Talk:Battle of Vijithapura

GA Review

This review is transcluded from Talk:Battle of Vijithapura/GA1. The edit link for this section can be used to add comments to the review.

Reviewer: Sturmvogel 66 (talk) 23:38, 19 December 2009 (UTC) GA review – see WP:WIAGA for criteria

1. Is it reasonably well written?

   A. Prose quality:

   B. MoS compliance:

2. Is it factually accurate and verifiable?

   A. References to sources:

   B. Citation of reliable sources where necessary:

   C. No original research:

3. Is it broad in its coverage?

   A. Major aspects:

   B. Focused:

4. Is it neutral?

   Fair representation without bias:

5. Is it stable?

   No edit wars, etc:

6. Does it contain images to illustrate the topic?

   A. Images are copyright tagged, and non-free images have fair use rationales:

   B. Images are provided where possible and appropriate, with suitable captions:

7. Overall:

   Pass or Fail:

   Nice job.

Thanks for the review, Sturmvogel 66 :) ≈ Chamal ^talk ¤ 00:58, 20 December 2009 (UTC)

GA status revocation

• Our article considers the Mahamvamsa chronicles as (largely) accurate reconstruction of certain events, that happened over half-a-millennia prior to their drafting. This goes against current consensus in Sri Lankan historiography.

• Readers are advised to consult the following sources —by professional historians— about ways of interpreting the chronicles, and why they cannot be understood as objective history:

Walters, Jonathan S. “Buddhist History: The Sri Lankan Pāli Vaṃsas and Their Community.” In Querying the Medieval: Text and the History of Practices in South Asia. By Ronald Inden, Jonathan Walters, and Daud Ali, 99–164. Oxford University Press, 2000

Kiribamune, Sirima. “The Mahāvaṁsa: A Study of the Ancient Historiography of Sri Lanka.” In Senarat Paranativana Commemoration Volume. Edited by Leelananda Prematilleke, Karthigesu Indrapala, and J. E. van Lohuizen-de Leeuw, 125–136. Studies in South Asian Culture 7. Leiden, The Netherlands: E. J. Brill, 1978.

Bechert, Heinz. “The Beginnings of Buddhist Historiography: Mahavamsa and Political Thinking.” In Religion and Legitimation of Power in Sri Lanka. Edited by Bardwell L. Smith, 1–12. New York: Columbia University Press, 1996.

Seneviratne, H. L. (1989). IDENTITY AND THE CONFLATION OF PAST AND PRESENT. Social Analysis: The International Journal of Social and Cultural Practice, 25, 3–17.

Berkwitz, Stephen C. Buddhist History in the Vernacular: The Power of the Past in Late Medieval Sri Lanka. Brill’s Indological Library. Leiden, The Netherlands, and Boston: E. J. Brill, 2004.

Gunawardhana, R. A. L. H. “The People of the Lion: The Sinhala Identity and Ideology in History and Historiography.” In Sri Lanka: History and the Roots of Conflict. Edited by Jonathan Spencer, 45–85. London and New York: Routledge, 1990.

It is against this background [of the ruler of Anuradhapura being among the many suzerains of the land] that the campaigns of Dutthagamni which form an integral and important element in the Sinhala ideology, particularly in more recent times, have to be examined.

In the Mahavamsa, Elara, against whom Dutthagamni waged his war, was the ruler of the whole of northern Sri Lanka and members of Dutthagamni's lineage had been rulers of the entire Rohana kingdom eversince Mahanaga established his power at Mahagama. Dutthagamni is presented as waging war in the interest of Buddhism. His campaigns culminate dramatically with the capture of Anuradhapura after a duel fought in accordance with the kshatriya rules of chivalry. Thus a Buddhist prince of the Sinhala dynasty who ruled over the southern principality conquers the northern principality ruled by a Tamil who, though known for his just rule, was yet a man of "false beliefs."

This view of the chroniclers has influenced modern historical writings, and the chauvinist Sinhala writings have picked on these campaigns as representing the exemplary victorious war waged by the Sinhalese against the Tamils. However, even the author of the Mahavamsa, who was obviously transposing to an earlier period conditions more typical of his own times, found it difficult to reconcile material available in his sources with this anachronistic picture he was trying to present. Some information in the Mahavamsa itself suggests that not all the people who fought against Dutthagamni were Tamils. For instance, Nandhimitta, a general in Dutthagamni's army, is said to have had an uncle who was a general serving Elara. Though the Mahavamsa tried to present Dutthagamni as the ruler of a unified Rohana fighting against the sole ruler of the northern plains, it is evident that the sources used by the chronicler carried accounts of Dutthagamni fighting against thirty-two different rulers.

As the present writer has printed out previously, the most plausible explanation of the available evidence is that Dutthagamani was a powerful military leader who unified the island for the first time after fighting against several independent principalities. His campaigns do not appear to represent a Sinhala-Tamil confrontation.

Kiribamune (1986) engages in a similar reading.

