NEW YEAR AND THERAVADA BUDDHISM
It is unfortunate that the Europeans, especially the British pioneered modern Historical studies or Historiography of our region. Any History cannot be objective as there is no objectivity as such, except in the minds of the objectivists, realists,etc. It is not the prerogative of History to be subjective and relative as even Mathematics and Physics, the so called queen and king of science are not objective. What we teach in the schools and the universities are western Mathematics and western Physics and not Mathematics and Physics as such. The History pioneered by the British and then followed by the Historians trained by them in the Liberal, Marxist or any other western tradition is essentially British History of the region. It is Historiography and one should not refer only to the Histories written by others those do not agree with the European History as Historiography. It should be clear that by European History I do not refer to the History of Europe but to the History written by those belonging to the European traditions including the Marxist tradition.
What is written here is mainly based on some studies a former student of mine and I have carried out during the last few months. We see History in an essentially Sinhala Buddhist framework and we do not have to pretend to be objective unlike the westerners who want to deceive the others. The trouble with the British is that they see the world and the history of the world through their experience and attempt to interpret events as they suit them, while giving the impression that are objective.
I have no objection to the use of the term Sinhala and Hindu new year if the usage is consistent with the experience in other fields and areas as well. To me it appears what I call local consistency with experience is the only yardstick that can be used in deciding between competing theories. It has to be emphasised that there is no experience devoid of theories contrary to what the phenomenolgists seem to believe, and experience is theory and concept laden. Thus experience has no independence that the theories and the concepts lack, and the theories, concepts, experience make a holistic system. There is no perception without conception. For example there is no way of knowing the greenness of a leaf without the concept of greenness. However, it does not imply that there should be a word to experience the greenness as any normal child who does not know any language would know the "greenness" from the "redness".
The term Sinhala and Hindu new year was coined by the British in the nineteenth century and since then it has been developed to the point where Sinhala and Tamil or Sinhala and Dravida new year is used to describe this event. In the nineteenth century before the British coined the term Sinhala and Hindu new year there was not even a Sinhala new year.. There was a new year or "avurudda" celebrated by the Sinhala Buddhists as a community. The problem started when the British realised that the "avurudda" of the Sinhala Buddhists was not the same as their new year which fell on the first of January. The Sinhalas did not refer to the January first as the new year and some of them called it the "Janeruwa". For them the "avurudda" without an adjective dawned in April and not in January. However as far as the British were concerned there was only one new year that dawned on January first and it was THE universal new year. Other new years were local, traditional, indigenous etc., but not the universal. The western Christian modernity that envisages making all the people Christian by culture if not by religion has seen to it that the January first that has been adopted as the Christian new year is the new year of most of the people in the world. Thus the new year of the Sinhala Buddhists in April was relegated to the Sinhala new year making the January first THE new year. However, apparently the British in order to make sure that the Buddhists and the Hindus were given the same number of holidays in Sri Lanka called it not the Sinhala new year but the Sinhala and Hindu new year, though the Hindus did not celebrate a new year on this particular day in April. If that was the case then the British should have called it the Hindu new year in India. In that country which is predominantly Hindu no new year is celebrated in April.
However, though Hindus do not consider April 12, 13 or 14 as the new year at present, there are countries in South East Asia that celebrate a kind of new year on this day. These are the Theravada Buddhist countries from Myanmar to Kampuchea. For the Theravada Buddhists in these countries it is the "sankranthi" or the transition of the sun from the constellation of pisces to that of aries. I am told that even the people in the Theravada sectors in China celebrate "sankranthi" on this day.
Though the British called this event the Sinhala and Hindu new year it is clear that the Hindus in Sri Lanka or in India do not celebrate this new year. There are some Tamils, as well as peace mongers among the Sinhalas who would like to declare from their pulpits that the Sinhala Buddhists took the new year in April from the Tamil Hindus. However these declarations are not consistent with what is observed. In India no Hindu celebrates April 12, 13, or 14 as the new year. The peace mongers who only declare what the others have already said, would like to give the impression that the Sinhalas received the concept of new year in April, from the Tamil Hindus.
