SRI LANKA
Sri Lanka is home to the world’s oldest continuing
Buddhist civilization. Brahminscriptions etched in
stone on drip ledges above natural caves in the coun-
try’s North-Central province indicate that hermitages
have been dedicated by Buddhist LAITYfor the medi-
tation needs of monks since the third century B.C.E.
Moreover, the fourth- and fifth-century C.E. monastic
chronicles, the Dlpavamsa(Chronicle of the Island) and
the Mahavamsa(Great Chronicle), contain a series of
myths in which the Lankan king Devanampiya Tissa
(third century B.C.E.), a contemporary of the Indian
emperor AS ́OKA, is said to have been converted to the
Buddha’s teachings by As ́oka’s own missionary son,
Mahinda. Thus, from inscriptions and monastic liter-
ary 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 As ́oka is also thought to have provided
support for Devanampiya Tissa’s abhiseka (corona-
tion), it would seem that Buddhism became formally
associated with Lanka’s KINGSHIPby this time as well.
For more than two millennia, until the British de-
throned the last Lankan king in 1815, a symbiotic re-
lationship entailing mutual support and legitimation
between the Lankan kings and the Buddhist SAN ̇GHA
(community) was sustained, either as an ideal or in ac-
tual practice.
Over the course of this long history, other forms
of Buddhism joined the predominant THERAVADA
bhikkhu (monk) and bhikkhunl(nun) san ̇ghas, which
the Mahavamsaasserts were established by As ́oka’s
children, Mahinda and his sister San ̇ghamitta, respec-
tively, and whose lineages were preserved by the Ther-
avada Mahavihara nikaya.These included the cults of
MAHAYANA BODHISATTVASsuch as Avalokites ́vara, 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 approx-
imately eight thousand Buddhist monks then resided
in the capital city. Faxian also reports that a public rit-
ual procession of the Dalada(tooth-relic of the Bud-
dha) was celebrated annually, that the cult of S ́ri Ma-
habodhi (a graft of the original bodhi tree at BODH
GAYAin India) was regularly venerated and lavishly
supported by the laity and the king, and that Lankan
kings had built massive STUPAs 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 engineer-
ing and through the establishment of trade with part-
ners as far flung as China in the east and Rome in the
west. Furthermore, the city had become the adminis-
trative pivot of the three great monastic nikayas (chap-
ters) of the Lankan Buddhist san ̇gha: the Theravada
Mahavihara; and the more doctrinally eclectic Ab-
hayagiri and Jetavana chapters, each of which system-
atically established a vast array of affiliated village
monasteries and forest hermitages throughout the do-
mesticated 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 ex-
pected to be the chief patron supporting the san ̇gha,
so the san ̇gha 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 fluo-
rescence of an economically advanced and artistically
sophisticated culture. Although the only surviving ex-
amples of painting are the frescos of heavenly maidens
(perhaps apsaras) found at Sgiriya, thousands of free-
standing 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 Ama-
ravat in south India, while images from the later
Anuradhapura period, such as the eighth-century
Avukana image, reflect the development of a distinc-
tive Lankan style that emphasized the significance of
the Buddha as a mahapurusa(cosmic person).SRILANKA