Traditions of Buddhism 255
Bahu I. From the second century BCE south Indian kings had
invaded and ruled on several occasions in Anuradhapura with-out causing any cultural discontinuity, but the wars of the tenth
and eleventh centuries proved particularly destructive of ancient
Sri Lankan culture; the extent to which the lineage of the Bud-
dhist Sangha was disrupted is not entirely clear, but it appears
that the order of nuns died out at this time and that contacts with
Burma played some part in the re-establishment of the traditionsof the three ancient lineages of the Mahavihara, Abhayagiri,
and Jetavana.^3 In n65, however, following a dispute between
these three lineages, King Parakrama Bahu I unified the Sangha
according to the rule of the Mahavihara. But the Buddhism
of Sri Lanka should not be regarded as a simple Mahavihara
'orthodoxy' at this period or earlier; indeed, it is doubtful that
Buddhism anywhere has ever operated quite in the manner of
an 'orthodoxy'. From early times continued contacts with south
India (where it appears Theravada traditions flourished untilat least the fourteenth century) and the arrival of monks from
outside the island meant that various Buddhist influences and
practices, including those of the Mahayana and the Vajrayana,
were present on the island.
Invasion from south India led to the fall of Polonnaruva in1215. The following centuries witnessed a relative decline in the
institutions of Buddhism in Sri Lanka. From the sixteenth cen-
tury the Portuguese (1505-1658), the Dutch (1658-1796), and
finally the British controlled the coastal kingdom centred on
Korte and then Colombo, with only the central Kandyan kingdom
retaining its independence. The state of. monastic Buddhism
reached a low ebb in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries,
resulting in the sending of missions to South-East Asia in order
tore-import the higher ordination lineage. This was successfully
accomplished in 1753 during the reign of Kirti Sri Rajasirpha
(1747-81). In 1815the British took control of the Kandyan king-
dom, and their colonial rule of the whole island lasted until
- The nineteenth and twentieth centuries saw the emergence