Senaka Weeraratna

There  is a well known saying ‘ If you want to study Economics first study the lives of the Economists’.

Likewise the same principle is applicable to the investigation of the story behind the myth that the Buddha (Prince Siddhartha) was born in Sri Lanka and not in India (or Nepal).

Who are the propagators of this fanciful story? They are mostly products of Missionary Schools and drawn from the Catholic Belt of the country.

The past pupils of high standing Buddhist Schools like Ananda, Nalanda, Mahinda, Visakha, Maliyadeva, Musaeus  and the like are not part of this subversive campaign.

Missionaries were subversive in India and Sri Lanka. The British used Western-style missionary schools as a tool of religious conversion and cultural integration, which marginalized native languages and traditional practices. In the colonial era, the use of Sinhala (mother tongue) was banned and enforced with fines and other forms of punishment meted out to young Sinhalese students.

From the day of their arrival in 1505 the Missionaries working hand in glove with the Portuguese Conquistadors (from the Spanish word for “conquerors”) destroyed every Buddhist Temple in sight. For example, Kelaniya Temple. In India, Missionary schools are called ‘ Hate schools’.

Today the acolytes of Missionaries under the guise of ‘ Patriots’ are preaching the falsehood that Buddha was born, was enlightened and passed away in Sri Lanka.

Why these so-called historic sites were not venerated by the Sinhala Buddhists in the last 2300 years and treated like authentic places for pilgrimage, and had to wait until the Missionaries and their acolytes (funded by Christian countries like Norway) shed light on these places, is the paradox.

Were the Sinhalese Kings of this country( totaling 180 or more) fools? not to know of this fabricated storyline.

India is reputed as the Vishwaguru “teacher to the world” or global leader in philosophy, spirituality, and modern knowledge.

Sri Lanka was never a Vishwaguru given the comparative small size of this country. The Buddha was born with a mission to enlighten the world. He had to be born in a bigger landscape for his sacred mission to succeed.

Such a mission cannot succeed with birth in a small bankrupt country eternally struggling for survival.

Epigraphy and Physical evidence is overwhelmingly in favour of Buddha being a Sakhyan.

The Buddha is most formally known as Shakyamuni, which translates to “Sage of the Shakya clan”. Born Siddhartha Gautama, he belonged to the ruling warrior-noble (Kshatriya) class of the Shakya people. The Shakyans were an Indo-Aryan and Munda-descended  community inhabiting the foothills of the Himalayas in what is now modern-day southern Nepal and northern India.

Nobody has called the Buddha ‘Sinhalamuni’ except those who have a mission to dislodge Buddhism from its primacy as the foremost religion of Sri Lanka. That mission started with the Portuguese and was continued by the Dutch and the British, all of whom were never Buddhism friendly.

The challenge for the Buddhists is not to fall for the trap of Missionaries and their acolytes coming out of schools that have not given up their subversive mission.

Senaka Weeraratna