{"id":56842,"date":"2016-07-22T15:46:30","date_gmt":"2016-07-22T22:46:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/?p=56842"},"modified":"2016-07-22T16:08:30","modified_gmt":"2016-07-22T23:08:30","slug":"no-unhrc-when-portuguese-destroyed-buddhist-temples-and-erected-catholic-churches-on-top-of-destroyed-buddhist-sites-in-sri-lanka-during-the-portuguese-era-1505-1658-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/2016\/07\/22\/no-unhrc-when-portuguese-destroyed-buddhist-temples-and-erected-catholic-churches-on-top-of-destroyed-buddhist-sites-in-sri-lanka-during-the-portuguese-era-1505-1658-2\/","title":{"rendered":"No UNHRC when Portuguese destroyed Buddhist Temples and erected Catholic Churches on top of destroyed Buddhist sites in Sri Lanka during the Portuguese era (1505 – 1658)"},"content":{"rendered":"

Senaka Weeraratna<\/em><\/span><\/h2>\n

Desecration of Kelaniya Viharaya by the Portuguese: The destruction of the sacred temple Kelaniya Rajamaha Viharaya was iconic of the near annihilation of Buddhist temples and Buddhism during the time of the Portuguese invasion of Sinhale<\/p>\n

\"destructionof<\/p>\n

Wall Paintings at the Aluth Vihara Ge or the New Image House at the Kelaniya Raja Maha Viharaya (Kelaniya Temple).<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"destructionof<\/p>\n

The paintings above done by Solius Mendis show the destruction of the Kelaniya Temple in 1578 under the Portuguese rule<\/p>\n

\"destructionof<\/p>\n

…………………………………………………………………………………………….<\/p>\n

See article<\/p>\n

Beware of wolves in sheep\u2019s clothing<\/h2>\n

by<\/p>\n

Sesha Samarajiwa<\/strong><\/p>\n

http:\/\/www.asiantribune.com\/index.php?q=node\/7724<\/a><\/p>\n

I am at the ancient Kelaniya Raja Maha Viharaya in Sri Lanka. I have come to this sacred Buddhist place seeking some sorely needed serenity. In a great hallway there, I see once again a painting \u2013 a panel of paintings \u2013 that tells a familiar story of brutal intolerance. It shows an army of Portuguese soldiers destroying this very temple. In fact, they did set fire to this sacred place and partially destroyed it. They also confiscated the temple, banning Buddhists from entering the precincts. Later, the Buddhists reclaimed and rebuilt the temple 200 years later under the auspices of King Kirti Sri Rajasinghe.<\/p>\n

But the stark reminder of historic injustice and intolerance on the wall made my eyes mist over. And it kindled deep within me a spark of outrage, for it dawned on me, as clear as the blue sky outside, that nothing much had changed in our world; the same mindset that drove those long-dead Portuguese aggressors still fuels today\u2019s oppressive trespassers.<\/p>\n

So in a tea shop with a view of this achingly beautiful temple \u2013 a sacred temple my people had built over 2300 years ago years ago in honor of their Beloved Master, a temple which had withstood much tribulations \u2013 I began to sketch this essay.<\/p>\n

Pests from the West<\/strong><\/p>\n

Evangelists belong to a long line of pests from the West who have come and keep coming like locusts to colonize our souls and cannibalize our cultures. I have in mind the whole bandwagon: Mormons who hunt in pairs, Jehovah\u2019s Witnesses, Baptists, Anabaptists, Church of This and the Church of That, well-heeled evangelists of a mind-boggling array of corny creeds and cults, all of whom, in slick American style, are engaged in aggressive marketing and PR campaigns to boost their ranks and their coffers with suckers from the East. Of course, they command the money, the power and the technologies to back their campaigns, their fishing missions.<\/p>\n

The main entrance way to the magnificent Kelaniya Raja Maha Viharaya. It’s construction is credited to Prince Uttiya, brother of King Devanmpiyatissa. Buddhism was introduced to Sri Lanka during this monarch’s reign, in 306 BCE to be precise.<\/strong><\/p>\n

