Opinion

A fable: Misappropriation Bill presented in Parliament of Sovereign Kleptocratic Republic of Chauristan

Published

3 years ago

2022/12/8

by Usvatte-aratchi

No, you will not find it among the five ‘Stan Countries’ in the massive spread of Eurasia. Go further south and further east until you meet a sizeable island, not quite utima thule. Ask any forlorn-looking young man in that land where cones on stupa nearly scrape the underbelly of heavens, ‘In this seemingly pleasant land, what is the profession where a person with no inherited wealth, no education, and no professional skills can amass vast wealth in less than five years?’ The young man turned to him as if the stranger were a gross ignoramus and answered, ‘Why silly, politics? This is where asinus rex est.’ ‘Did you say, a land where the donkey is king’? How so?’ asks the visitor. ‘By misappropriating public funds’, gravely replied the young man, ‘to continue which, there is today a Misappropriation Bill presented before the House. It is mainly for misappropriating public funds, first by misallocation’. ‘That is probably why those rich thieves thrive luxuriantly outside a jail. In other countries, such men and women are housed at state expense in jails and at somewhat less comfort than princely. The state owes at least that little to those geniuses, who brought such immense ill fame to this land.’

A few days ago, the Chaurisri, the president of the Chaurigrha (that is the name of the Parliament like the Knesset in Israel or the Duma in Japan) announced the first reading of the said Misappropriation Bill. Since 2005, the annual Misappropriation Bill has been the principal instrument used to plunder the revenue of the state. Revenue (misnamed government income) of the state comprises tax revenue, government income and proceeds from loans raised by the government, each year. The misappropriation has been so gross, systematic, persistent and thorough that the kleptocratic republic won infamy in international fora including lending institutions, as a dark hole that sank money that should have benefited the common people of that country. As was inevitable, the Treasury was empty and the people were left with only foul air to breathe. Yet, Chauripurohit (Minister of Finance), who is also Chauripathi, announced in Chaurigrha that corruption in that land was but ‘a fable’. If the purohit spoke the truth, which he betimes does, then the truth in Chauristan is incredibly fabulous (Fable and fabulous come from the same Latin word ‘fabula.) At the bottom of that dark hole sat a spreading family of fat cats whose skills were confined to deception and corruption. They could not catch so much as a mouse who dared to pilfer some of the Swiss cheese they had imported to fatten the cats. One of the lenders to Chauristan was so concerned that its funds should not be misappropriated, that it appointed its own accountants and auditors when lending to the government of Chauristan. Knowledgeable taxpayers avoided and evaded tax payments because they knew that their taxes only would fatten the family of cats who would litter more. Other taxpayers and potential taxpayers flew out in flocks. The cost of those preventive measures became a part of the loan that the taxpayers of Chauristan would eventually repay.

Three parties misappropriated funds for their benefit. First the members of the Executive Branch of the government from the highest to the lowest. Those sums were fittingly very high. It is commonly averred that they siphoned 20 percent of any loan proceeds and of the price of large contracts. The contractors themselves plundered public funds by using sub-standard material, cheating on measurements and abandoning projects fully paid up but only partly done. There were three important consequences. First, the highest in the executive branch who decided on which projects or which version of a project would be selected, always and inevitably opted for the highest-priced project on offer. The reasoning was quite simple: 20 percent of $20 million raised a bribe of $4 million and 20 percent of 100 million gave $20 million and some loans exceeded a few billion US dollars. There were more than a few who shared each loot. Second, all large-scale projects were financed with loans from overseas with some marginal contribution from tax revenue. The Family avoided accepting offers of projects from countries and companies that would not collude with the Family to offer the cut that the Family wanted and further, deposit the bribe in banks outside Chauristan. So solicitous were they for the good name of Chauristan that they kept their gold securely in a locked Pandora’s Box. The most egregiously corrupt instance was when the government of Chauristan turned down a Light Rail Project offered almost free by a friendly government. Thirdly, as projects which had been accepted became either completely or partially unproductive, the burden of repayment fell on taxpayers, whose income had not increased at all. If you built a house and nobody took it on rent, you would pay the loan to the bank from your monthly salary and that at the cost of milk for your baby. The responsibility is yours for having put up that house in a devil’s cemetery. In reaction, when the burden of taxation became too heavy to bear, some refused to earn beyond a certain upper limit, some packed their bags and looked for refuge overseas and the very poor withered on the vine like grapes in winter in northern Italy. Loans were used to build 40 foot-wide roads on which crocodiles slumbered in the sun and buffaloes gambolled idly, airports, where hangars stored rice and sheltered no airplanes, ports where ships did not call, theatres where ghosts (not Ibsen’s) found permanent residence and where tall columns kept watchful guard over teals nesting in the bushes near the Beira. They did not produce an income adequate to service the loans and people in other sectors were starved to pay off loans while the cats and (Kaputas) crows grew visibly fatter. When those other sectors were destroyed wilfully by one member of the Family and by circumstances well beyond the control of the Family, the economy fell with a thud and woeful consequences fell upon the public. Yet, the cats grew fatter. Purposely and wilfully, one member of the Family denied large sums of tax revenue to the government and diverted that flow to Family friends who also had helped pay for their election to office and also to evade justice. The problem was further complicated as some of these loans were from overseas and had to be serviced with foreign currency. The value of the domestic currency in both foreign exchange and domestic markets tanked. Price inflation soared higher and faster than a kite in August on Galle Face Green.

