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Lankamithra Fernando writes about Mhavamsa.

By Charles Perera

Lankamithra Fernando (Dr), has contributed another article to federalidea.com, on Mahavamsa Myths About Leonine Ancestry Of Sinhala People. Reading it, I could not help finding similarity of both style and facts of an article by another doctor, a Alvappillai Velupillai, of the Arizona State University, USA, that appeared in the website of the Ilankai Tamil Sangam.
The latter also resorts to comic and ridicule in reference to Buddhism, the Mahavamsa mindset, and all that is Sinhala and Buddhist. May be it was a pure coincidence.

However, a Sinhala Buddhist writing a similar article about Jaffna or Battricaloa Tamils would resort neither to ridicule nor to insult, or write with so much of venom towards the Tamil and their religion the Hinduism.

Lankamithra, as a Sinhala first name is certainly not common, and I hear it for the first time. Nevertheless, in the article referred to above Lankamithra refers to his ethnic religious background and says, “ I hail from a very pious Sinhala Buddhist family and was brought up in an
environment of strict Sinhala Buddhist traditions.” In support of his vast
Sinhala Buddhsit credentials, he refers to his uncle who was a custodian of the one of the Buddha’s disciple’s relics kept in a golden casket in a shrine room in his house in Copetty. I am sure there are people in Colpetty, who still remembers that place made sacred by the presence of his uncles shrine room..

His grandfather was a native doctor and young Lankaputhra says that he had to “ learn the art of native medicine, which is usually associated with Buddhist rituals, and I was expected to memorise prescriptions written in Pali on ola leaves ”. That sounds strange to me, as Sinhala native medicine has no Buddhist rituals, and the Old Sinhala native medical prescriptions were written in Sinhala on ola leaves, and not in Pali as far as I know.

The rest of the article belittles the Sinhala Buddhists, and reiterates the Myth of Mahavansa. I would say, Lankamithra’s article is written with material taken from the article of Dr. Alvapillai Velupillai, in Ilankai Tamil Sangam website. Who ever the writers are, they write with a sense of sad inferiority.

The Sinhala Buddhists what ever their beginnings, are quite capable of separating legend from history, and myth from reality. There is no Sinhala I know of, who harks back to the origin and hold it sacred. A lion that the Mahavamsa speaks of may be an animal or a man, but generation of Tamils centuries from now may speak of how the beastly tigers who lived in the jungles of a place called Kilinochchi terrorised the Sinhala race. They may speak of it as a legend or a myth, while historians then will look for records and chronicles to prove that they were real human beings who became beastly through hatred and an inferiority complex, and tried to wrest away part of the land that belonged to a race called Sinhala, who wanted nothing else but share the land with all Communities and live happily together.

It is normal that the terrorist Tamils, who have taken arms against the Sinhala have a grievance against them, but why should the other Tamils who have their place in Sri Lanka, and their rights as Sri Lankans have not been denied to them by any Sri Lankan government, burn themselves with so much of hatred towards the Sinhala people, who have nothing against them.

Lankamithra , in another article says that Greek Philosophy is far greater than Buddhist Philosophy. But this what a great scientist of all times Albert Einstein, had to say about Buddhism:
"....Buddhism, as we have learnt from the wonderful writings of Schopenhauer especially, contains much stronger elements of it. The religion of the future will he a cosmic religion. It should transcend a personal God and avoid dogmas and theology. Covering both the natural and the spiritual, it should he based on a religious sense arising from the experience of all things, natural and spiritual and a meaningful unity. Buddhism answers this description. If there is any religion that would cope with modern scientific needs it would be Buddhism."

Albert Einstein (1879-1955) German physicist, mathematician.
Winner of the Nobel Prize

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