The latest incursions are merely a continuation of the 500-year-old sorry saga of Asia, Africa and South America, which began with the arrival of the Portuguese and the Spaniards. Some have never recovered from the machinations of their priests and the savagery of their conquistadors. The baton of imperialism has passed from the Europeans to the Americans. That is not to say that the rest of the West has dropped out. They have not. They are very much in the game. It\u2019s just that the Americans are in the lead, the new Romans on the rampage.<\/p>\n

Carrots and sticks, time-tested tricks<\/strong><\/p>\n

The old tricks still work. Priests from the West come to the East. They tell the natives that good things will happen now and in the afterlife if only they accept their blond, blue-eyed god as their savior. Otherwise, the prospects would be dreadful.<\/p>\n

Now, close your eyes, and let us pray,\u201d says the priest. Let us pray that the god of your conquerors will save your miserable, heathen souls. Let him carry your burdens, give you comfort, so that when you die, you can enjoy eternity sitting on his lap. Every Sunday, let the blood of the lamb wash your sins away, so that you can live to sin another day. If you don\u2019t, you\u2019ll roast in hell forever. So, let us eat the flesh of our god and drink his blood to make sure that doesn\u2019t happen!\u201d<\/p>\n

An image of Gautama Buddha. <\/strong><\/p>\n

Sri Lanka is the world’s oldest, and continuous Buddhist country.<\/strong><\/p>\n

So we shut our eyes tight, clutch our bibles tighter and we pray. When we open our eyes, we have the bibles, while the canny comforters and their kind have our land, our blind allegiance and even our pennies, which can multiply into a tidy sum for the \u2018spiritual\u2019 cartel. Carrots and sticks. Time-tested tricks.<\/p>\n

Cannibalizing Cultures<\/strong><\/p>\n

We know well how the Europeans won the West. They won it through mass genocide of the native populations in North and South America. In South America, hundreds and thousands of natives who resisted conversion were garroted. There is a poignant painting depicting such conversions. It shows armored Spanish soldiers garroting native priests, while a Spanish priest holds up a large cross. More terrified natives await their turn. On the side, another Spanish priest feeds stacks of ancient gold-leaf books of the Mayans into a fire. On the face of the Mayan priests, a look of utter sadness mixed with resignation.<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"mayan02\"<\/p>\n

THIS PAINTING HANGS IN THE CORRIDOR OF THE MUNICIPAL BUILDING IN MANI (MAYAN VILLAGE) IN YUTACAN (South America). IT DEPICTS THE AUTO DE FE\u201d OF 1562 WHEN THE SACRED WORKS OF THE MAYANS WERE DESTROYED BY THE SPANISH CATHOLICS\u00a0\u00a0BY THROWING THEM INTO THE FIRE<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"mayan03\"<\/p>\n

THIS PEACEFUL COURTYARD IS NEAR THE ATRIUM WHERE FRAY DIEGO DE LANDA BURNED THE MAYAN BOOKS AND THEIR RELIGIOUS ARTIFACTS WHILE BRUTALLY TORTURING HIS VICTIMS.<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"mayan04\"\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

THE MASSIVE MANI CHURCH AND CONVENT BUILT UPON THE SITE OF THE FORMER MAYAN TEMPLE AS IT IS TODAY AND LITTLE CHANGED FOR THE PAST 450 YEARS.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

A visit to Mani, Yucat\u00e1n <\/strong><\/h2>\n

by\u00a0<\/a><\/strong>John M. Grimsrud<\/a><\/p>\n

https:\/\/bicycleyucatan.wordpress.com\/category\/blogroll\/<\/a><\/p>\n

Mani is a small quaint, quiet and tranquil Mayan village 80 kilometers south south-east of the capital city of M\u00e9rida. Nearby is the shoe and pottery manufacturing city of Ticul plus the garden market capital of Yucatan, Oxkutzcab.<\/p>\n

Mani is also situated on the age-old seldom traveled but famous Ruta de Los Conventos\u2019.<\/p>\n

This seemingly unpretentious diminutive settlement has the incredible distinction of being continuously inhabited by one of the most technically advanced civilizations the world had ever known for the past 4,000 plus years\u2026 an astonishing and impressive claim to fame that few places on this planet could proclaim.<\/p>\n

