What Happened to the Nagas of Ancient Ceylon?

The Disappearance of an Ancient People and the Emergence of Tamil and Sinhalese Identities

The early history of Sri Lanka cannot properly be understood by projecting the present-day identities of “Tamil” and “Sinhalese” backwards for more than two thousand years. Long before these identities had developed into their later forms, ancient literary, inscriptional and historical traditions refer to peoples known as the Nagas.

This raises a fundamental question that has received insufficient attention in popular accounts of Sri Lankan history:

If the Nagas constituted an important element of the population of ancient Ceylon, what happened to them?

They could not simply have vanished.

The more reasonable explanation is that the Nagas survived biologically while their separate ethnic and linguistic identity gradually disappeared. Over many centuries, sections of the Naga population participated in the formation of the two major communities that subsequently emerged in the island — the Sinhalese and the Sri Lankan Tamils.

The Nagas as a Distinct People

It is misleading to call the earliest Nagas either Sinhalese or Tamil in the modern ethnic sense.

The early Sri Lankan chronicles as well as Tamil literary traditions refer to Nagas as a recognisable people. Historian K. Indrapala has particularly cautioned against the older assumption that the inhabitants of Sri Lanka at the beginning of recorded history were already “Sinhalese” in the later ethnic sense and that Tamils simply arrived subsequently from outside.

The archaeological record also establishes the prominence of the name Naga at a very early period. Early Brahmi inscriptions contain individuals named Naga. One Mihintale inscription, for example, records a cave donation by Asali, described as the son of a chief named Naga.

There is also inscriptional evidence referring to a Naga family or lineage — Naga-kula — exercising economic or administrative functions.

The Nagas therefore cannot simply be dismissed as mythological serpent worshippers. Whatever the origins of the name and its religious symbolism, people identified by Naga names or lineage appear in Sri Lanka’s early historical and inscriptional record.

Nagas and the Anuradhapura Kings

The importance of Naga names is particularly noticeable among rulers associated with Anuradhapura.

The royal lists contain such names as Khallata Naga, Ila Naga, Mahallaka Naga, Cula Naga, Kuda Naga, Siri Naga I, Abhaya Naga and Siri Naga II.

This does not mean that every king of Anuradhapura was a Naga, nor does the presence of “Naga” in a personal name by itself prove ethnicity. Nevertheless, the frequency of Naga names among royalty, chiefs and other important persons demonstrates that Naga traditions and lineages occupied a significant place in early Sri Lankan society.

The Nagas Had Their Own Identity

The Tamil Buddhist epic Manimekalai is important in this discussion. Its traditions concerning the Nagas should not be interpreted as proving that all Nagas were originally Tamil-speaking merely because the work itself was composed in Tamil.

The more cautious conclusion is that the Nagas had an identity of their own and were in close contact with Tamil-speaking populations.

Over time, however, languages and identities changed.

This phenomenon is not peculiar to Sri Lanka. Throughout human history, populations have adopted new languages, religions and identities without being physically replaced by another population.

Buddhism and the Formation of Sinhala Identity

Buddhism became established in Sri Lanka traditionally during the reign of Devanampiya Tissa in the third century BC. Its spread profoundly changed the religious and cultural character of the island.

The development of the Sinhala people should therefore not be imagined simply as the arrival of a fully formed “Sinhalese race” that subsequently absorbed everybody else.

Rather, Sinhala identity itself evolved.

The language generally called Sinhala developed through forms of Prakrit spoken in the island, subsequently developing through what is conventionally described as Old Sinhala or Elu/Hela. Pali exercised an enormous religious and literary influence, while prolonged interaction with Tamil also left an important linguistic and cultural imprint.

K. Indrapala has described this wider historical process in terms of language replacement and ethnic formation: Prakrit dialects became dominant among much of the population and ultimately developed into Sinhala, while Tamil became dominant in other areas and contributed to the emergence of a distinct Sri Lankan Tamil community.

Religion increasingly reinforced the distinction.

