THE VIJAYA ORIGIN MYTH OF SRI LANKA AND THE STRANGENESS OF KINGSHIP * The story of Vijaya has become fundamental to the way in which the Sinhalese think about themselves. 1 It is this errant Indian prince, descended from a lion, who is credited with bringing civ- ilization to Sri Lanka. His tale is enshrined in the Maha ¯vam : sa,a chronicle set down by Buddhist monks in the late fifth or possibly early sixth century AD, which is granted an almost sacred authority by many Sinhalese. 2 In the modern era, when Sinhala-ness has shaped and asserted itself in the face of British imperialism and post-independence ethnic politics, the ramifications of the Vijaya story have been unavoidable. 3 Overwhelmingly, its significance has been seen to lie in its apparent revelation of the following: the Sinhalese are the natural heirs to the island; the founder of the Sinhalese race is an ‘Aryan’; the land is given over to the Buddhist dispensation. This has obvious resonances at a time when a Tamil minority, who are largely Hindu and often characterized as ‘Dravidian’, press their own claims to legitimate residence and governance. In 1983 ethnic rioting turned their separatist struggle into a con- flagration that took on the character of a civil war punctuated by acts of terrorism. In 2009, that phase of the conflict has been brought to a bloody conclusion. When the victorious President Rajapaksa made an offering at the sacred Bo tree at Anura ¯dhapura — descended from the tree under which the Buddha attained * My thanks to the following for reading parts of this article or for offering advice: Gananath Obeyesekere, John D. Rogers, Marshall Sahlins and Marilyn Strathern. Versions of the article were presented and discussed at the ASH seminar at Clare Hall, Cambridge, and the South and Southeast Asian Studies Seminar in Cambridge. 1 Exactly how long it has been fundamental is a matter of debate. For its seventeenth- century importance, see Alan Strathern, Kingship and Conversion in Sixteenth-Century Sri Lanka: Portuguese Imperialism in a Buddhist Land (Cambridge, 2007), 238. 2 Maha ¯vam : sa: The Great Chronicle of Sri Lanka, trans. Ananda W. P. Guruge (Colombo, 1989), VI–VII; The Dı ¯pavam : sa: An Ancient Buddhist Historical Record, trans. Hermann Oldenberg (1879; New Delhi, 2004), IX. 3 Steven Kemper, The Presence of the Past: Chronicles, Politics, and Culture in Sinhala Life (Ithaca, 1991); John Clifford Holt, The Buddhist Vis : n : u: Religious Transformation, Politics, and Culture (New York, 2004), 62–4. Past and Present, no. 203 (May 2009) ß The Past and Present Society, Oxford, 2009 doi:10.1093/pastj/gtp019