The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) has included the Sri Lankan historical account, the Mahavamsa (Great Dynasty or Great Chronicle), in its list of 64 new items of documentary heritage inscribed on the Memory of the World International Register.
The Memory of the World (MoW) Register lists documentary heritage which have been recommended by the International Advisory Committee (IAC), and endorsed by the Executive Board of UNESCO on the basis of their world significance and outstanding universal value.
Inscription on the Register publicly affirms the significance of the documentary heritage, makes it better known and allows for greater access to it, thereby facilitating research, education, entertainment, and preservation over time. There are 494 inscriptions on the International MoW Register, as of May 2023, the UNESCO’s website says.
 George Turnour |
About the Mahavamsa, UNESCO says that it is one of the world’s longest unbroken historical accounts. “The Mahavamsa is the first of its kind in South Asia, initiating a mature historiographic tradition, presenting Sri Lanka’s history in a chronological order from the 6th century BCE.”
“The authenticity of the facts provided in the document has been confirmed through archaeological research conducted in Sri Lanka and India. It is an important historical source in South Asia containing crucial information about the lifetime of the Buddha, Emperor Asoka and the rise of Buddhism as a world religion. The document played a significant role in popularising Buddhism in Southeast Asia and contributed singularly to the identity of Emperor Asoka in Indian history.”
“The existence of a number of manuscripts of the Mahavamsa in several countries as well as the transliteration and translation of the text to several Southeast Asian and European languages stand testimony to its immense historical, cultural, literal, linguistic and scholarly values,” it added.
George Turnour
The man who brought the Mahavamsa to the world outside Sri Lanka (or Ceylon as it was called) was a British colonial civil servant named George Turnour.
Hugh Karunanayake, writing in the Daily Island said that George was born in Ceylon (as Sri Lanka was then known) in 1799. His father had come over to Ceylon in 1789 with the 73rd British Regiment, and was appointed Fort Adjutant in Jaffna in 1795. Young George was sent to England for his education, and on his return as an 18-year-old, joined the Ceylon Civil Service (CCS).
Harry Williams writes in his “Ceylon: Pearl of the East” that the Colonial Service at that time, attracted men of culture “for whom the betterment of mankind in general, and not personal prosperity, was the principal objective.” George Turnour who was Government Agent (GA) in Ratnapura in the Sabaragamuwa Province, was one of these men.
It was by chance that Turnour became aware of the Mahavamsa. A bhikkhhu whom he knew had placed some palm leaf manuscripts on his desk. Williams says: “The documents which lay on the desk before him that morning (in 1826) were not connected with his routine duties as the GA. They afforded the key, if a scholar could be found to decipher them, to such fabulous historic riches that the mere sight of them filled Turnour with excitement. He resolved to dedicate his own life to the task of solving the problem.”
At that time, the existence of a historical record called the Mahavamsa was known only to a handful of senior bhikkhus.
Williams said: “It was a metrical chronicle, hiding in mystical verse the most astonishing dynastic history of any people, covering a period of no less than 23 centuries from the year 543 BC to AD 1758. The language employed was Pali, which had long passed out of use, and to those who had, with difficulty, managed to translate a verse or two, the work had not seemed worth proceeding with.” Pali is believed to be the language that the Buddha spoke to His followers.
Man of genius
“The authors of the Chronicle had, it appeared, sacrificed sense for rhyme, the poem being mystical, verbose, and incomprehensible. It had fallen into such disrepute that few, even among the Buddhist priesthood, knew of its existence. One of the priests, however, named Gallé, recognised in Turnour a man of genius, and it is certain that, without Gallé, the history of Ceylon would have been lost. He sought out the Government Agent, and told him of his conviction that a tika of the Mahavansa was still in existence.
A tika is a prose key, which, fitted into the mystical verse of the earlier poets, reduces it to a commonsense narrative. Gallé was convinced that that was just what the Mahavamsa was, an accurate record of events obscured by the flowery outer-cover of metrical rhetoric.”
Williams writes: “Turnour’s interest was aroused, and between them a search was made of the only possible repositories of such a set of documents: the old Buddhist temples (Purana Viharas).
They were successful. The missing tika was found at Mulgirigalla (now also called Mulkirigala), near Tangalle in the deep South, a temple founded 150 years before the birth of Jesus Christ. It was this manuscript which lay on Turnour’s desk that sunny morning in 1826.”
“The difficulties of his task must have appalled the GA. Although fluent in the Sinhalese vernacular, with a considerable knowledge of the Sinhalese script, he knew nothing of Pali, which was an extinct language at that time. It is a root language of Sinhalese (as is Sanskrit), but clearly distinct from it. There were no textbooks nor vocabularies available, and no parallel documents for comparison.
“Turnour knew that he would be compelled to spend months delving into the minds of the very few Buddhist priests who were still able to remember a few words of Pali. And he would have to dedicate many years of his life to the work of research, for there were 100 books of the Mahavamsa, and they covered, in detail, 2,000 years of Ceylon history during which 54 kings of the Great Dynasty- the Mahavamsa of the title -and 111 Sovereigns of the Sulavansa or lower race, sat on the Throne of Lanka.”
Williams goes on to say that Turnour was inspired by the beauty of Gem City Ratnapura’s imposing landscape to take up the onerous task of translating the manuscripts. The result: some 30 books of the Mahavamsa were translated, edited and arranged by him during his lifetime and published in 1836, ten years after his first glimpse of the tika.
Sadly, Turnour did not live to complete the whole vast Chronicle. But recognition of the value of the record was instantaneous.
“It was revealed as one of the most remarkable histories in existence, unrivalled as a dynastic narrative of an ancient and cultured civilisation. That was not all. Turnour’s research opened the path to the study and translation of carved inscriptions found all over India and among the countless monuments of two of the most remarkable lost cities in the world: Anuradhapura and Polonnaruwa, abandoned and forgotten in the arid plains of Central Ceylon,” Williams writes. In fact, Anuradhapura is one of the oldest place names in the world, having been named after Anuradha, a warrior and minister of King Dutugemunu. When the news of Turnour’s death in England in 1843 reached Ceylon, there was widespread grief in the island among colonial officialdom and local elites, writes Hugh Karunanayake.
Memorial
“It was decided to establish a suitable memorial to Turnour and subscriptions were collected for the purpose. The subscription list was headed by Chief Justice Sir Anthony Oliphant with a donation of £2-2 shillings. This was matched by similar donations from the following: Justice Stark, Donald Davidson, Capt. Kelson, Dr. Cameron, Joseph Read, Lt. Col. Fletcher, J Jumeaux, J.G. Firth, C.R. Buller, Francis Hudson, Lt. Hawkins, Capt. Lillee, William Morris, F. de Livera, T.C. Power, F.B. Norris, J.H. Rabinel, R. Jefferson, H. De Alwis Mudyr, David de Silva Mudyr, C. Webster, S. Northway and Don Hendrick Mudyr.”
Be that as it may, according to Williams, Turnour never received the recognition which was his due. He was almost unknown. A small and obscure road in Borella in Colombo 8, named after him, is the only reminder.
“But his work is of an importance which increases with the passing of the years,” Williams says. Since the translation was done, the status of Pali has also been enhanced, with universities in India and Sri Lanka offering Pali courses.