Buddhist temples of the south : An ongoing debate

The social and cultural history of Buddhist temples in Sri Lanka has been the object of study for well over a century. Far from receding into a world of their own, these temples occupied an important place in the world around them.

Buddhist monks essentially lived under a code of piety and self-denial, and they operated under their own rules and customs. Yet despite being cut off from mundane concerns, they linked to the society they hailed from. Granted entire villages for their upkeep, the clergy made use of the social institutions of their time to maintain their hold.

The first proper sociological overview of the relationship between the Buddhist clergy and Sinhala society was R. A. L. H. Gunawardana’s Robe and Plough: Monasticism and Economic Interest in Early Medieval Sri Lanka. Gunawardana’s point, in essence, was that conventional narratives of Sinhalese kings, especially Parakramabahu I, uniting warring religious factions underlay a complex reality. For Gunawardana, Parakramabahu I didn’t so much enable the triumph of one faction (Theravada) over another (Mahayana) as achieve a compromise between the two, a compromise that was in line with the interests of a monarchy in search of unity against the threat of South Indian overreach.

Comprehensive as it was, Gunawardana’s book did not delve much into Sri Lanka’s post-Medieval history. Nor did it examine the sociological relevance of Buddhist temple art and architecture. Coming in almost 70 years after the publication of Ananda Coomaraswamy’s Medieval Sinhalese Art, Senake Bandaranayake’s Sinhalese Monastic Art sought to fill this gap. Published five years before Robe and Plough, Bandaranayake’s book limited itself to the same period covered by Gunawardana, the Anuradhapura and Polonnaruwa kingdoms. It laid the groundwork for a more comprehensive study 20 years later, The Rock and Wall Paintings of Sri Lanka. This latter work, a landmark for its time, has since proved itself useful to scholars of social and cultural history, and of Buddhism in Sri Lanka.

In The Rock and Wall Paintings of Sri Lanka, Bandaranayake divides the history of Buddhist art into four distinct periods: the primitive rock-shelter paintings, associated with prehistoric times and Veddah tribes; the paintings of the Early and Middle Historic Periods, dating from the 5th to the 13th century AD; the Kandyan Period; and the Southern or Maritime Period. The latter two belong to the period between the 14th and 19th century, while the Southern Period can be located in the Dutch and British eras, going beyond the 19th century and well into the early 20th century. Bandaranayake constantly emphasises that these periods can’t be viewed in isolation from each other, since there were, to quote the title of another of his works, important continuities and transformations between them.

Concentrated along the coastal belt between the Galle and Matara districts, the Southern Tradition has been the object of several studies. However, perhaps because of the place it holds in the nationalist consciousness, it is the art of Kandyan temples, the murals and the sculptures, that has won more scholarly attention.

Although it has been claimed that Southern painters stuck independently to their artistic visions or borrowed from the Kandyan tradition, the reality seems to have been more complex. There were intersections between Kandy and the South, but there were also differences and cleavages. Bandaranayake underscores this.

“What is not yet clear is whether the Southern murals are a provincial offshoot of the Kandyan school, branching off in the late 18th or early 19th century; or a continued and late development of that same tradition, as most observers view it; or a partly independent school or sub-school, with its own history and character… What is not so certain, due to the lack of sufficient evidence, is the nature of the relationship between the two schools in the period from about 1750 to 1830 and before, and the forms of art that were extant in the southern and western regions in the preceding phase of the 17th and early 18th centuries.”

Bandaranayake goes on to argue that part of the reason why we don’t have a clear answer to this is that there is a substantial body of work belonging to the Southern mural tradition which has been lost to us, “the reconstruction of which… is about as impossible a task as the retrieval of the pre-1750 painting styles of the Kandyan kingdom.”

Although the scholar-painter-monk Manjusri tried to date the temples to which this phase belongs, Bandaranayake cautions against his chronologies. For instance, while Manjusri dates the murals at the Sunandaramaya in Ambalangoda to 1802, Bandaranayake contends that they appear “too elaborate” to belong to that period.

