Browsing by Author "de Silva, D.G.B."

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    Converting a ‘Heathen’ King: Kotte under Missionary Pressure
    (University of Kelaniya, 2005) de Silva, D.G.B.
    Conversion of rulers to Christianity in the new territories where Portuguese temporal power was extended, remained a primary combined strategy of the State and the Church. The missionaries mistook the spirit of tolerance which prevailed among the ruler and the populace, as an open invitation to carry out the spread of their gospel. It was not at making ‘rice Christians’ out of beggars, concubines and other lowly strata of the society in which they made some progress, that they aspired, but of converting the rulers and courtiers in the hope that massive conversion would follow. The political circumstances in Sri Lanka were seen as conducive to bringing about the conversion of the ruler of Kotte, who was under immense pressure from his brother Mayadunne on one hand, and who was keen to receive Portuguese support for his grandson to succeed to the throne, on the other hand. To achieve this objective, immense pressure was brought Bhuvanekabahu personally by the chief Franciscans missionary who came with the king’s ambassadors. Other methods were tried later, which included the king’s beliefs and heaping insults on his religion. Finally, the king was exposed as not only unreliable, but proving ‘obstinate’. An opposition was built up against him through communications of the friars, including Francis Xavier, addressed to the king, the Viceroy and others. They even found fault with Portuguese authorities for extending patronage to Bhvanekabahu. Supported by Viceroy Alfonco de Souza, missionaries exerted to get the Portuguese sovereign to revoke the Royal Decree supporting Dharmapala to succeed him on the ground that he has caused the death of his son Jogu Bandara who was ready to be baptized. The death in Goa of the two princes whom the plotters wanted to crown in Dharmapala’s place and as the ruler of Jaffna and Kandy respectively brought the affair to an end. Bhuvanekabahu was personally insulted by the new Viceroy Noronnah who harassed him to part with money and was killed after the Viceroy left the shores by a Portuguese mulatto under very suspicious circumstances. Dharmapala was crowned immediately. From them onwards, the Portuguese made Dharmapala a tool in their hands to extend their political hegemony as well as proselytizing activities.
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    Sandesa Kavya Descriptions of Sites Destroyed by the Portuguese
    (University of Kelaniya, 2005) de Silva, D.G.B.; Karunamuni, M.
    The Portuguese encounter group consisting of over 40 multi-disciplinary researchers in a nearly two-year period study has been documenting the sites destroyed by the Portuguese in their cultural ("spiritual") and "temporal" conquest of Sri Lanka. The group has visited around 50 sites in different parts of the country from Jaffna in the North, to Devundara in the South, from Kotte in the West to Batticaloa in the East. Nearly thousand photographs of destroyed sites have been taken. A key element of the documentation included examination of Sinhalese, Tamil and Portuguese sources on the sites destroyed. Portuguese documents were a primary source for the acts of destruction of almost the entire key Buddhist, Hindu and Muslim centres of worship along the Western coast. In attempting to reconstruct how these centres, especially the Buddhist ones looked like in the pre-Portuguese period, the group took recourse to Sinhala literature specially, the Sandesa Kavyas which were written between the 14th to 16th centuries. The Sandesa Kavyas thus used included the Gira, Hansa, Kokila, Mayura, Parevi, Salalihini, Sevul and Tisara. In using this material, the poetic metaphor and ornamental descriptions were discounted while concrete descriptions such as "fivestorey building", "vihara to the North" etc were taken into account. 194 verses were found in the Sandesa literature describing the sites, specially the better-known ones. Sites described in the literature include Agbo Vehera (Weligama), Attanagalla Raja Maha Vihara, Barandi Kovila, Dalada Medura (Kotte), Delgamu Vehera, Devinuwara, Dorawaka Vehera, Galpatha, Galapatha, Ganananda Pirivena, Gangatilaka Vihara (Kalutara), Kadurugoda (Jaffna peninsula), Kali Kovila, Kelaniya, Keragala, Kotte city, Mapitigama Vihare, Nawagamuwa Devale, Paiyagala Vehera, Ratgam Vehera, Saman Devale Ratnapura, Totagamuwa,Veherakanda , Vidagama. The site descriptions before the destruction were correlated with Portuguese acts of destruction, for example in the vivid description on the sacking of Devinuwara. The descriptions in the two language realms, namely Sinhala and Portuguese were then correlated with the actual site situation today and the ruins existing. The paper summarizes this corpus of descriptive verse.