The Anuradhapura Kingdom - XVI

The Anuradhapura Kingdom - XVI

Contiued with part fifteen   here to go previous one

The Mahayanist influence was seen also in the increasing popularity of images of the Buddha and of bodhisattvas in Buddhist worship. As a result, an image house became, in time, an essential feature of the complex of structures that formed a vihara. There was also evidence once more of Mahayanism's persuasive appeal a profound change in the Theravadin concept of the Buddha, one feature of which had significant political implications the belief that a righteous king could attain Buddhahood in a future birth. This latter was an irresistible attraction for royal patrons of Buddhism. They could hardly demonstrate any enthusiasm, much less passion, for suppressing a religious doctrine the effect of which was to confer an element of divinity on kingship. One other point needs emphasis. Mahayanism was not the only influence at work in softening the pristine starkness of Theravada Buddhism. There were others too: pre Buddhistic cults, Hinduism and Tantric Buddhism, in chronological order. The belief that one's life was affected by good and evil spirits i.e. disembodied souls or incorporeal beings, who needed to be propitiated by prayer and ritual was one of the ritual elements of the pre-Buddhistic folk religion to survive in the face of the more rational outlook which Buddhism encouraged. Eventually, Buddhist rites were developed to cater to this pre-Buddhist survival, and a ceremony called spirit was evolved. This consisted of the public chanting of extracts from the Buddhist scriptures by bhikkhus in times of general calamity such as drought, epidemic or famine, for the purpose of exorcising evil spirits from a place or person. Sorcery and magical arts, generally pre- Buddhistic in origin, remained as strongly rooted among the people after their conversion to Buddhism as before, and indeed continued to exercise their sway with virtually undiminished power. This accommodation between Buddhism and pre Buddhistic cults and practices became a feature of Sinhalese religious beliefs lasting up to modern times.

Although the spread of Buddhism in the island was at the expense of Hinduism, the latter never became totally submerged, but survived and had an influence on Buddhism which became more marked with the passage of time. Vedic deities, pre-Buddhistic in origin in Sri Lanka, held their sway among the people, and kings who patronized the official religion, Buddhism, supported Hindu temples and observed Brahmanic practices as well. Hinduism was sustained also by small groups of Brahmans living among the people and at the court. It was in the later centuries of the Anuradhapura kingdom that the Hindu influence on Buddhism became more pronounced as a necessary result of the political and religious change in South India. The early years of the Christian era saw Buddhism strongly entrenched in South India, and Nagarjunikonda (in Andhra) and Kanchi were famous Buddhist centers there. Close links were established between these South Indian Buddhist centers and Sri Lanka. There was a Sri Lanka vihdra at Nagarjunikonda, and the introduction and establishment of the new heterodox Buddhist sects of Sri Lanka was the work primarily of visiting ecclesiastics from India or Sri Lankan students of famous Indian theologians.

After the sixth century all that remained of South Indian Buddhism, inundated by the rising tide of an aggressive Hindu revivalism, were a few isolated pockets in Orissa, for example, maintaining a stubborn but nonetheless precarious existence. There was no recovery from that onslaught. The intrusive pressures of South Indian kingdoms on the politics of Sri Lanka carried with them also the religious impact of a more self-confident Hinduism. All this was especially powerful after the Cola invasions and Cola rule. There was, for instance, the influence of Hindu ritual and modes of worship; faith in the magical effect of incantations, a great Vedic phenomenon, and more importantly in bhakti (devotion as a means of salvation), which was an important part of Hinduism from about the seventh century ad, strengthened the shift from the ethical to the devotional aspects of Buddhism initiated by Mahayanism. Hindu shrines came to be located close to vihdras. The assimilation of Hindu practices in Buddhism, of which this was evidence, was reinforced by the gradual accommodation in Buddhist mythology of Hindu deities such as Upuluvan, Saman, and Natha. This latter occurred by the tenth century.

Tantric Buddhism had established itself and indeed begun to flourish in India from about the eighth century, especially in the land of the Palas. As with every Indian religious movement of the time, its influence began to be felt almost immediately in Sri Lanka, so much so that when two well-known exponents of Tantrism, Vajrabodhi, and Amogharajra, arrived on the island sometime in the eighth century, they were able to collect a large number of Tantric texts as well as learn some of the Tantric ritual practices prevalent there. In the ninth century, Tantrism had an even stronger impression on Sri Lanka. Two Tantric schools or sects were introduced, the Napa darsana and the Vajravada, the latter in the reign of Sena I (833-53) by a bhikkhu from the Viramkara monastery at Anuradhapura. Sena I himself became an adherent of Tantrism. Tantric incantations or dharanis in the Indian Nagari script of the ninth century, inscribed on stones, clay tablets, and copper plaques, have been found in a number of places in the old Rajarata, as well as Tantric images in bronze and copper, e.g. of the goddess Tara.

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