German Memories in Asia - Adam's Peak of Sri Lanka

A visiting German team became familiar to me when we were having dinner at the beach-end restaurant at the Aquarius resort as we were sitting at adjoining tables. They were going to Adam's Peak in a few hours just before midnight as they could reach Adam's peak in the early morning hours of sunrise.

Adam's Peak is a beautiful place, which is more divine than mere fun to visit. There were many visitors from around the world who visited Adam's Peak, which is jutting out, sharply skyward from the lush jungles of southwestern Sri Lanka since historical times. This is also called Sri Pada, the 'Holy Footprint'. The mountain has the unique distinction of being sacred to the followers of four of the world's major religions: Hinduism, Buddhism, Christianity and Islam.

Long before the development of these religions, however, the aboriginal inhabitants of Sri Lanka, the Veddas worshipped the Mountain. Their name for the peak was "Samanala Peak", Saman being one of the four guardian deities of the island.

For Hindus, the name of the mountain is "Lord Shiva's Holy Foot", because it was the world-creative dance of the God Shiva that left the giant footprint.

According to Buddhist traditions from as early as 300 BC, the real print actually was left by the Lord Buddha during the third and final of his legendary visit to Sri Lanka. When Portuguese Christians came to the island in the 16th century they claimed the impression to be the footprint of St. Thomas who, according to legend, first brought Christianity to Sri Lanka.

And finally, the Arabs recorded it as being the solitary footprint of Adam where he stood for a thousand years in penance on one foot. An Arab tradition tells that when Adam was expelled from heaven, God put him on the peak to make the shock less terrible.

Adam's Peak is more easily seen from the sea than from land. Early Arab seafarers fascinated with the pyramidal peak wrote of it as "the highest mountain in the world". The early tribes also believed it to be of great height and a native legend tells "from Seyllan to Paradise is forty miles, and the sound of the fountains of Paradise is heard here".

Many early world travelers including the Arab traveler and explorer Ibn Batuta and the Venetian Marco Polo visited the mountain, which had attained a legendary status as a mystic pilgrimage destination.

The German team's visit was well timed as the pilgrimage commenced in December and continued until the beginning of the monsoon rains in April. Visitors might experience panic when they travel along certain parts of the path leading up to the mountain, as they are extremely steep.

There is a mythical story prevailing that Alexander the Great had fastened chains in certain sections to make the climb less arduous. But there is no evidence that Alexander the Great, the Macedonian king, made it to this far south in Sri Lanka on his Asia travels, though his empire extended in Asia up to the Indus River in the Indian subcontinent.

The area people still believe the rain - water taken from the footprint has a wonderful healing power. Adam's Peak is also called 'butterfly - mountain' because of the myriads of small butterflies that fly from all over the island to die upon the sacred mountain.

The Mountain has many myths, mysteries and wonders surrounding it from historical times but what struck me was what made the team from Germany to be attracted to that extent.

German Memories In Asia - Roman Era Europe And West Asia

The early events of Jaffna by the Portuguese recalled the historical events in the Roman era Europe and West Asia.

In the course of the centuries the Roman Empire steered into a heavy and lasting crisis.

Constant wars for the defense of borders, rising military expenditure, excessive taxes, repressive laws, rampantly growing bureaucracy and all-present corruption - all this undermined the loyalty of the Romans and provincial residents to the Roman state.

The taxes were so high that many citizens had to work for the state for most of the year, while only a little was left for themselves. The Roman citizens had turned into slaves of the state and they didn't care after sometime whether their ruler and oppressor was a Roman or a victorious Germanic conqueror.

Similarily destructive was the new religion, Christianity, starting from 313 A.D., which disapproved of the old ideals. In 390, Roman emperor Theodosius banned the old Pagan religion. The worship of gods of Jupiter, Juno, Minerva, Venus and Mars was declared a crime. Led by their bishops, Christian mobs destroyed most of the pagan temples, the most beautiful buildings of ancient times, massacred philosophers and intellectuals, and destroyed the large library of Alexandria.

