Robin Coningham

Monks, caves and kings: A reassessment of the nature of early Buddhism in Sri Lanka

Abstract This paper begins by describing the early history of Buddhism in Sri Lanka as recorded in the two Pali chronicles, the Dipavamsa and the Mahavamsa. Their general approach treats the introduction of Buddhism into the island as a royal package sent by the Emperor Asoka to his Sri Lankan ally Devanampiya Tissa, through the formers son and daughter, Mahinda and Sanghamitta. Buddhism was immediately accepted as the state religion, thus linking it with the destiny of the Sinhala people. This pattern is not, however, supported by the only extant category of Buddhist archaeological remains from this period ‐ over 1,000 Buddhist cave‐dwellings. It is clear from their dedicatory inscriptions that they were constructed by patrons bearing high royal titles about whom the chronicles are remarkably silent. By drawing from studies of modern forest‐dwelling monks, it is possible to identify more fully the processes at work and to identify the discrepancy between the two records. It is argued that the first monk...

From 'collapse' to urban diaspora: The transformation of low-density, dispersed agrarian urbanism

Abstract In the tropical regions of southern Asia, Southeast Asia and the southern Maya lowlands, the management of water was crucial to the maintenance of political power and the distribution of communities in the landscape. Between the ninth and sixteenth centuries AD, however, this diverse range of medieval socio-political systems were destabilised by climatic change. Comparative study reveals that despite their diversity, the outcome for each society was the same: the breakdown of low-density urban centres in favour of compact communities in peripheral regions. The result of this, an ‘urban diaspora’, highlights the relationship between the control of water and power, but also reveals that the collapse of urban centres was a political phenomenon with society-wide repercussions.

The state of theocracy: defining an early medieval hinterland in Sri Lanka

The ancient Sri Lankan city of Anuradhapura is currently the subject of one of the worlds largest and most intensive archaeological research projects. Having traced its growth from an Iron Age village to a medieval city, the research team now moves to the task of modelling the surrounding landscape. Three seasons of fieldwork have located numerous sites of which the most prominent in the urban period are monasteries. Here is a clue about how the early urban hinterland was managed which has implications well beyond Sri Lanka.

Paradise Lost: the bombing of the Temple of the Tooth--a UNESCO World Heritage site in Sri Lanka

The bombing of the Temple of the Tooth at Kandy in 1998 provides the focus for an analysis of the political targeting of heritage in Sri Lanka.

Were cities built as images

Many ancient city sites display a remarkable regularity in their plan which has led to considerable debate on the symbolism and intentionality which may lie behind these arrangements. Grid plan cities of the Greek and Roman world were discussed by Haverfield almost a century ago, but it was above all the cities of South and East Asia analyzed by Wheatley in his influential Pivot of the Four Quarters (1971) which has given new emphasis to the potential of meaning and significance. Such planned cities necessarily incorporate an essential tension between praxis — the practical day-to-day needs of the urban community — and idealism, the desire to impose on those practical concerns a city-plan which expresses a symbolic or cosmological image. Contemporary texts, where they exist, may help towards an answer, but the physicality of the city plan itself provides the crucial ground for argument as to whether symbolic or ideological imperatives governed the actual outcome. Cities may be conceptualized in ideal terms without ever taking on the physical attributes of any ideal form. The contributors to this Viewpoint approach the issue from a diversity of standpoints and with reference to different geographical areas. Were cities built as images? Did powerful belief systems combined with strong centralized control give rise to cities where the moat represented the encircling sea and the raised cathedral the mountain-dwelling of the gods? Or are such readings more the product of Western analysis and wishful thinking than the original intentions of their builders? The discussion here is opened by an architectural historian, who places city-planning firmly within the Western intellectual tradition, and considers it in particular as a product of Greek geometry. A series of regional specialists then take up the baton and assess the evidence for symbolic city planning in Egypt, the Roman world, South and Southeast Asia, and Mesoamerica. How far did cities of the Classical world conform to ideas set out by Aristotle and Vitruvius? Were the regulations of the Artashastra really adopted as a practical guide for city lay-out in South Asia? The balance of evidence — of what may have been intended, against what was actually laid out on the ground — provides fertile ground for a stimulating diversity of opinions.

A geochemical investigation of the origin of Rouletted and other related South Asian fine wares.

Pottery of the Rouletted ware family belongs to Indias Early Historic period (c. 500 BC to c. AD 200) and has been found as far east as Bali in Indonesia and as far west as Berenike in Egypt. Although they appear similar to Mediterranean products, scientific tests by the authors show that Rouletted ware Arikamedu Type 10 and Sri Lankan Grey ware had a common geological origin in India. Since Grey ware at least pre-dates the arrival of Roman pottery in India, all these related wares were probably the products of indigenous communities.