Perhaps the most important point to note about Buddhist temple art in the South is its immense diversity. To say this is not to deny, or underestimate, the artistic diversity of the Kandyan styles. They too were influenced by other periods and cultures, predominantly Dravidian. Like the Kandyan Tradition, the Southern Tradition was influenced heavily by a folk culture. Whatever period they belonged to, these murals epitomised the spirit and age of a people who were yearning for freedom from colonial subjugation and at the same time accommodating the colonial presence in their midst. It is this latter quality which sets the Southern Tradition apart from the Kandyan School, since direct confrontations between the Kandyan regions and British colonialism transpired much later.

We can cite several reasons for this. When I visited Ambalangoda in 2022, right before the economic crisis, the Chief Incumbent of the Randombe Viharaya, who has been officiating there since 1965, told me that since it was under Victoria’s reign that Buddhists in Sri Lanka obtained certain freedoms, such as the declaration of Vesak as a public holiday, devotees wished to note their gratitude and thus placed her portrait at the entrance.Another more plausible reason may have been that Buddhist monasteries wished to remain neutral vis-à-vis the confrontations between locals and colonial officials in the Maritime Provinces. By setting up Victoria’s portrait, along with Dutch symbols, at the entrance, these temples were able to “project” their fealty to the British crown.

Victoria’s portrait can usually be found at the entrance of many low-country temples. There is no doubt that it commands respect for and fealty to the British Crown. Yet after entering these temples, one is immediately struck by a profusion of another colonial motif: Dutch mosaic tiles. As we all know, floor-tiles are meant to be walked on. Many of these tiles bear the imprint of colonial art and symbolism. What explains the decision to place them on the inner floors of Southern Buddhist temples? According to the Chief Incumbent at the Randombe Viharaya, if the rationale of Victoria’s portrait was to express gratitude to the British Crown, the objective of these tiles was to promote opposition to it.

“Under the Dutch and the British, there was a general feeling among the people of the South that an alien power was treading on our way of life, our history. By laying down these tiles in the image-house, devotees ensured that when perambulating the outer chamber, they would pay their respects to the Buddha while spurning European rule. The Europeans had trod on our way of life, and we were treading on theirs.”

These anecdotal accounts and explanations must be taken with a pinch of salt. Yet there is no doubt that in the British and the Dutch Period, there were many interactions between Buddhist temples in the South and the colonial government. It is a little difficult to ascertain just where the head priests of these temples genuflected to European authority and where they criticised and opposed it. One explanation would be that since these temples were dependent on colonial patronage, through headmen and other elites, they had no choice but to express their gratitude to the British Crown.

Yet as Kitsiri Malalgoda has pointed out in his brilliant study of Buddhism in 19th century Sinhala society, the South and the low country in general witnessed an outpouring of cultural and linguistic revival. Monks, local elites, and religious institutions had a say in that revival, and expressed it in different ways.

It is this that explains the more colourful contradictions embedded along the walls and floors of these temples. Why, for instance, would a temple feature Victoria’s portrait at the entrance while also featuring depraved Europeans along the walls of its inner chamber, as is the case at the Kataluva Purvaramaya in Ahangama? What explains the incredible church-like architecture of the Dharmasalawa at the Pushparamaya in Balapitiya? And what of the art nouveau sculptures and backdrops in the image house at Randombe?Senake Bandaranayake’s explanation is perhaps the most accurate: these motifs and details, he tells us in the closing paragraph of The Rock and Wall Paintings of Sri Lanka, are “as much a comment on our perceptions of that tradition and the historical trajectory that produced it, as they are indicators and reflections of our contemporary moment.”

(Uditha Devapriya is a regular commentator on history, art and culture, politics, and foreign policy who can be reached at udakdev1@gmail.com. Together with Uthpala Wijesuriya, he heads U & U, an informal art and culture research collective.)

The post Buddhist temples of the south : An ongoing debate appeared first on DailyNews.