A Material Inquiry into Paths of Peaceful Co-Existence and Interethnic Harmony in Late Antiquity in Sri Lanka

Abstract

This research paper explores how the ancient Silk Road facilitated cultivating a culture of accommodation, tolerance, and peaceful co-existence in Sri Lanka via the foreign medical practice of Unani, which was introduced by the Arab merchants, in the first century B.C. Since the 1960s, Unani has been integrated as one of the four pillars of Sri Lanka’s traditional medicine. This indigenization process of a foreign medicinal practice in a nation where its political history is marred by violence against the perceived ‘outsiders’ presents an intriguing phenomenon. While the dominant discourse on migration and mobilities often evokes discord and conflict, we aim to interject this dominant narrative by tracing Unani’s global and local roots and extrapolate its material agency in reviving a new discourse on peacebuilding in post-civil war Sri Lanka. By examining historical and archaeological material data and narratives collected from current and ancestral Unani practitioners on the island, our study concludes the role of mobilities of people, ideas and things via the ancient Silk Road has been facilitating a culture of acceptance, accommodation, and peaceful co-existence between native population and their ‘non-native other’ in late antiquity in Sri Lanka. We hope our study can inspire new visions of a peaceful future in postwar Sri Lanka.

DISCLOSURE STATEMENT

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Correction Statement

This article has been corrected with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Notes

1 Sasanian empire (224–651 A.D.) was founded in ancient Mesopotamia. It played a major role in religious, political, and visual culture in the Byzantine and early Islamic eastern Mediterranean. Sasanian art form was borrowed from ancient Near Eastern and Greco-Roman traditions to express a new Iranian cultural identity, that was inscribed in art form in prestigious monuments and objects connected to the royal court.

2 Since the end of Sri Lanka’s 23-year civil war between the Government of Sri Lanka and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) in 2009, followed by renewal of Sinhala-Buddhist populist politics, the mainstream discourses recentred in safeguarding the purity of Sinhala-Buddhist identity, by adhering to strict identity boundaries based on who are legitimate, to be belonged to an authentic Sri Lanka (Gamage 2023).

3 Holistic, plant and herbal based practices, and common understanding of human temperaments and the principle of basic humors (i.e., cold and heat) in diagnosis.

4 Based on authors’ interviews with contemporary Unani practitioners in Sri Lanka at the Faculty of Indigenous Medicine, University of Colombo in August 2023.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by UNESCO through the framework of the UNESCO Silk Roads Youth Research Grant 2022-23.

Notes on contributors

Sandunika Hasangani

Sandunika Hasangani is a Senior Lecturer at the Department of Social Studies in the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences at The Open University of Sri Lanka. Her research focuses on Visual Peace, Visual and Multisensory International Relations, and Digital Ethnography. Email: [email protected]

Shyamika Jayasundara-Smits

Shyamika Jayasundara-Smits works as an Assistant Professor in Conflict and Peace Studies at the International Institute of Social Studies of Erasmus University Rotterdam, The Netherlands. Email: [email protected]