Today minute and modest Mani is serenely passive but this off-the-highway rural community was once the tragic site of one of the most heinous degradations of cultural heritage and spiritual annihilation that this world has ever witnessed.
\nJanuary 6th, 1542 the Spanish conquistadors established a permanent encampment on the Yucatan peninsula at the height of their fanatic inquisition fired religious rampage.
\nThis was a mere fifty years after the first Spanish explorer; Christopher Columbus set foot upon the New World at the Bahamas Islands.<\/p>\n

Between 1549 and 1559 under the tyrannical direction of Fray Juan de M\u00e9rida the enslaved indigenous Maya were forced to pull down their ornate astronomically oriented sacred temples that pre-dated Christianity by thousands of years and with the remnants build a Catholic church and convent upon their native soil.<\/p>\n

The inquisition crazed conquistadors inflamed by self-righteousness were mandated by their God to plunder the Yucatan\u2019s indigenous residents whom they deemed to be heathen heretics that worshiped ancient pagan gods in false temples indulging themselves in unholy sacrifices which they had been doing for more than three very un-Christian millenniums.
\nThe Spanish inquisitionists were by this point in time well practiced in ethnic cleansing and imperialistic expansionism having successfully purged the Iberian peninsula of the Jews and Moors.
\nIn spite of the 500 years of degradation, slavery and absolute plunder of the Mayan civilization it is a remarkable attribute to these long suffering original inhabitants of Yucatan that they still to this day perpetuate the sacred rituals of their ancestors, speak in their original Mayan tongue and even dress in their traditional custom.
\nTo this day the Mayan daily partakes of the culinary specialties of their ancestors.
\nThese Maya are the people that brought the human race such things as corn (maize), tobacco, chocolate, cotton, tomatoes, pineapple, peanuts, chili peppers and turkeys that have all impacted mankind monumentally to this day.
\nBesides a myriad of food products the indigenous of the Yucatan introduced to global humanity they also were the hemispheric healers armed with thousands of medicinal plants that even now enhance more than 500 American prescription drugs.
\nQuinine and ipecac are still standards of the pharmacy but cannabis and hallucinogenic mushrooms eased pain and altered the mental state that were but a few in the huge inventory of medicinal remedies dispensed by these technologically advanced original inhabitants.<\/p>\n

What the Mayan received in return from the Spanish conquistadors were horses, rats, cockroaches, pigs, weeds, fruit trees and thousands of men all infused with diseased petulance that unleashed a pandemic that rapidly dwindled the indigenous populace.
\nSmallpox murdered more native Americans than several hundred years of systematic Spanish slaughter.
\nThere definitely was some pay-back involved when the Indigenous of America sent home to Europe syphilis with Christopher Columbus that became epidemic by 1495, along with tobacco and cannabis to smoke. The great exchange saw winners and losers on both sides.<\/p>\n

To further plunder these overrun indigenous, in 1562 Fray Diego de Landa burned and destroyed<\/p>\n

5,000 Mayan figures of their God, 13 altars, 27 parchment books made of deer hide and 197<\/p>\n

decorated pottery containers of worship.
\nAll of this was done to drive these heartless heathens\u201d to Christianity.
\nFrom the book Genesis\u201d by Eduardo Galeano; 1562: Mani page 137<\/p>\n

The Fire Blunders<\/em><\/p>\n

Fray Diego de Landa throws into the flames, one after the other, the books of the Mayas.<\/em>
\nThe inquisitor curses Satan, and the fire crackles and devours. Around the incinerator, heretics howl with their heads down. Hung by the feet, flayed with whips, Indians are doused with boiling wax as the fire flares up and the books snap, as if complaining.<\/em><\/em><\/p>\n

Tonight, eight centuries of Mayan literature turn to ashes. On those long sheets of bark paper, signs and images spoke: They told of work done and days spent, of the dreams and the wars of a people before Christ. With hog-bristle brushes, the knowers of things had painted these illuminated, illuminating books so that the grandchildren\u2019s grandchildren should not be blind, should know how to see themselves and see the history of their folk, so they should know the movements of the stars, the frequency of eclipses and prophecies of the gods and so they could call for rains and good corn harvests.<\/em><\/p>\n

In the center, the inquisitor burns the books. Around the huge bonfire, he chastises the readers. Meanwhile, the authors, artist-priests dead years or centuries ago, drink chocolate in the fresh shade of the first tree of the world. They are at peace, because they died knowing that memory cannot be burned. Will not what they painted be sung and danced through the times of the times?<\/em><\/p>\n

