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Sri Lanka Popular Sinhalese Religion
There is no central religious authority in Theravada
Buddhism, and the monastic community has divided into a number of
orders with different styles of discipline or recruitment. The
broad outlines of the modern orders originated in the eighteenth
century. By that time, monastic personnel came entirely from the
upper levels of the Goyigama caste, and enjoyed easy lives as
recipients of income from monastic estates worked by lower
castes. The official line of monastic ordination had been broken,
since monks at that time no longer knew the Pali tradition. In
1753 the Kandyan king fulfilled his duty as a protector of
Buddhism by arranging for Theravada monks from Thailand to ordain
Sinhalese novices. These initiates set up a reformed sect known
as the Siyam Nikaya (the Siamese order), which invigorated the
study and propagation of the ancient Sinhalese heritage. The
order remained a purely Goyigama enclave. By the nineteenth
century, members of rising low-country castes were unhappy with
Goyigama monopoly over the sangha, and rich merchants
arranged for Karava youths to receive ordination from Thai monks.
These initiates formed a new sect called the Amarapura Nikaya,
that subsequently split along caste lines. Disputes over
doctrinal matters and the role of meditation led to the
establishment of another order, the Ramanna Nikaya, in the late
nineteenth century. In the 1980s, the Sinhalese sangha of
20,000 monks fell into three major orders, subdivided into
"families": the Siyam Nikaya contained six divisions; the
Amarapura Nikaya, twenty-three; and the Ramanna Nikaya, two. Each
family maintained its own line of ordination traced back to great
teachers and ultimately to the Buddha. Caste determined
membership in many of the sects.
The members of the Buddhist monastic community preserve the
doctrinal purity of early Buddhism, but the lay community accepts
a large body of other beliefs and religious rituals that are
tolerated by the monks and integrated into Sinhalese religion.
Many of the features of this popular religion come from Hinduism
and from very old traditions of gods and demons. Sinhalese
Buddhism is thus a syncretic fusion of various religious elements
into a unique cultural system.
There is a thin boundary between reverence for the Buddha's
memory and worship of the Buddha as a god, and the
unsophisticated layperson often crosses this line by worshiping
him as a transcendent divine being. The relics of the Buddha, for
example, have miraculous powers; the literature and folklore of
the Sinhalese are full of tales recounting the amazing events
surrounding relics. During the construction of a Buddha image,
the painting of the eyes is an especially important moment when
the image becomes "alive" with power. At the Temple of the Tooth
in Kandy, where the Buddha's Tooth Relic is enshrined, rituals
include elements from Hindu temple worship, such as feeding and
clothing of the Buddha
(see Sri Lanka - Hinduism
, this ch.). In general,
devotees believe that the Buddha's enlightenment makes him an
all-powerful being, able to control time and space and all other
supernatural beings.
The Buddha is so pure and powerful that he does not intervene
personally in the affairs of the world. That is the job of a
pantheon of gods (deva) and demons (yakka) who
control material and spiritual events. The Buddha never denied
the existence of the gods or demons, but said that attention to
these matters simply detracts from concentration on the path to
enlightenment. The Sinhalese believe that the all-powerful Buddha
has given a warrant (varan) to a variety of spiritual
entities that allows them to regulate reality within set
boundaries (sima). For help in matters of everyday life,
the Sinhalese petition these spiritual entities rather than the
Buddha. Near many dagoba, or shrines of the Buddha, there
are separate shrines (devale) for powerful deities. After
reverencing the Buddha, devotees present prayers and petitions to
the gods for help with daily life. The shrines for the gods have
their own priests (kapurala), who practice special rituals
of purification that allow them to present offerings of food,
flowers, or clothing to the gods. Propitiation of demons occurs
far away from Buddhist shrines and involves special rituals
featuring the assistance of exorcists.
The popularity of different deities changes over time, as
people come to see particular deities as more effective in
solving their problems. The principal gods include Vishnu (also a
Hindu god, identified by Buddhists as a bodhisattva, or
"enlightened being," who helps others attain enlightenment),
Natha, Vibhisana, Saman (the god of Adams Peak and its vicinity),
and the goddess Pattini (originally an ordinary woman whose
devotion to her husband, immortalized in poetry, elevated her to
divine rank). During the twentieth century, the god Vibhisana has
declined in popularity while the god Kataragama, named after his
hometown in Moneragala District, has become extremely powerful.
The annual Kataragama festival brings tens of thousands of
worshipers to his small town, including Hindus who worship him as
a manifestation of the god Murugan and Muslims who worship at the
mosque there. This common devotion to sacred sites and sacred
persons is one of the most important features of popular religion
in Sri Lanka.
Another example of this religious syncretism is the cult of
Sri Lanka's leading oracle, Gale Bandara Deviyo, who originally
was a Muslim prince slain by the Sinhalese to prevent his
accession to the throne. He is revered by Buddhists and Muslims
alike at his shrine in the town of Kurunegala (in Kurunegala
District). As transportation and communication facilities have
expanded in modern Sri Lanka, there has been a big expansion of
major pilgrimage sites that are jointly patronized by Sinhalese,
Tamils, and Muslims, thus providing a commonality that may lead
to closer cultural cooperation among competing ethnic groups.
Data as of October 1988
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