The cult of Pattini or Kannakai Amman in Sri Lanka

Kannaki Amman and devotees

Kannaki Amman depicted at Vattappalai, Sri Lanka

Kannaki Amman Kovil, Vattappalai, Sri Lanka

Kannaki, the principal character of Cilappatikâram, was in course of time raised to the rank of a deity. According to the story she was from a family of affluent merchants settled at Kaverippattinam in the Chola country. She was married to Kovalan, the son of a merchant prince. Kovalan indulged in a life of ease, luxury and pleasure. He was attracted by Matavi, a young and accomplished damsel from a family of harlots at Kaverippattinam. While he was living with her he had exhausted all his resources and became impoverished. In that circumstance he returned to Kannaki with the intention of venturing a new career. Kannaki gave him one of her anklets so that he could dispose it and collect money for an enterprise. The ornament was sold to a goldsmith in the city of Madurai, who had complicity with a theft in the queen’s apartment at the palace. During the course of investigations, the guards on the false information supplied by the goldsmith accused Kovalan. He was taken into custody and was beheaded on the King’s order.

On receiving information about the tragedy Kannaki raged in fury, proceeded to the city of the Pandya king, sought out the ruler and demonstrated her husband’s innocence. When the monarch saw that a serious breach of justice had been committed, his sceptre slipped down. The king, who was overwhelmed with a sense of grief and shame, collapsed and died. The queen also suffered a similar fate. Kannaki whose fire of wrath was still burning announced to the gods and ascetics of the city that she would avenge the treachery committed against her innocent husband. She tore apart with her hands her left breast and having circumambulated thrice cast it way with the curse that the city should be burnt down. Madurai was then destroyed by fire.[1]

When Ilanko, the author of the Cilappatikâram, wrote his masterly work Kannaki was already deified and in her deified form she was known as Pattini. By his time the Pattini cult was probably popular and fairly widespread. It was assimilated by Buddhism in the Tamil country and it is significant that Pattini appears as a Buddhist deity in the Manimêkalai, which incidentally refers to a shrine of Pattini at Vañci, the capital city of the Cera kings.[2] It would appear that the spread of the Pattini cult in Lanka was facilitated through the contacts maintained with Buddhist centres in the Tamil country.

Although the Pattini cult had its origins in South India it was in Sri Lanka that it had a continuous existence as a popular cult over a long period of time. Until recently it was popular among the Sinhalese Buddhists and the Hindu Tamils. Shrines dedicated for the worship of Pattini are numerous and found scattered over a large part of the country. Elaborate rituals and a variety of literary traditions associated with this cult have developed over a long period. Yet, the early history of this cult in Sri Lanka is still vague and the chronology of its early development is uncertain.

The earliest textual references to Pattini are from the 15^th Century. The pertinent observations of S. Paranavitana may be recalled here. He says: “The goddess Pattini, whose worship formed such an important part of the religion of the Sinhalese up to recent times, is referred to for the first time in the reign of Parakramabahu VI who built a three storied shrine dedicated to her in the vicinity of his capital.”[3] Such a development presupposes that the cult had gained in popularity during the 15^th century.

Pattini is referred to in the Gadaladeniya inscription of Senasammata Vikramabâhu, which was engraved in A.D. 1511. It records the following expressions: “This is the command of the Three Gems; this is the command of the four guardian gods Utpalavarna, Sumana, Vibhisana, Sanmukha and the rest...; this is the command of the goddess Pattini”.[4] The reference to Pattini in this inscription has threefold significance. It is clear that the goddess Pattini was equated with the four guardian gods in the central highlands during the time of Senasammata Vikramabâhu, the founder of the kingdom of Kandy. Another consideration is the fact of the accommodation of Pattini in the Buddhist pantheon of deities, which suggests the assimilation of the Pattini cult into the fold of Buddhism. It is also noteworthy that the royal cult, which was a synthetic tradition around this time, reflected a general tendency in the development of religious and cultural traditions in contemporary society. Although originally Pattini was not reckoned as one of the four guardian deities, in course of time she was raised to that status along with Nâtha. Both of them dislodged Saman and Vibhisana from the company of the four guardian gods. The temples dedicated to the four guardian deities, namely Visnu, Nâtha, Skanda and Pattini, are situated around the temple of the Tooth Relic in Kandy. These four deities were paraded annually at the procession of the Tooth Relic.

The cult of Pattini was most popular in the coastal regions of the Western and Southern provinces and the province of Sabaragamuva. The central shrine of Pattini is in Navagamuva, which is situated close to Ruwanvella, and in ritual texts she is consistently referred to as Pattini of Navagamuva. The major ritual expressions of the cult were the gammaduwa, a ceremony performed by priests called kapurâla, and the ankêliya or the horn-pulling ceremony which was practised in most parts of the island until recently.[5]

Returning to the consideration of the images of Pattini from the Jetavanarama site it may be observed that they provide a firm basis for tracing the spread and development of the Pattini cult in the island from a period much earlier than the one suggested by literary and epigraphic notices. The chronology of these images could be fixed within certain limits and they could be assigned to the 11^th and 12^th centuries on stylistic grounds as suggested earlier. The fact that the principal monasteries and temples at Anuradhapura were in a state of neglect after the mid thirteenth century is also an important consideration in assigning these images to the period prior to the 13^th century.[6] Their discovery at the Jetavanarama site seems to provide an indication of the fact that the Pattini cult had an association with the form of Buddhism epitomised by the unorthodox Jetavanarama.