When its little paper houses are burned, memory finds refuge in mouths that sing the glories of men and of gods, songs that stay on from people to people and in bodies that dance to the sound of hollow trunks, tortoise shells, and reed flutes.<\/em><\/p>\n

***
\nAs atonement for destroying the books of one of the greatest civilizations the world had known obliterating their art, literature, mathematics, astronomy and medicines Fray Diego de Landa wrote a document of the conquerors view entitled; Relation de Cosas de Yucatan\u201d.
\nhttps:\/\/bicycleyucatan.wordpress.com\/category\/blogroll\/<\/a><\/p>\n

……………………………..<\/strong><\/p>\n

In places like India and Sri Lanka, they were no better. They too faced abject horrors. In his book, Christianity’s scramble for India, <\/em>Navaratna Rajaram says that the Christian Missionary is neither a Christian nor a missionary. In fact, he is a racist and a white supremacist in priestly guise.\u201d<\/p>\n

The cruelty of the Christians when converting the natives of places like Sri Lanka, India and the Philippines is well documented, but I can offer just a small sample here.<\/p>\n

As Senaka Weeraratna<\/strong> asserts in this article, Repression of Buddhism in Sri Lanka by the Portuguese: <\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

The Portuguese imperial agenda was to create discord in the country and then take maximum advantage of the situation for their benefit in terms of siphoning off wealth from Sri Lanka and converting Buddhists into Christianity, who then in their calculation would remain loyal to the Portuguese Crown rather than to the Sinhalese Kings of the land.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n

http:\/\/www.vgweb.org\/unethicalconversion\/port_rep.htm<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

Even if in less barbaric form, this was the agenda of the later colonial masters from Europe \u2013 the Dutch and the British.<\/p>\n

The insidious destruction of culture<\/strong><\/p>\n

When people adopt an alien religion, it is not just a religion they adopt, but an alien way of life. Such people celebrate not so much local traditions, but the festivals and high points of Jews, Christians and Arabs and whichever colonial master they had.<\/p>\n

One of the most beautiful Buddhist temples in the world, the Kelaniya Temple epitomizes refined Sinhala\u00a0aesthetics. Buddhism fashioned the culture of the Sinhala. This Path — from which the Sinhala have derived their spiritual sustenance — is intrinsic to their heritage.<\/strong><\/p>\n

In his masterly travelogue, Among the Believers \u2013 An Islamic Journey,<\/em> V S Naipaul shares his intimate insight into the ways an alien religion destroyed indigenous cultures. This is an extract from a speech he gave in 1990. Listen to Naipaul.<\/p>\n

Because I was soon to discover that no colonization had been so thorough as the colonization that had come with the Arab faith. Colonized or defeated peoples can begin to distrust themselves. In the Muslim countries I am talking about, this distrust had all the force of religion. It was an article of the Arab faith that everything before the faith was wrong, misguided, heretical; there was no room in the heart or mind of these believers for their pre-Mohammedan past. So ideas of history here were quite different from ideas of history elsewhere; there was no wish here to go back as far as possible into the past and to learn as much as possible about the past.<\/p>\n

Now, traveling among non-Arab Muslims, I found myself among a colonized people who had been stripped by their faith of all that expanding intellectual life, all the varied life of the mind and senses, the expanding cultural and historical knowledge of the world, that I had been growing into on the other side of the world. I was among people whose identity was more or less contained in the faith. I was among people who wished to be pure … No colonization could have been greater than this colonization by the faith.\u201d<\/p>\n

Naipaul describes the effects well. Christianity and Islam are just two sides of the same intolerant coin.<\/p>\n

Cruel Custers and Cortezes<\/strong><\/p>\n

Their Buffalo Bills and their Wild Bills, their Custers and their Cortezes, and the long line of predators and priests made sure that the sorry remainder of once-proud nations would remain so, while they ruled the roost in lands drenched with native blood. Many weaker cultures succumbed to the relentless onslaught from the West. They either slaughtered those who resisted or they sowed the seeds of abjection and their eventual self-destruction.<\/p>\n

