Buddhist treasures

Published : Apr 03, 2013 00:00 IST

The birth of the Buddha, Mural by Soliyas Mendis, Kelaniya Vihara, early 20th century. Soliyas Mendis' paintings are remarkable in showing their roots in the art of Sri Lanka and ancient India while serving the contemporaneous needs of Buddhists on the Island.

The birth of the Buddha, Mural by Soliyas Mendis, Kelaniya Vihara, early 20th century. Soliyas Mendis' paintings are remarkable in showing their roots in the art of Sri Lanka and ancient India while serving the contemporaneous needs of Buddhists on the Island.

THE culture of all of South Asia is deeply unified by a vision of great compassion, which is born out of seeing no separations between different people; between the lives of men and women and that of animals and birds, plants and trees. This vision of life sees all of us and indeed all that is around us as a part of the same. Our understanding of ourselves as separated human beings, our self-centred goals, our egos, are considered to be an illusion. The high purpose of life is to lose our attachments in the material world, to be able to see the truth beyond. Sri Lanka is one of the great inheritors of this vision of life.

In the 3rd century BCE, Sanghamitra, daughter of Emperor Asoka, carried a cutting of the revered Bodhi tree at Bodhgaya to Sri Lanka. Buddhism was symbolically planted, along with the holy tree, on the island. Both the faith and the venerated tree continue to flourish today.

The deeply venerated tree is at Anuradhapura in central Sri Lanka and it may be the oldest recorded living tree in the world. It stood at Bodhgaya since at least the 6th century BCE. The cutting brought by Sanghamitra was planted in Anuradhapura in 249 BCE by the king of Sri Lanka who called himself Devanampiya-tissa, meaning “Beloved of the divine”. He was following a tradition of not using his name. This was a time when no portraits were made in Indic art and the names of artists were not put on their works. Our ephemeral personalities were not considered important. The higher purpose of life was to lose the sense of the self, the ego, and to recognise the ‘maya’ or ‘mithya’, the world of illusory forms, around us.

The Bodhi tree marks a most wonderful and unique interaction between two countries. In fact, when the tree at the original site in India was no more, it was grown again from a cutting of the tree in Sri Lanka. The two countries have jointly kept the tree and its tradition alive.

Benoy K. Behl is a film-maker, art historian and photographer known for his prolific output of work over the past 34 years. He has taken over 36,000 photographs of Asian monuments and art heritage, made 126 documentaries on art history and held exhibitions in 29 countries. An exhibition of his photographs on the Buddhist heritage of Sri Lanka will be held at the India International Centre, New Delhi, from April 9 to 16.

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