மஹாவிஹாரம் · கருத்தாக்கம்Mahāvihāra as Ideology
The four load-bearing citations here (Gunawardana 1990, Indrapala 2005, Coningham 1996–2013, Sivasundaram 2013) are mainstream academic references, taught in Sri Lankan, Indian, UK, and US universities. None is a Tamil-nationalist source.
A working academic-forum register that lists the Sinhala-, international-, and Tamil-scholar work concurrently, so that any counterargument-page cannot dismiss the frame as 'Tamil ethnic reading'. Nilaiththanmai target: the reading of the Mahāvaṃsa-as-ideology becomes uncontroversial in reference-work citation, which is what the underlying scholarship already supports.
Gunawardana 1990 · 'The People of the Lion'
R.A.L.H. Gunawardana's landmark essay 'The People of the Lion: Sinhala Consciousness in History and Historiography' (in Social Scientists' Association, Ethnicity and Social Change in Sri Lanka, Colombo, 1984; expanded 1990) established that the modern Sinhala ethnic self-conception is a 19th-c. formation shaped by Turnour's English translation of the Mahāvaṃsa (1837) and colonial-era vernacular revival, not a continuous pre-modern identity [01]. Gunawardana was Peradeniya's most-cited historian on this question until his death; the essay is on standard reading lists.
Indrapala 2005 · The Evolution of an Ethnic Identity
K. Indrapala, in The Evolution of an Ethnic Identity: The Tamils of Sri Lanka (MV Publications, Sydney, 2005), applied Coningham's Anurādhapura stratigraphy and Karunatilake's linguistic work to establish that Tamil and Sinhala ethnic identities emerged as differentiated formations relatively late in the historical record, and that pre-modern populations moved between religious and linguistic affiliations without the modern ethnic-boundary logic [02].
Coningham et al. · the Anurādhapura Project
The British-Sri Lankan Anurādhapura Project (Coningham, Allchin, Batt, Lucy et al.) produced material evidence — Tamil-Brāhmī graffiti, pre-Aśokan literacy, mixed-community occupation strata — that cannot be reconciled with a mono-ethnic Sinhala founding narrative [03]. Their work is published in Cambridge Archaeological Journal, BAR International Series, and Antiquity.
Sivasundaram 2013 · Islanded
Sujit Sivasundaram's Islanded: Britain, Sri Lanka, and the Bounds of an Indian Ocean Colony (University of Chicago Press, 2013) showed that the island-frame itself — 'Sri Lanka as one bounded historical unit' — is a 19th-c. British colonial cartographic project, and that pre-colonial patterns were of littoral and inter-island connection [04]. The book won the Royal Historical Society's Whitfield Prize. This directly supports the Oceanic Node argument (Dossier 03): 'island' is a colonial cartographic frame, not a self-evident historical unit.
What the four concessions mean
The debate is no longer whether the Mahāvaṃsa is ideology — mainstream Sinhala and international historians accept it is. The debate is what to do with that concession. TLTE's answer, held in this dossier, is: read the ideology as ideology, read the material record as material record, and let the reader see they do not coincide.
Where this scholarship is peer-reviewed. Aarambam does not add to that peer review; it cites it faithfully.
The Sinhala-institutional counterpart to any Tamil-source reading.
Where site-interpretation labelling depends on which historiographical reading is adopted.
- [01]Gunawardana, R.A.L.H., 'The People of the Lion: Sinhala Consciousness in History and Historiography', in Sri Lanka: History and the Roots of Conflict, ed. J. Spencer (Routledge, 1990); orig. in SSA Ethnicity and Social Change (Colombo, 1984).
- [02]Indrapala, K., The Evolution of an Ethnic Identity: The Tamils of Sri Lanka c. 300 BCE to c. 1200 CE, MV Publications, Sydney, 2005.
- [03]Coningham, R.A.E. (ed.), Anuradhapura: The British-Sri Lankan Excavations at Anuradhapura Salgaha Watta 2, Vols. I–II (BAR International Series 824 & 1508, 1999 & 2006).
- [04]Sivasundaram, S., Islanded: Britain, Sri Lanka, and the Bounds of an Indian Ocean Colony, University of Chicago Press, 2013.
- · Does not read the Mahāvaṃsa as 'false'. It is a Mahāvihāra document of enormous value read in its own frame — as monastic chronicle.
- · Does not treat 'Sinhala Buddhism' as ideology. Sinhala Buddhism is a religious tradition of great depth. The critique is of the 19th-c. ethno-national retrojection, not of the religion.
- · Does not personalise. No living historian on any side of the debate is characterised.
- · Does not claim mainstream Sinhala historiography is 'anti-national'. Gunawardana, Indrapala, and Sivasundaram are cited precisely because they are inside their own scholarly traditions.