Even today, we see the pathetic dregs of once-noble nations staggering around native reservations and barrios in North and South America, in Australia, in Canada, in New Zealand. They have lost their spirit. They have lost their will to live. They seem embarrassed to be alive. They are self-destructing. At best, they are performing monkeys titillating whites with a thirst for the exotic. These are abject peoples, vanishing tribes.<\/p>\n

Now, not satisfied with ruling their large chunk of raided real estate, they are hell-bent on extending their hegemony over the whole world. Not even a little island nation in the Indian Ocean escapes their radar, a radar scanning new territories for economic, cultural and spiritual colonization.<\/p>\n

They howl in protest when the natives resist. But it\u2019s very easy to substantiate the nefarious activities of their ilk. Still, in the interests of space and time, I do not intend to cite the corpus of studies which prove beyond doubt the devastation that has been wreaked on various peoples and cultures by the religious agents of Western imperialism \u2013 an arrogant and ruthless enterprise fueled by religion, money and armed might, the unholy trinity of neo-imperialism.<\/p>\n

Happy hunting grounds of human misery<\/strong><\/p>\n

Human misery is happy hunting grounds for the spiritual cartels. It has always been so. They strike when their targets are at their weakest or bomb them to submission to make sure they are at their weakest. Thus softened up, they are susceptible to inducements and brainwashing.<\/p>\n

In the 16th Century, the great Kelaniya temple was set ablaze by Portuguese soldados, partially destroying it. Later, the Lankans repaired the damage. <\/strong><\/p>\n

They have many tried and tested weapons in their arsenal. They are canny. To \u2018convert\u2019 people, you must first make them despise and reject what had sustained their people for millennia. So they vilify their faith or convince them it is a spent force or dark superstition. In so doing, they make us spit on our heritage.<\/p>\n

Focus describes a grotesque brainwashing technique thus: “A Christian missionary (pastor) brings two boxes before little children. He says one belongs to Jesus and the other to Buddha. Children are asked to select any box of their choice. The Buddhist children select the box of Lord Buddha. They find the box empty. The pastor now says select the box of Jesus. It is filled with many nice things. Then the pastor says “see how Jesus loves you.”<\/p>\n

You can read more about the Buddha Biscuit and religious conversion techniques in South Asia here.<\/a><\/p>\n

Then as now, rare is the native who can resist such marvelous baubles. Make the bait juicy. Dazzle the natives with their power and glory. Pile on the questionable comforts of the religions they are peddling, and reel them in, easy as you please. Add another zombie to the roster. Check!<\/p>\n

This is cruel. This is unacceptable. But protest and you are sure to invite a howl of counter protest accusing you of suppressing freedom \u2013 freedom to engage in their agenda.<\/p>\n

Selling pie in the sky<\/strong><\/p>\n

Western religious intruders are, in every sense, Trojan horses, the Fifth Column, which the dictionary defines as A subversive group that supports the enemy and engages in espionage or sabotage; an enemy in your midst.\u201d In the imperial enterprise, the priests always went in first, then followed the firepower. They may use foreign and local agents, but their controllers are megalomaniac Westerners, the powers behind most of the \u2018churches\u2019 selling pieces of blue sky to natives.<\/p>\n

A mother and daughter pay their respects to the Great Teacher. Incredibly, despite tremendous predicaments spanning more than two millennia, the majority of the Sinhala people have managed to protect the Buddha Sasana and remain steadfast to their faith and way of life \u2013 a way of life worth preserving. ( Photos: Sesha Samarajiwa\/ShootOut Photography)<\/strong><\/p>\n

We welcome them to our lands and accept their gifts at grave risk. For once they are in, once they gain a foothold, they will demolish our unity and integrity, which is tantamount to annihilating our culture. Then we are one step closer to extinction.<\/p>\n

The self-righteous mob on fishy fishing missions fishing in troubled waters should know that Asian civilizations were established on, and sustained by, the finest and wisest spiritual and moral foundations this planet has ever known. Although colonizers from the West have tried for five centuries to colonize our souls, make us ape them and adopt their delusions, many of us have resisted, while some of us, of course, succumbed to inducements and spiritual seduction. It\u2019s too late to do anything about that now and I mean no offense to any Asian who worships the gods of the conquerors. I wish them well.<\/p>\n

