Sri Lankans were aware of Buddhism before the arrival of Mahinda, Dalrymple says. But it was Mahinda, a bhikkhu and son of Emperor Asoka, who, along with his first convert King Devanampiya Tissa who gave Sri Lankan Buddhism an organisational structure which helped it spread and strike deep roots in the island
It is generally believed that Buddhism was introduced to Sri Lanka in 247 BCE when the Indian Buddhist Emperor Asoka (304–232 BCE) sent his son Mahinda and daughter Sangamitta to preach the doctrine enunciated by Siddhartha Gautama six centuries earlier. Both Mahinda and Sangamitta were members of the Buddhist Order, whose mission was to spread the faith far and wide.
Mahinda’s first achievement in Sri Lanka was the conversion of the then King of Anuradhapura, Devanampiya Tissa in 250 BCE. The two had met accidentally in the forests of Mihintale near Anuradhapura where Devanampiya Tissa was hunting. Upon conversion, the King inspired his subjects to adopt Buddhism. Mahinda’s sister, Sanghamitta, followed Mahinda with a sapling of the sacred Bo tree from Buddha Gaya under which the Buddha received enlightenment. The sapling was planted in Anuradhapura, giving the converts in the island a focus and a direct link with the Enlightened One.
Intimate friends
However, according to British historian William Dalrymple, author of The Golden Road, Bloomsbury, London, 2024, Buddhism was by no means new to Sri Lankans when Mahinda came. Dalrymple says that King Devanampiya Tissa was a friend of Emperor Asoka’s even before Mahinda’s arrival. He would have known about his friend Asoka’s faith. The two monarchs were in fact “Intimate friends, united by faithful affection,” Dalrymple says.
Stupa in Rajagala where Arahant Mahinda’s relics are interred
It was Asoka who had asked Devanampiya Tissa to seek refuge in the Buddha as he himself had done.
As a token of friendship and camaraderie, Asoka had sent Devanampiya Tissa appropriate gifts during his re-coronation.
Pointing out to very early links between Sri Lanka and Indian Buddhism, www.factsanddetails.com says that from the time of the arrival in Sri Lanka of Prince Vijaya from Bengal (in 543 BCE), there had been a constant intercourse between India and Sri Lanka. Some of the South Indian Pandyan families who came to Sri Lanka, had originally belonged to the Madhyadesa, the Indian region lying between the Himalayas in the North and the Vindhya mountains at the centre. This vast area was traversed by the Buddha during his wanderings spread over 80 years. The people in these areas came under the sway of the Buddha.
At least some of the Pandyas who migrated to Sri Lanka from Madhyadesa might have been Buddhists and it is likely that they had spoken about Buddhism to the islanders. Some scholars such as Hermann Oldenberg and G.P.Malalasekera however, believed that Buddhism came to Sri Lanka from Kalinga (present-day Odisha) through the sea route.
Be that as it may, what is undisputed is that it was Mahinda (who became an Arahant later) and his first convert, King Devanampiya Tissa, who gave Sri Lankan Buddhism an organisational structure which helped the faith spread far and wide.
The 20th century Sri Lankan bhikkhu, Walpola Rahula, even went to the extent of describing Arahant Mahinda as ‘the father of Sinhalese literature’ because he had translated and written a commentary on the Tripitaka in Sinhala, turning it into a literary discourse. Mahinda is also credited with introducing the culture of the Mauryan (Asokan) Empire to the island, along with its architecture.
King Devanampiya Tissa set up the first monastery and a grand stupa to house the Buddha’s relics in his kingdom. Dalrymple adds that it was in Anuradhapura (the second largest city in South Asia after the Asokan capital of Pataliputra) that the Buddha‘s teachings were committed to writing on palm-leaf folios. That was in 50 BCE.
Cave temples
Subsequently, hundreds of monasteries were built across the island. In the Rajagala area of the Ampara district, recent excavations revealed 593 archaeologically important remains dating back to the first century BCE. According to UNESCO, apart from these, there are about 70 inscriptions in Rajagala, of them the most important inscription is the one stating that the relics of Arahant Mahinda were enshrined in a stupa in the premises. This is the only inscription in Sri Lanka which identifies the presence of Arahant Mahinda in the country.
