Kohombā kankāriya, myths and politics: Some creative dimensions of history

This paper attempts to trace the substantial reality underlying the mythical establishments: the origin myth, and the concept of gods in the Kohombā kankāriya traditional ritual of Sri Lanka. Narrators tend to alter the historical myth known as “Vijaya and Kuveni” after about 1000 years of its available initial mention in the great chronicle of Sri Lanka in weaving the origin myth of the ritual. The Kuveni Asna of 15^th century, a creative prose poetical writing, appears as the pioneer modifier of the myth while depicting the traits of a ritual as well, performed for the king Parākramabāhu VI (AD 1412–1467). The long-term social political process localised the royal ritual as “Kohombā kankāriya” under the intervention of feudal aristocracy promoting a local godhead. Current paper argues that the composition of the origin myth of the ritual was an action taken upon aristocratic need in order to tune the ritual milieu into “their culture” and this very “stratification of human intelligence” disrupts the universal reality of invocation based on the common human sensation of consolation. Paper applies thematic text analysis and historical analysis in tracing the social political dimensions underlying the myths in Kohombā kankāriya. In this sense, the current paper is an attempt to explicate that the myths in Kohombā kankāriya are creative establishments produced by humans in order to achieve their social political goals.