the island and the tales of his descendants. The book ends with the reign of Mahasena, recounting the religious merits gained by the kings leading up to him, by way of building Buddhist monasteries and reliquaries. No matter what you think of Buddhism, the contempt of the Buddhist monks for people from other religions and the deprecating mentions in the book are hard to miss. So are the religious schisms that had the monks use their political clout to settle scores with their opponents (from other factions). But the book covers next to nothing about the prevailing social customs or lifestyle of the people at that time, things that one normally wants to learn through such books.

The history of every dynasty is rife with infighting, patricidal / regicidal / fratricidal outcomes, incestuous relationships, queens that changed their paramours like they changed their upper clothes, conspiracies and cruel rulers. This ancient Sri Lankan history is no exception. In this long tale, only two characters stand out for me. Duttugamanu, a rebellious Sinhalese prince that was bent on freeing the northern part of his island from the Tamil kings and Elara – or Ellalan – his sans pareil arch rival, who is better known to the people of Tamilnadu by the name Manu Neethi Chozha. The rest all feel like names that came and went at the end credits of a movie.

May be, I am missing the true pleasure of the book due to the poor or outdated translation. Someday I would love to lay my hands upon a better translation. Till then, it is only 2.5 stars!