Prof. S Pathmanathan, BA, Ph.D. (London). LFIBA
Professor of History
University of Peradeniya

[1] Ilankovatikal arulicceyta Cilappatikara Mulamum arumpatavuraiyum atiyarkkunallaruraiyum, ed. U. Ve. Caminataiyar, Tamil Palkalaikkalakam, Tancavur, 1985, Vancinamalai, pp. 483- 488.

[2] Manimekalai, U, Ve Caminataiyar, aram patippu (6^th edition), Cennaikapir accukkutam, 1965. S. Pathmaathan ‘The Manimêkalai in its historical setting’, A Buddhist Woman’s Path To Enlightenment, Proceedings of a Workshop on the Tamil narrative Manimêkalai, Uppsala University, May, 25- 29, 1995, Peter Schalk, Editor-in-Chief, Uppsala, 1997 (330 pages), p. 47.

[3] University of Ceylon History of Ceylon Volume I, pt II (pp. 411- 911) Editor- S. Paranavitana, Ceylon University Press, Colombo, 1960, pp. 765-6.

[4] H.W. Codrington, ‘The Gadaladeniya Inscription of Vikramabâhu’ (pp. 8-15), Epigraphia Zeylanica “Being Lithic and Other Inscriptions of Ceylon” Ed. S. Paranavitana, Published (London: Oxford University Press, 1943).

[5] Gananath Obeyasekera, The Cult of the Goddess Pattini, (Delhi: Narendra Prakash Jain for Motilal Banarsidas, 1987), p. 9.

[6] The discrepancy between the description in the Cilappatikaram and the anatomical features of the two images concerned cannot be a valid argument against their identification as being representations of Pattini. As seen earlier, the Cilappatikaram of course says that Kannaki who was in a fit of rage over the death of her innocent husband, had torn off with her hands her left breast and cast it away with the curse that the city of Madurai should be burnt down. In the images under consideration it is the right breast which is represented as a disfigured one. It should be noted that the artisans who produced these images did not and could not have the benefit of consulting technical treatises on iconography in respect of Pattini. Silpa sâstra texts do not contain descriptions of the images of Pattini. Besides, artisans who were living at Anuradhapura in medieval times could not be expected to have been very familiar with the text of the Cilappatikaram. The principal consideration here is the conception of a deity with a disfigured breast and such a deity was none other than Pattini. Further, it may also be pointed out here that in certain instances the artisans of Anuradhapura had produced images without paying serious attention to descriptions in technical treatises on iconography. A striking example of such a tendency is the bronze figure of ardhanari from the Abhayagiriya site of the Cultural Triangle, presently exhibited in the Colombo Museum. In that image, the female aspect of the deity is depicted on the right side.

It is useful to consider here briefly the images of Pattini identified by Ananda K. Coomaraswamy. One of them is an erect figure of a deity whose head is covered with the hood of a cobra. The dress is raised to show one anklet. The image is of copper and is provisionally assigned by him to the last two centuries of the first millenium A.D. A large copper image of more or less the same antiquity was found at Tiriyay. The figure is depicted with a ‘high head-dress’ from which a jewel is missing. The right hand is in vara mudra and the left hand is in vitarka mudra. The image is in the sthanaka pose and has a height of 144 cm. The folds of the drapery are of the typical Lankan style found in medieval sculpture and the bronze was undoubtedly a work of local craftsmen. It is noteworthy that one of the images from the Jetavanarama site, identified by the present author as that of Pattini, resembles very closely this particular item of sculpture except in the disposition of the hands.

A miniature copper image of the seated figure of a female deity whose head is covered by the hood of a cobra is yet another item identified by Ananda Coomaraswamy as a representation of Pattini. Another item belonging to the same category is a miniature copper image of a deity, which he has assigned to the 9^th and 10^th centuries. The last one is an image with costume and headdress of a unique style suggesting affinities with Kandyan art of the 17^th and 18^th centuries. The images of Pattini exhibited in the Jetavanarama Museum are unique in that they depict very clearly and vividly the distinguishing characteristic of Pattini—the female deity with a disfigured breast. They have the effect of focusing attention on the need for a scholarly, competent and dispassionate re-examination of the other items of sculpture reckoned as representations of Pattini. The determination of the chronology of these items is a requisite for a meaningful investigation of the introduction and diffusion of the Pattini cult in the island. Memoirs of The Colombo Museum Edited by Joseph Pearson, Series A. No. 1. Bronzes From Ceylon, Chiefly In The Colombo Museum by Ananda K. Coomaraswamy, Ceylon, 1914, pages 31 - XXVIII plates.

This paper is based on the work done in collaboration with the staff of the Postgraduate institute of Archaeology. The author wishes to acknowledge the help and support extended by Mr. Raj Somadeva, Senior Lecturer in Archaeology, Mr. I.S. Madanayake of the Photographic Unit, Prof. Senake Bandaranaike, Director of the Institute and presently Acting Director General of the Central Cultural Fund and Dr. Hema Ratnayake, Director, Anuradhapura Project of the Cultural Triangle.