146 CHAPTER SEVENthe texts that Buddhaghosa did not live to finish, and subcommentaries to
the texts he did. I-ching reports that when he visited Sri Lanka in the sev-
enth century, the members of the Dharmaruci sect outnumbered the
Mahaviharans considerably. Wars and rebellions began to ravage the island,
and some kings, made desperate by the political situation, robbed the
monasteries to support their military campaigns. Eventually, in 1017,
Anuradhapura fell to Cola forces, and in the ensuing half-century of polit-
ical chaos the Bhikkhu and Bhikkhul).i Sanghas died out.7.3 THE THERAVADA CONNECTION
After the fall of Anuradhapura, a series of events in Burma and Sri Lanka set
the stage for Theravada to become the predominant form ofBuddhism in
these areas. In the middle part of the eleventh century, King Aniruddha
(Anawrahta) (r. 1 040-77) had brought most of present-day Burma, together
with Nanchao in southern China, under the control of his kingdom centered
in Pagan. With his base of power expanded, he embarked Pagan on a program
of temple building that over the course of the next two centuries made it one
of the architectural glories of Southeast Asia. He is credited with bringing the
Pali Canon to Pagan from Thaton in Lower Burma and with converting
Burma to Theravada, but archaeological evidence indicates that whatever it
was he brought from Thaton, it was not pure Theravada. Still, Theravada must
have been a conspicuous part of the religious scene in Pagan at this time, for
in 1065 King Anirudd.ha received a request from King Vijayabahu I of Sri
Lanka for help in reinstating a proper Theravadin ordination line on that is-
land, and Pagan had the monks to send him.
King Vijayabahu had just succeeded, with Pagan's help, in driving the Cola
forces from Sri Lanka and was in the process of establishing a new capital, not
at Anuradhapura, but further inland at Polonnaruwa. Part of his program was
to build a new home for the Mahavihara sect, but as there were not enough
monks left on the island to conduct ordinations, he had to send abroad for
new monks to reinstate a proper ordination line. The main Theravadin center
of the time was the Cola port ofKancipuram, but for obvious reasons King
Vijayabahu was not about to send an embassy to the Col<).s asking for monks,
so he ended up sending the embassy to his allies in Pagan instead. This is the
first recorded instance of Sri Lanka switching its religious focus away from
India and to mainland Southeast Asia, and it was to establish a precedent that
served both sides of the new connection well in the following centuries, when
India began exporting Islam instead of Buddhism and Brahmanism.
King Aniruddha complied with the Sri Lankan request by sending a con-
tingent of mon~s together with Pali texts, and this opened a line of communi-
cation between the two kingdoms-involving not only religious texts, but
also artistic and architectural styles-that was to last on and off for two cen-
turies. The connection strengthened the Theravada tradition in both coun-