Encyclopedia of Buddhism Volume One A -L Robert E. Buswell

S RI
L ANKA
SRI LANKA
Sri Lanka is home to the world’s oldest continuing
Buddhist civilization. Brahm inscriptions etched in
stone on drip ledges above natural caves in the country’s
North-Central province indicate that hermitages
have been dedicated by Buddhist LAITY for the meditation
needs of monks since the third century B.C.E.
Moreover, the fourth- and fifth-century C.E. monastic
chronicles, the Dlpavam sa (Chronicle of the Island) and
the Mahavam sa (Great Chronicle), contain a series of
myths in which the Lankan king Devanam piya Tissa
(third century B.C.E.), a contemporary of the Indian
emperor AŚOKA, is said to have been converted to the
Buddha’s teachings by Aśoka’s own missionary son,
Mahinda. Thus, from inscriptions and monastic literary
traditions, it is known that by the third century
B.C.E. lineages of forest monks supported by Buddhist
laity were established on the island in the region that
became Lanka’s political center for thirteen subsequent
centuries. Since Aśoka is also thought to have provided
support for Devanam piya Tissa’s abhiseka (coronation),
it would seem that Buddhism became formally
associated with Lanka’s KINGSHIP by this time as well.
For more than two millennia, until the British dethroned
the last Lankan king in 1815, a symbiotic relationship
entailing mutual support and legitimation
between the Lankan kings and the Buddhist SAṄGHA
(community) was sustained, either as an ideal or in actual
practice.
Over the course of this long history, other forms
of Buddhism joined the predominant THERAVADA
bhikkhu (monk) and bhikkhunl (nun) saṅghas, which
the Mahavam sa asserts were established by Aśoka’s
children, Mahinda and his sister Saṅghamitta, respectively,
and whose lineages were preserved by the Theravada
Mahavihara nikaya. These included the cults of
MAHAYANA BODHISATTVAS such as Avalokiteśvara, and
the teachings of several Mahayana schools and of
tantric Buddhist masters associated with Mahavihara’s
rival in Anuradhapura, the Abhayagiri nikaya, which
were established and thrived, particularly during the
seventh through the tenth centuries C.E.
The Anuradhapura period
FAXIAN (ca. 337–ca. 418 C.E.), the itinerant Chinese
Buddhist pilgrim, has provided a valuable description
of fifth-century Anuradhapura, reporting that approximately
eight thousand Buddhist monks then resided
in the capital city. Faxian also reports that a public ritual
procession of the Dalada (tooth-relic of the Buddha)
was celebrated annually, that the cult of Śri Mahabodhi
(a graft of the original bodhi tree at BODH
GAYA in India) was regularly venerated and lavishly
supported by the laity and the king, and that Lankan
kings had built massive STU PAs to commemorate the
Buddha and his relics. Well before Faxian’s time and
long thereafter, the city of Anuradhapura had become
a politically powerful and cosmopolitan center whose
successful economy had been made possible through
the development of sophisticated hydraulic engineering
and through the establishment of trade with partners
as far flung as China in the east and Rome in the
west. Furthermore, the city had become the administrative
pivot of the three great monastic nikayas (chapters)
of the Lankan Buddhist saṅgha: the Theravada
Mahavihara; and the more doctrinally eclectic Abhayagiri
and Jetavana chapters, each of which systematically
established a vast array of affiliated village
monasteries and forest hermitages throughout the domesticated
rice-growing countryside. During the first
millennium C.E., the three nikayas in Anuradhapura
and their affiliated monasteries dominated every facet
of social, economic, educational, and cultural life.
Some have argued that just as Lankan polity was expected
to be the chief patron supporting the saṅgha,
so the saṅgha functioned as a “Department of State”
for the kingship. Perhaps somewhat exaggerated, that
assertion does point to the extent to which Buddhist
institutions became the basic social infrastructure in
Lanka for many centuries.
Given the congenial relationship between polity and
religion, the Anuradhapura period witnessed the fluorescence
of an economically advanced and artistically
sophisticated culture. Although the only surviving examples
of painting are the frescos of heavenly maidens
(perhaps apsaras) found at Sgiriya, thousands of freestanding
stone sculptures of the Buddha, scores of
stone-carved bas-reliefs, and hundreds of bronzes are
still extant, including the famous colossal images at
Avukana and the meditative Buddhas that remain
within the ruins of the Abhayagiri monastic complex
at Anuradhapura. Early anthropomorphic images of
the Buddha in Lanka bear a stylistic, and sometimes
material, affinity with Buddha images created at Amaravat
in south India, while images from the later
Anuradhapura period, such as the eighth-century
Avukana image, reflect the development of a distinctive
Lankan style that emphasized the significance of
the Buddha as a mahapurusa (cosmic person).
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