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Message: <blockquote data-quote="xx_varun_xx" data-source="post: 1463593" data-attributes="member: 82138">Histories instead of storiesAt this point, I want to mention a difference in the meaning of the term 'history' in European and Asian languages. Etymologically, neither the Sanskrit word itihåsa nor the Tamil word VaralåÂu or Carittiram convey the same meaning as history, which derives from the Greek to see. Both are nearer to the German term Geschichte[12] in the sense of what has happened: itihasa means 'that which has happened like that', and both VaralåÂu Carittiram mean 'that which came about, what happened, the course of events, also the origin of events'. So there is a strong connection with the question: where do we come from and how and why are we here, what is our claim to be here? It is a much less 'objective' and detached, one could perhaps say, a more personalised concept than the Greek 'that which has been seen'. Once the Tamils must or want to prove their right to exist, their right to be there, then the purpose of history is to prove that 'we have always been here, we have more rights to be in this particular place than anybody else, and we can prove and justify this with 'historical facts'. It becomes clear then, that the historical problem and the problem of being there is not at all a general Tamil problem, but that of a particular group of Tamils: namely those in Sri Lanka. For the Tamils in India, the problem is there, but it is muted, covered by the attempts not to prove their right to be there, but to fend off central attempts to subsume them under a dominant culture and language by claiming the superiority of the one over the other. It is then sufficient to establish the equal excellence of Tamil culture to counter this attack (and to establish the former's antiquity, which in reality means timelessness: Tamil has no beginning in time, it was always there.) And while the Indian hierarchy subsumes, but does not destroy, for the Sri Lanka Tamils, being subsumed under a dominant culture always means immediately being robbed of their right to be there, of their right to exist, of being extinguished (probably physically) as persons as well as Tamils.[13] Therefore, religion, culture, way of life, are not sufficient to prove that right, and history has to come in. The origin and beginning in time of Tamil existence on the island has to be fixed and proved to be earlier than that of the Sinhalese. So the statement is not like in Tamilnadu: Tamil has always been there, but we Tamils have always been here. Thus, history in our sense seems not to unite Tamils all over the world, because they are already united by religion, culture, language, and way of life, but to divide them into groups, as the Bengalis have been divided into Bangla Deshis and Bengalis. So are the Tamils divided into Indian Tamils and Jaffna Tamils. History as history of state, needed to justify existence in the Tamil case developed strong linkages with nationalism, but linkages that divide rather than unite: instead of affirming the Tamil identity, nationalism wrenches it apart, splits it up into all sorts of different Tamil nationalisms. At this juncture, the question of territory, irrelevant for Tamil identity as such, becomes vital: the fatherland and the mothertongue. But this was not always so. It started when the Tamils acquired and accepted the mentioned western-style historical consciousness. This was a very specific 19th century phenomenon. It was a view of history propounded predominantly by German scholars that history was the history of great men and of nations, that civilisations had their birth, zenith and decline, and that there were 'people without history' which bore a stigma of 'primitivism' and 'savagery'. To have legitimacy, a western-style 'great' history was therefore deemed necessary. Yet while saying this, we must remember that it were western scholars who fell to discovering the 'past' of Ceylon with a vigour enhanced by the fact that Ceylon had a unique collecton of historical sources which were considered 'historical' even in the western sense: the chronicles Mahavamsa and Culavamsa. In contrast to the Indians who were considered to think 'unhistorically', here was a people that did not do so, and the Mahavamsa was taken as literal truth. There were no obvious comparable sources existent on the Tamil side. Only much later was it acknowledged that as far as 'historical' accuracy was concerned, the formerly spurned Indian and Ceylonese inscriptions might provide firmer ground than the chronicles. There was, to be sure, a chronicle on the Tamil side, a compilation from the beginning of the 18th century, ordered to be collected by a Dutch governor and based on some older chronicles and traditions, partly extant and partly lost. Yet it was never considered 'historical' in the way the Mahavamsa was. With hindsight, this seems rather strange: The Mahavamsa is as full of myth and superstition as the YåÒppå^a Vaipava Målai is thought to be. And while the Mahavamsa is certainly datable to the 6th century, the Culavamsa, its successor, had constantly been modified and added on until British and even our times. The truth of the Mahavamsa could only be verified or otherwise when one began to check it against South Indian inscriptions. Yet the YåÒppå^a Vaipava Målai was not deemed magnificent enough to stand up beside the Sinhalese chronicles and the South Indian inscriptions, though the Tamils who considered it a most reliable source, could and later did prove that not all in it was pure fiction. However that may be, history of Ceylon in the 19th century was history of all Ceylon as the history of the Sinhalese.