Gámani Abhaya; The Fearless — Part 1
The Dravidian Rule
In the year 205 BC, around the time Hannibal’s campaign against Rome was approaching an ill-fated end, a different conqueror in a another corner of the world was emerging victorious in an invasion which also involved war elephants. In the land of Rajarata (King’s Country) in northern Sri Lanka, the warrior-chief Elara mounted his elephant and routed the forces of the incumbent Aséla at Anuradhapura, the ritual and administrative center of the island. Elara came from the Dravidian Chola dynasty, whose influence at the time stretched from the northern tip of Sri Lanka upwards along the Coromandel Coast of India up to the River Penna, between modern Bangalore and Hyderabad [1]. Little did this usurper know that the hegemony he planned to hold over the north would brew potent tensions in the south that will cause a prince to shun his father, pit him against his brother, and finally bring destruction to Elara himself.
A Damila (Tamil) of noble descent, named ELARA, who came hither from the Chola-country to seize on the kingdom, ruled when he had overpowered king ASÉLA, forty-four years, with even justice toward friend and foe, on occasions of disputes at law.
~ Mahävamsa, Chapter 21 — The Five Kings
Elara was not the first Dravidian ruler to seize power at Anuradhapura. In 237 BC, two South Indian chiefs, Sena and Guttika, who were trading horses on the island killed the king Suratissa and reigned for twenty-two years before Aséla defeated them in battle. This is the first recorded instance of Tamil rule in Sri Lanka. These early Tamil rulers were considered, even by the Sinhalese Buddhist majority, to be just and even-handed monarchs, exemplars for Virgil’s ideal rulers . Especially so was the conqueror Elara, whose name by virtue of his fairness found its way into Tamil literature as a metaphor for justice and integrity [2].
But you, Romans, remember your great arts;
To govern the peoples with authority.
To establish peace under the rule of law.
To conquer the mighty, and show them
Mercy once they are conquered.
~ Aeneid, Virgil
In the Mahävamsa [3], there are a few incredible accounts that embody these qualities of Elara. Given the context of the Mahävamsa, which was written a good five centuries after his reign, it is most likely that these stories are allegories, distorted and exaggerated through oral tradition, and shrouded by the mythical reverence of his figure. King Elara’s propensity towards justice was so great, the Mahävamsa records, that he hung a bell in his bedchambers with a long rope fed to the outside, which commoners could ring if they wished the king’s judgement. Easily the most striking story about Elara in the treatise tells us that his only son was riding in his chariot when a wheel ran over the neck of a calf that was resting on the road with its mother, killing it. Learning of the bereaved mother cow tugging at the bell, Elara discarded the suggestions of his advisors and ordered the death of his son in the same fashion the calf had died, under the same wheel [4].

Specifically, there are two virtues of Elara that makes him one of the greatest monarchs in Sri Lankan history: his insistence of the rule of law and his respect for the religion of the land. Elara seems to have shrewdly embraced ideas the Roman statesman Seneca later wryly expressed:
Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by the rulers as useful.
Yet another story in the Mahävamsa has it that the yoke of Elara’s chariot once damaged the stones of a stupa (dome-shaped Buddhist shrine) after which the king leapt down at once and demanded the resident monks sever his head using the chariot wheel. The monks refused and suggested that the king make peace by repairing the stupa instead [5].
It was a thousand years before the egalitarianism of the Magna Carta and the renowned religious freedom of Genghis Khan’s empire that Elara ruled over Rajarata. It is difficult to escape the sense of adulation that must have surrounded him during and after his forty-four year reign, even with the most circumspect reading of the ancient sources. Today there stands a statue of him in the gardens of the Madras High Court in Chennai, a recognition of his justness.
Keeping in mind Elara’s good standing in history, we are forced to resort to imagination if we are to dissect the unrest that must have gripped the island when a young Sinhalese prince from the southern kingdom of Ruhuna contested the Anuradhapura throne. This prince, known as Dutthagámani (The Disobedient) at the time, was not fated by history to be an unpopular king following a successful one, like Commodus after Marcus Aurelius or James II after his brother Charles II. Although Dutthagámani came from royal beginnings, he built his army with trust and would go on to win over his people, leaving behind one of the greatest legacies in the history of the island. Before it could come to that, however, he had a few battles to win.
Note on Sinhalese, Dravidian and Tamil: The Sinhalese of Sri Lanka are an Indo-European language speaking people with a culture historically steeped in Buddhism. The Tamils are a large ethno-linguistic group native to the south of the Indian subcontinent whose language belongs to the Dravidian family. Many (including the Cholas) were followers of Hinduism. In the context of these early mutual influences between Sri Lanka and South India, the terms Dravidian and Tamil may be used interchangeably, although they refer to different things.
REFERENCES
[1] Codrington, Humphrey William, and Arthur Maurice Hocart. A Short History of Ceylon: With Maps and Illustrations. New Delhi: Asian Educational Services, 1994. Print.
[2] Silappatikaram — http://self.gutenberg.org/articles/eng/Silappatikaram
[3] Mahävamsa — The Great Chronicle of Sinhalese history put into writing by Buddhist monks starting in the third century AD.
[4] Mahävamsa Chapter 21: The Five Kings — http://lakdiva.org/mahavamsa/chap021.html
[5] Ibid.
Originally published at http://purehistoryjuice.com on July 28, 2017.