Buddhism eventually became overwhelmingly associated with Sinhala identity. It is therefore reasonable to see Buddhist sections of the earlier populations, including Nagas, not merely as people who were “assimilated into an existing Sinhalese race,” but as participants in the historical formation of the Sinhala Buddhist community itself.

The Nagas and the Tamil Community

A different process appears to have taken place among Nagas living in areas where Tamil became dominant.

Sri Lanka and southern India were never isolated worlds. Movement across the Palk Strait, commerce, marriage, religion and political relationships existed from ancient times.

As Tamil became increasingly established in northern, north-western and eastern Sri Lanka, Naga communities in those areas could gradually adopt Tamil. With the subsequent growth of Saivism, particularly following the powerful Saiva revival in South India from about the seventh to ninth centuries, Hindu religious identity became increasingly associated with Tamil identity.

Thus, Nagas who remained within this cultural environment gradually ceased to constitute a separate people and became part of the emerging Sri Lankan Tamil community.

Religion alone should not be regarded as the sole mechanism. Language, geography, political authority, intermarriage and continuous interaction with South India were also important.

Nevertheless, the eventual association of Buddhism predominantly with the Sinhalese and Saivism predominantly with the Tamils became an important marker separating the two developing communities.

The Evidence of Place Names

Place names may preserve memories of earlier populations long after the people themselves have ceased to use their former identity.

The most obvious example is Nagadipa, the ancient name associated with the northern part of Sri Lanka in Buddhist tradition.

Nainativu, an island off the Jaffna Peninsula, continues to possess both important Hindu and Buddhist associations. Its very traditions illustrate how Naga memories became incorporated into the later religious histories of both communities.

Nagarkovil in the Jaffna Peninsula is another conspicuous name containing the Naga element.

The famous Naguleswaram temple at Keerimalai also preserves a name associated in tradition with Naga/Nagula. It became one of the celebrated Saiva shrines of the Tamil country of Sri Lanka.

Such names are suggestive, but they must be handled carefully. Similarity of names alone cannot prove that every place beginning with Naga, Naka, Nagula or a related form represents an ancient Naga settlement. Each name must be examined through its earliest recorded form, inscriptions, literary references, local traditions and linguistic development.

Nevertheless, taken together with literary and inscriptional evidence, the persistence of Naga-associated names in the North is significant and deserves considerably more investigation.

So Where Did the Nagas Go?

We return to the original question.

If Nagas were an important people of ancient Ceylon, why is there no Naga ethnic community in Sri Lanka today?

The most plausible answer is:

The people did not disappear. Their separate identity did.

As political, linguistic and religious identities evolved, different Naga populations followed different historical paths.

Those who became part of the Buddhist, Prakrit-speaking cultural world participated in the gradual development of Sinhala Buddhist society.

Those living within the increasingly Tamil-speaking and Hindu cultural regions became part of the Sri Lankan Tamil community.

By the end of the first millennium AD, “Naga” had ceased to function as the name of one of the island’s major separate ethnic communities.

History Is More Complex Than Racial Myths

This history challenges attempts by either community to claim racial purity or exclusive antiquity.

It is equally unsatisfactory to describe the ancient Nagas automatically as Sinhalese or automatically as Tamils.

Neither modern community existed two thousand years ago in precisely its present form.

Peoples change their languages. They change their religions. They intermarry. Political boundaries change. New identities arise and older identities disappear.

Sri Lanka was no exception.

The history of the Nagas may therefore contain an important lesson for the present. The Sinhalese and Tamils are not two eternally separate “races” that arrived fully formed and remained biologically isolated from one another.

Their histories are intertwined.

The ancient Nagas did not vanish from the island. Their descendants almost certainly survive among the people who today call themselves Sinhalese and Tamil.

What disappeared was the name by which their ancestors once identified themselves.

Suggested references

K. Indrapala, The Evolution of an Ethnic Identity: The Tamils of Sri Lanka, c. 300 BCE to c. 1200 CE.

S. Paranavitana, Inscriptions of Ceylon, Department of Archaeology, Sri Lanka.

Manimekalai, the classical Tamil Buddhist epic.

Mahavamsa and Dipavamsa, for