Die Gegenwart der Geschichte - Altsinghalesische Chroniken und ihr moderner Gebrauch. Vortrag am 29.1.1998 anläßlich des Kolloquiums "Sri Lanka: 50 Jahre Unabhängigkeit". Tilman Frasch

• The controversial epic of Dutugemunu (Pali: Dutthagamini), is perhaps the best-known narrative concerning the much-contested ancient Sri Lankan polity. The earliest version is found in the Mahavamsa and purports to be an account of events that occurred in the late second century BCE.
  — Dharmakirti, Devarakkhita Jayabahu (2011). "The Saga of Dutugemunu". In Holt, John Clifford (ed.). The Sri Lanka Reader: History, Culture, Politics. London: Duke University Press. p. 30.

• The myth-cycle continued (and continues) to remain in flux to reflect contemporary anxieties:

  In both the Dipavamsa and the Mahavamsa, Elara although a Hindu is accorded the status of a righteous king who ruled "justly" and "wisely" (Kemper, 1991: 61), but in the Pujavaliya he has descended to the status of an unrighteous king who destroyed Buddhist monasteries. In the Pali literature, Magha is memorialized for the destruction he caused and is projected as a Mara (anti-Buddha) type figure — it is this historical experience of Magha that almost certainly accounts for Elara’s descent to unrighteousness.

  A more profound descent in Elara’s status is recorded in the seventeenth-century text, the Rajavaliya, a discourse on the history of Sinhalese Buddhist kingship up to the arrival of the Portuguese. In the Rajavaliya (Lineage of Kings), Elara and his followers are equated with the rampaging hordes of Mara. This descent of Elara to the status of the absolutely demonic must be seen in the light of the social trauma initiated with the coming of the European powers and the Dutch expulsion of the Portuguese by 1656.
  — De Silva Wijeyeratne, Roshan (1996-09-01). "Ambivalence, Contingency and the Failure of Exclusion: the Ontological Schema of the 1972 Constitution of the Republic of Sri Lanka". Social & Legal Studies. 5 (3): 378. doi:10.1177/096466399600500305. ISSN 0964-6639.

• Extrapolating, Kapferer (1988) writes,

  The texts cannot be reduced merely to the context in which they were written or to the ontological principles underlying mythic construction. They are ideological in the sense in which I use the word; that is, the events of a lived social and political reality are selected to achieve their significance in accordance with an ontology which, in its turn, gains force and meaning in a world of flesh and blood.

• To use an analogy, the epic of Mahabharata is believed to build upon a historical war but that hardly renders Mahabharata a text of history, from where we can reconstruct all the grand maneuvers and intrigues — contrary to what Hindu nationalists (or here, Sinhalese-Buddhist nationalists) might have us believe. There are better "frames" to interrogate these "structures."
• An analysis of used sources (excluding news-articles/opinion-editorials):

• Two (non-critical) translations—by Wilhelm Geiger and S. Wijesooriya—of Mahavamsa. Treatable as primary sources esp. that Geigers's newer scholarship contradicts his previous analysis of the chronicles.
• A (non-critical) translation—by H. M. Moratuwagama—of Thupavamsa. Treatable as a primary source, drafted around late 13th century.
• A historical fiction by E. A. Abesekara.
• A reader (ed. Arnold Wright) where the concerned chapter was originally published by a lawyer, about a hundred and twenty years ago.
• A pop history, written about a hundred years ago, by one John M. Senaveratna, since described as a romantic Sinhalese nationalist.

• None of the above sources satisfy the standards of historical scholarship. That leaves us with a single source — Siriweera. TrangaBellam (talk) 19:35, 21 October 2021 (UTC)

Proposed merge of Ten Giant Warriors into Battle of Vijithapura

No independent notability. TrangaBellam (talk) 20:48, 25 October 2021 (UTC)

IMO, if such merge happened, it would be detrimental to the notoriety of both articles; the merge could be less destructive if it was the other way around: adding the "Battle of Vijithapura" into "the Ten Giant Warriors" one. Reason: more readers are likely to search and find faster the words "10 warriors", or "giant warriors" in a search engine than the specific keyword "Vijithapura" next to "battle", to find the data. 187.162.96.85 (talk) 16:45, 2 April 2022 (UTC)

so, i think it would be better to keep both articles separate, or worst case, only keep the one about the "Ten Giant Warrios". 187.162.96.85 (talk) 16:47, 2 April 2022 (UTC)

I am afraid that you arguments are not based in policy. Searching for "Ten Giant Warriors" in Google Scholar leads to three hits, of which one is irrelevant (some study on geckos) and another, a college magazine. Searching for "Ten Great Giants" hardly improves the situation with Google Scholar throwing up three relevant hits. There is no hit for "දසමහා යෝධයෝ". TrangaBellam (talk) 05:22, 28 August 2022 (UTC)

Oppose, given that the scope of Ten Giant Warriors extends beyond the scope of the battle (so the merge direction proposed is questionable), and that the topics are sufficiently distinct that readers are best served by having the topics discussed separately. That is, WP:NOTMERGE point 3. Klbrain (talk) 17:55, 1 October 2022 (UTC)

GA Reassessment

This discussion is transcluded from Talk:Battle of Vijithapura/GA2. The edit link for this section can be used to add comments to the reassessment.

• See this note. TrangaBellam (talk) 19:44, 25 October 2021 (UTC)

  Delisted. Any improvement is impossible without starting from the ground up. TrangaBellam (talk) 19:25, 17 November 2021 (UTC)