Fight cultural annihilation, resist converters<\/strong><\/p>\n

We believe it\u2019s worth preserving the unique, beautiful and, yes, great civilizations that flourished in Asia. I don\u2019t mean we should try to hang on to the past and reject modernity; that would be primitivism, guaranteed fossilization. That\u2019s not what I\u2019m promoting. Besides, that would be impossible, for cultures are not static; they are dynamic; they change; they adapt; they move on. I mean it\u2019s worth preserving the quintessence of our cultures, for example, the way Thailand and Japan have done. They did that, to a large extent, by successfully repelling European priests \u2013 the Fifth Column I referred to earlier \u2013 from gaining a foothold in their homelands. Unfortunately, the rest of Asia was not so savvy. By the time they opened their eyes, the natives had the Bibles and the interlopers had their lands.<\/p>\n

I believe we owe our future generations. It would be a pity if they can have a glimpse only in museums of the by then long dead cultures, the great cultures that had sustained their ancestors. I believe it is worth fighting for, as did our ancestors who fought against tremendous odds. (Admittedly, some of our ancestors sold out.) For that, we must be vigilant. For that, we must be courageous. For that, we should not allow alien cultures to colonize our souls. For that, we must resist bribes and brainwashing.<\/p>\n

We know we are struggling against an enemy immensely more powerful than we are. But we must resist at all costs. In this do-or-die struggle to preserve our way of life and our spirit, we can take courage from the lessons of history. Where is the mighty Roman Empire whose dominion extended from remote Britain to the Middle East? Where is the British Empire where the sun once never set? Where today is the Soviet empire? Gone, vanished.<\/p>\n

When the founding pillars of a people \u2013 religion, language and culture, all inextricably linked \u2013 are undermined, neither a nation nor a civilization can survive intact for long. Those who engage in such willful, relentless destabilization are engaged in emotional violence, psychological warfare. They traumatize and balkanize nations, set son against father, husband against wife, neighbor against neighbor, group against group, fermenting crisis and conflict, which will eventually lead to their destabilization and disintegration. Then they are soft targets for takeover.<\/p>\n

For five centuries, their kind not only colonized our lands and bled us dry but, to add insult to injury, they also colonized some of our souls. Yet some of us, our heroes and our martyrs, resisted. So can we, if we have the guts to scream out loud: Be gone, ye wolves in sheep\u2019s clothing!\u201d<\/p>\n

References<\/strong><\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Navaratna Srinivasa Rasarum, Christianity’s scramble for India<\/strong> and the failure of the secularist’<\/em> elite, Hindu Writers Forum; (1999)<\/li>\n
  2. Sri Lanka: Conversions go south<\/strong>, Sunday Leader, June 5, 2005, reproduced in Buddhist Channel<\/a><\/li>\n
  3. Kamalika Piers, Christian conversion in Buddhist Sri Lanka<\/strong>
    \nIsland Newspaper, March 8, 2000. Reproduced in?     Christian Aggression.org.<\/a><\/li>\n
  4. Senaka Weeraratna, Repression of Buddhism in Sri Lanka by Portuguese<\/strong>. (Abridged version).
    \nThe Buddhist Channel, June 28, 2005<\/a><\/li>\n
  5. V S Naipaul, Our Universal Civilization,City Journal, 1991.<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    Sesha Samarajiwa<\/strong> is interested examining foreign religious agents\u2019 role as Fifth Columnists of neocolonialism\/neoimperialism.<\/p>\n

    – Asian Tribune –<\/p>\n

    See also<\/p>\n

    Sri Lankan Intellectuals Research Exposes Years of Portuguese Exploits<\/strong><\/p>\n

    http:\/\/worldhinduism.org\/2016\/04\/11\/sri-lankan-intellectuals-research-exposes-years-of-portuguese-exploits\/<\/a><\/p>\n

    https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/2016\/04\/20\/sri-lankan-intellectuals-research-exposes-years-of-portuguese-exploits\/<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    Senaka Weeraratna Desecration of Kelaniya Viharaya by the Portuguese: The destruction of the sacred temple Kelaniya Rajamaha Viharaya was iconic of the near annihilation of Buddhist temples and Buddhism during the time of the Portuguese invasion of Sinhale Wall Paintings at the Aluth Vihara Ge or the New Image House at the Kelaniya Raja Maha […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-56842","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-forum"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56842","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=56842"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56842\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=56842"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=56842"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=56842"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}