The Buddha had urged the bhikkhus in the Sangha to go forth in all directions to spread the new doctrine, even saying that no two bhikkhus should go in the same direction. But the bhikkhus ceased to be peripatetic by the first century BCE, preferring to stay put in the rock caves in Central India, Dalrymple says.
Due to this trend, more than 1,000 rock cave dwellings came up in the hills overlooking the Western Indian coast for bhikkhus to live and preach Buddhism. These caves later grew into monasteries or Viharas. However, these early Viharas were more than meditation centres. They became places for congregational or community worship, the first in the history of Indian religions, Dalrymple says. The focus of attention in a monastery was the Stupa, housing the Buddha’s relics.
Mihintale, the cradle of Sri Lankan Buddhism
According to Dalrymple, the earliest stone sculptures in India were not Hindu, but Buddhist. This is because Vedic Hinduism was either ‘aniconic’ (without idols) or the Vedic Hindu idols were made of perishable material such as wood. It was at the time of Asoka that stone temples with stone carvings came into being in India. And all religions existing in India at that time, adopted the stone carving trend.
The symbolism of the various faiths in India was adopted by all religions. Indian religions tended to be syncretic. For example, ferocious lions, snakes and male and female demons figured in the temples of all religions, including Buddhism.
The coexistence of human and animal figures represented in Buddhist sculptures reflected the Buddhist view that humans and animals did not belong to different worlds but to one integrated world. In the Buddhist view, both humans and animals have a place in the cycle of birth and rebirth in which one could be an animal in one birth and a human in the next.
In India, Buddhist monasteries and the expanding trading community got inextricably linked. Indian traders lavished the monasteries with money and other offerings and the bhikkhus gave them blessings as well as an ideology which legitimised trading as a noble profession and not one to be scorned.
The other notable aspect of early Buddhism in India, according to Dalrymple was that bhikkhus here were not ‘ascetic’ practicing severe self-abnegation. Given their ties with trading guilds, the monasteries soon became beneficiaries of the growing trade networks of South, South East and Central Asia. The monasteries were not only wealthy due to the donations given by merchants but were lending money on interest, as banks do today, he says.
According to Dalrymple, in one of the early Buddhist texts, the Buddha himself had enjoined that ‘endowments for the sake of the Buddha, the Dharma and the Community, must be lent on interest and the they required dated, witnessed and written contracts’. Some early Buddhist scriptures even have currency conversion!
The Buddha was open to the accumulation of wealth which, in his view, was a ‘necessary evil’ until Nirvana (total liberation) was achieved.
Bhikkus were lauded for their business acumen as well as their wisdom. Buddhists saw wealth as a sign of good karma and poverty as a sign of bad karma.
In Buddhist mythology, Bodhisattvas ‘saved’ merchants form shipwrecks, robbers and sea monsters. A Bodhisattva is a compassionate beingwho is striving for Buddhahood to help others achieve Nibbana.
The first century BC, during which Buddhism had spread far and wide across continents, was also a ‘terrific’ period of urban growth and international trading networks. The flourishing Indo-Mediterranean trade brought enormous prosperity to India’s Western coast, especially.
Contrast with Vedic Hinduism
The Buddhist attitude to international trade and money-making was in sharp contrast to Brahminical or caste-ridden Hinduism which frowned on trade, especially international trade across the seas, because travel across the seas could mean eating and living with non-Hindus and losing the caste consciousness as a result.
Caste taboos shackled Hindu traders but Buddhist traders were free from these, hence the close link between Buddhism and international trade in ancient India.
In Buddhist India, due to the absence of fuss about pollution all foreigners, Buddhists as well non-Buddhists were welcomed. And bhikkhus took the ideas of the Buddha to much of the South, the South East and East Asia taking the land and the sea route. Indeed, the Buddhist era in India was a progressive and glorious era, not just for itself but for the whole of Asia.