It is not my intention to claim that it was the Sinhala people who created the concept of a new year in April. There are some people who give meanings to the word "avurudda" and interpret it as the day on which the sun passes a point directly above in its diurnal motion round the earth. For those who think that the sun does not move but it is the earth that moves round the sun it has to be pointed that it is the relative motion that is considered here. In any event all motions or positional displacements are relative and those who believe that there is an absolute motion of the earth round the sun are mistaken.
The sun passes a point vertically above in Sri Lanka at different places not on 14th of April but on days prior to that. Also the new year that dawns in April is based on the Saka varsha or the year of Saka and is not the same as the western year. The western year is 365.242190 days while a Saka Varsha consists of 365.256363 days. This difference is due to the rotation of the axis of the earth or the precision that the ancients also knew by the name "ayanaya". There are two systems used in calculations in Astrology called "nirayana" ans "sayana" meaning without "ayana" and with "ayana" respectively. As a result of this difference the Saka Varsha advances relative to the western year and the time at which the Saka Varsha dawns moves ahead in the calendar by one day approximately in 70 years with respect to the western year. It is said that during the time of Robert Knox the new year dawned towards the end of March, and as the British had not adopted the Gregorian calendar during that time this meant that the new year dawned towards the end of the first week in April at that time. This is added evidence to show that the dawn of the new year has nothing to with the diurnal motion of the sun, as about thousand years ago the new year would have dawned towards the end of March according to the western calendar during which period the sun does not pass a point vertically above, as far as Sri Lanka is concerned. Thus it is unlikely that it was the Sinhala people who were the first to celebrate the new year in April or in March some thousand years ago.
It appears that the use of Saka Varsha began more than 1920 years ago. The Sakas were a dynasty that ruled western parts of ancient Bharaths around this time. The name of Sathavahana kings is also mentioned in connection with the Saka Varsha. When one considers the fact that Sakas were close to Udeni or Ujjain, that is identified not only with commerce but also with astronomical observations, and also the fact that the ancient town or "Pura" was situated at a latitude 23.5 North of the equator, a different picture begins to emerge.
It is unfortunate that unlike in Sri Lanka there are no Vansakathas in India. The history of India is the histories of dynasties and not that of tribes or of a nation. Various dynasties, perhaps together with some of their relatives, have ruled a section of a tribe or tribes during certain periods of time. The dynasties have sometimes shifted their area of influence sometimes under challenge from other dynasties and no section of a single tribe has been identified with a particular dynasty for more than a few centuries. This is in contrast to what happened in Sri Lanka where the dynasty of the Sinhas as symbolised by Vijaya and other tribal rulers were defeated in no time during the period of Pandukabhaya to form the Sinhala nation. Some of those who could only imitate western theories on nation would not agree with this statement as according to their masters in the west no nation was possible before the advent of capitalism. Then of course there are others who without realising the limitations of Social Sciences, would claim that the nation is an imaginary concept. They do not see that in Social Sciences it is difficult to give definitions as in the case of Physics and the so called natural sciences, and they seem to be of the opinion that anything that cannot be defined as clearly as in Physics, does not exist.
The Sinhalas wrote their Vansakathas which are also the histories of the country, the nation, and other sacred objects such as Sri Maha Bodhi, and the Tooth Relic. The first vansakatha "Deepavansa" was on the country and then followed Mahavansa on the nation. The absence of vansakathas has made the understanding of the history of Bharath a difficult task compared to that of Sri Lanka. However this difficulty could be overcome to some extent by considering the history of the region of Bharath and Sri Lanka as a whole. When looked at history from that perspective the new year that dawns in April appears to be connected with the spread of Theravada Buddhism. The fact that it is the Theravada Buddhist countries that celebrate the new year in some form or other also encourages us to think along these lines.
(To be continued)
Professor Nalin de Silva
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