Even the Germanic paganism, the religion and mythology of the ancient Germanic nations with the principal gods Odin, Thor and Tyr preceding Christianization were destroyed by similar means.

The best documented form of Germanic paganism, the10th and 11th century Norse paganism with other European and West-Asian pagan traditions, such as Finnish, Slavic, Baltic, Roman and Greek were lost from the practice.

The Franks, Alamanni, Anglo-Saxons, Saxons and Frisians were christianized forcibly between the 6th and the 8th century.

The Frankish King Charlemagne conquered the Germanic tribesmen and won in all eighteen battles which were fought in the areas of northwestern Germany. The result was the incorporation of Saxony into the Frankish realm and their conversion from paganism to Christianity.

The King Charlemagne allegedly ordered at the Blood court of Verden to behead 4,500 Saxons who had been caught practising paganism after converting to Christianity. The massacre led to two straight years of constant warfare (783-785). In 783, battles in Saxony saw Saxon women throw themselves barebreasted into battle. One of them was Fastrada, daughter of a Saxon count, who, in 784, became Charlemagne's fourth wife and gradually the Franks gained the upper hand in Saxony.

In 800 A.D. Charlemagne's authority in Western Europe was further increased by his coronation as emperor in Rome and by the establishment of Holy Roman Empire. He further increased his ruthless christianisation of people who were practising Paganism.

Northern Germany had seen an aggressive Christianisation between 1096 and 1291 in the period of the crusades where the Knightly religious orders the Templars, the Knights of St John and the Teutonic Order established new towns, imperial strongholds, castles, bishops' palaces and monasteries and conquered the native Baltic Prussians and Christianized them.

German Memory in Asia - Memories of the Old Europe

While we were passing a junction, the driver told, he wanted to visit a deity, because he had made a vow some time back and turned the vehicle towards a more isolated passage. Though he was Catholic by religion his faith in deity worship is not strange in Sri Lanka.
Ancient nature worship and Hindu traditions are deeply rooted in the daily life of many people.

Steffani, a German Praktikum (Internship) student and Romy were watching intently what was happening in that small temple of deity worship. But the deity and nature worship is not strange to Europe. Before Christianity was introduced into Europe, there were deities and also everywhere a variety of Pagan religious practices.

Pagan practices were only abolished when the Pagan temples were demolished by the later emperors of the Roman Empire and others in the Europe. Germanic Pagan religion played its own part in ancient Germany.

Germanic paganism refers to the religious practices of the Germanic nations preceding Christianization. The well documented form of Germanic paganism is 10th and 11th century Norse paganism. There are various references found in the ancient writings of Germanic peoples and in Roman descriptions. The information can be supplemented with archaeological findings and from the remnants of pre-Christian beliefs in later folklore.


Germanic paganism was a polytheistic religion with similarities to other European and West-Asian pagan traditions, such as Finnish paganism, Sami religion, Slavic paganism, Baltic paganism, Roman paganism, Greek paganism and Vedic religion. The principal gods are known as Odin, Thor and Tyr.

The surviving accounts indicate spectacular human sacrifices. A unique eye-witness account of Germanic human sacrifice survives in Ibn Fadlan's account of a Rus ship burial, where a slave-girl had volunteered to accompany her master with his burial.

The Heimskringla tells of Swedish King Aun who sacrificed nine of his sons in an effort to prolong his life until his subjects stopped him from killing his last son Egil. According to Adam of Bremen, the Swedish kings sacrificed male slaves every ninth year during the Yule sacrifices at the Temple at Uppsala.


The Swedes had the right not only to elect kings but also to depose them, and both King Domalde and King Olof Tratalja are said to have been sacrificed after years of famine.
Odin was associated with death by hanging, and a possible practice of Odinic sacrifice by strangling has some archaeological support in the existence of bodies perfectly preserved by the acid of the Jutland peat bogs in Denmark, into which they were cast after having been strangled.
An example is Tollund Man. However, there were no written accounts that explicitly interpret the cause of these strangling, which could obviously have other explanations.