[14] Again, this is a departure from the past: the colonial powers had before this always emphasised that Ceylon was inhabited by different 'races' with different traditions and rulers: Burnand, Bertolacci, Cleghorn, to name a few.[15] In the 19th century, however, the 'Aryan' Sinhalese were given pride of place and the Tamils termed 'immigrants' with a negative connotation of the term.[16] History RecoveredThis view of history did not go unopposed by the Tamils and their European sympathizers, mainly missionaries who in the 40s of the 19th century began to challenge the view of the history of Ceylon with the remark that the history of the Jaffna kingdom had been neglected and should be written.[17] Most interestingly, it was a Christian Tamil paper that voiced this demand for the first time, and for a long time, Christians were in the forefront of Tamil historiography in Jaffna: Casie Chitty, UT, Henry Martin, John and Daniel Samuel, Christpher Brito, C. Ñå~appirakåcar. These Christians were most eager to discover the historical roots of the Tamils. There was a simple reason for this: they could not rely for their identity on the religious context of the Hindus, on sacred texts like the sthalapuranas, epics and the Saiva Siddhanta literature, therefore they were eager to find a non-religious Tamil tradition to justify themselves, their existence and their identity. They found it in Tamil, Indian, and Ceylonese history and in the kingdom of Jaffna which had been a Hindu kingdom, but had also created literary and scientific works acceptable to all Tamils and had in its resistance to the Buddhist Sinhala kingdom of the South shown a spirit of autonomy most welcome to the Christians. Remarkably, the famous Hindu reformer, ÅArumuka Nåvalar, who had the fiercest controversies with the Christians over matters of religion and tried to reform the Saiva religion and ritual and purge the texts from unacceptable parts, never pronounced on Tamil or Jaffna history, nor did he doubt the representation of it by these authors. He left history to the Christians and missionaries, since for his identity it was irrelevant.[18] In 19th century Jaffna society as a whole history was not needed because Tamils had other means of identification. They felt a common bond with Tamils in South India and religious texts sufficed to tell them who they were and where they came from: their past was their present. Though in the light of the foregoing discussion we should better say, history in the western sense of the 19th century was not needed, since the functions fulfilled by history in the West were taken over by religious and mythical texts. However, once the Tamils discovered history in the western sense it was not religious texts proper (as among the Sinhalese) which were used as historical evidence, but quite different, secular, epical texts, like the KuÂal, Puranå~ËÂu, Cilappatikåram. Religious texts, like the Sthalapuranams or the Må~ikkavåcakam, if they were thought to contain historical information, were used occasionally, but their primary function was not historical.[19] Today in popular Tamil attitude the religious texts are often considered 'historically true' and much religious matter still finds its way unquestioned into historical tracts. But still there is a thin, but visible line between what is considered a historical text and a religious text. The difference between the two conceptions of history could simply be that in the West religion has become subsumed in history and in South India, history is subsumed in religion. While this might well be the case, we are still plagued by the contradiction shown above: if we broaden our concept of history as described earlier, we would have to include in Tamil history a number of texts not hitherto considered as such by the Tamils themselves, as seen in the example of ÅArumuka Nåvalar. Historical texts were not deemed necessary for Tamil identity: history was not necessary, since it served other purposes. To establish identity, stories of the past were sufficient . Distinctions start to get blurred in the case of the talapuranams which relate the (hi)story of certain temples, their gods and founders in time and space, and always in Sri Lanka itself. These therefore often carry other, historical information. This is especially true for Trincomalee where the available historical information is tied up in the Kø~[[perthousand]]car Kalve++u, the story of the Kø~[[perthousand]]car temple and the history has to be reconstructed from this.[20] This again proves the point: these talapuranams concern temples located in time and space, with a definite beginning. The god who causes the temple to be founded by his appearance has always been there, but chooses this particular spot to manifest himself.[21] The fact, however, that the Tamils had secular stories of the past to draw upon made it easier for the Christians and later for all of them to fashion a history not tied to religion and therefore to Tamilnadu, but tied to Jaffna and Ceylon. The contradiction might be solved if we realize that we are caught in a circular argument: by our concept of history, the Tamils did not need it to estab</blockquote>

Verification: Winadiyakata thappara keeyak tibeda?

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