Socio-economic transformations : Settlement survey in the tehran plain and excavations at tepe pardis

ABSTRACT An archaeological survey of the plain of Tehran was begun in August 2003, marking the initiation of the second phase of collaborative research between Durham University, the University of Bradford, the University of Leicester, the University of Tehran and the Iranian Cultural Heritage and Tourism Organisation (ICHTO). The survey was launched with three main aims. Firstly, to pilot the collection of data regarding the frequency, distribution, density and condition of sites from the terminal Palaeolithic c. 8000 B.C., through the Late Chalcolithic c. 3000 B.C. to the present. Secondly, to provide a basis from which to select prehistoric sites for detailed survey and test excavation in order to enhance the absolute chronology of the Tehran plain. Finally, to begin to assess the archaeological landscape background to these changes in the light of geomorpho- logical analysis. In the summer of 2004, we continued this work during a second season and recorded a total of 123 archaeological sites, including 14 previously unknown Chalcolithic sites. One of the larger Chalcolithic sites to be identified in our first season, Tepe Pardis, was also excavated in 2004 in order to enhance the absolute chronology for the plain, and has generated dates of c. 5300 B.C. for the Late Neolithic/Transitional Chalcolithic interface (Fig. 1). Finally, our new survey data has reconfirmed our earlier findings that this non-renewable cultural resource is under substantial pressure from farming, building and illicit excavations.

Archaeology and identity in south Asia : interpretations and consequences

Whilst archaeological discoveries initiated by the Europeans have long encouraged a pride in Indias past among its educated elite, there is even less evidence of nationalism influencing the practice of Indian Archaeology. TRIGGER 1995: 271 In 1995 Bruce Trigger dismissed the role of nationalism within the archaeology of south Asia (1995: 271), apparently ignoring even the archaeological nature of the crest of the new Indian republic — the Sarnath lion; and his comments have acted as a catalyst for this special number of papers, many of which explore the very real relationship between the south Asian nation-state and archaeology. We have expanded Triggers tripartite division of nationalist, colonialist or imperialist archaeology (1984), to reflect the aspirations of additional units such as regions, religious groups and individual communities over the last 200 years. In so doing we have used the concept of identity, as offered by Northrup (1989: 63), to encompass these disparate groups: Identity is the tendency for human beings, individually and in groups, to establish, maintain and protect a sense of self-meaning, predictability and purpose. It encompasses a sense of self-definition at multiple levels.

The earliest Buddhist shrine: excavating the birthplace of the Buddha, Lumbini (Nepal)

Key locations identified with the lives of important religious founders have often been extensively remodelled in later periods, entraining the destruction of many of the earlier remains. Recent UNESCO-sponsored work at the major Buddhist centre of Lumbini in Nepal has sought to overcome these limitations, providing direct archaeological evidence of the nature of an early Buddhist shrine and a secure chronology. The excavations revealed a sequence of early structures preceding the major rebuilding by Asoka during the third century BC. The sequence of durable brick architecture supplanting non-durable timber was foreseen by British prehistorian Stuart Piggott when he was stationed in India over 70 years ago. Lumbini provides a rare and valuable insight into the structure and character of the earliest Buddhist shrines.

The Vijayan colonization and the archaeology of identity in Sri Lanka

In my tours throughout the interior, I found ancient monuments, apparently defying decay, of which no one could tell the date or the founder; and temples and cities in ruins, whose destroyers were equally unknown. SIR JAMES EMERSON TENNANT(1859: xxv). There are competing, yet interlinked, identities in Sri Lanka through which people ‘establish, maintain, and protect a sense of self-meaning, predictability, and purpose’ (Northrup 1989: 55). These have become established over hundreds of years, and communities are attributed labels including Sinhala, Tamil, Vadda, Buddhist and Hindu (Coningham & Lewer 1999: 857). Sri Lanka is now experiencing what Azar (1990) has called a ‘protracted social conflict’, wherein a section of the Tamil communities led by the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) are engaged in a struggle to establish a Tamil honieland or Eelam . International links, especially with south India, have had important implications on the formation of identities in Sri Lanka. Here we will focus on a key influence which has deep archaeological and political implications, whose interpretation has informed and distorted the present understanding of the concept and evolution of identities. This theme, the Vijayan colonization of the island, illustrates the formulation of identities, especially as derived from a historical chronicle, the Mahavamsa , which was ‘rediscovered’ by colonial officials in AD 1826 and has played a major role in determining the dynamics of this conflict.