The second group that misappropriated funds were rich traders who had power and influence over the said Family. Those had gained from the losses to the government treasury and at the same time to the public. The current Misappropriation Bill provides several honeypots that the kleptocrats must already savour. Government enterprises making good profits are up for sale to the private sector, even to the very private sector enterprises and individuals who had plundered the public purse. The capital that the Fat Cats publicly denied owning will suddenly emerge from where they were hidden, and black money will suddenly whiten and glisten and so will be born the Sri Lanka oligarchs. Wealth now hidden in properties in Australia, Europe, Africa, islands in the Indian Ocean and in the Caribbean will flow into Chauristan. Several miracles will occur simultaneously: black money will glisten and whiten blindingly; plunderers in kapati suits will fatten further in Parisian suits and Italian shoes; Sri Lanka’s capital account in the balance of payments will be in the black temporarily. It will be perestroika all over again but in a teacup. Voters need to understand these shenanigans well and elect representatives who will confine plunderers in jail and recover the loot forthwith.

The third group of plunderers was bureaucrats at very high levels. Senior Advisors to presidents, the prime minister and other ministers were notoriously corrupt. Many were caught with their sticky fingers in the kitty but skillful lawyering and unscrupulous politicians installed them back in higher positions and with substantially higher pay. And so merrily did they plunder; the Chauripurohit was right; it was fabulous (fable-like).

The Misappropriation Bill was presented in Chaurigrha as if there was only a macroeconomic problem ailing the economy. All the talk was about primary balances and stability in the economy. There was not a word about the horrors committed by the misallocation of resources. They were fables: my left cleft foot! Everyone breathed the macro-economic vapour and in the ensuing stupor forgot that it was misallocating resources and mismanaging individual projects that summed up to the macro-economic disasters. Thirteen years after the war in Chauristan, defence expenditure keeps on rising at the cost of other sectors including education and health. It is true that defence forces employ large numbers who would otherwise go unemployed and that these young men and women dig trenches and fill them back. Some of them have started making bags for politicians; a few will carry them. But what is the invasion against which the armed forces ever defended Chauristan? Chauristan armed forces cannot withstand for a fortnight even a minor invasion by sea, air and land from any but the smallest powers in its neighbourhood. They failed miserably to prevent a well-planned attack on worshippers at prayer in church on Easter Sunday in 2019, reliable information from other countries notwithstanding. Defend the country: flipping claptrap (Andy Capp might have said). The armed forces in Chauristan arefor the protection of the government against its own people and not for the protection of the state against other states. (One way of confounding the public mind is to confuse the use of the terms state and government so that when people attack a government it is dressed up by government as an attack on the state. Aragalaya attacked the government then in power and not the state of Sri Lanka. They were not traitors to the state of Sri Lanka. In contrast, Eritrea became a separate state after she broke away from Ethiopia. The people who rebelled were traitors to the state of Ethiopia.) Chauripurohit during the budget debate threatened to use armed forces to protect his government from the wrath of the public . That call, in principle, is problematic. After all the armed forces are of the people. But the armed forces are there to maintain public order. Good judgment is of the essence Why not call that outfit the Ministry of Internal Security? Why call a rose by another name?

There is one organ of government that will protect the people from depredation by the government: the judiciary. The judiciary has neither sleuths nor guns nor tanks. The judiciary needs the active support of some important parts of the executive to bring enemies of the people (Ibsen, again) to justice. When the executive fails in its duties and, in fact, colludes with other parts of government to harm the governed, the judiciary is helpless. Allocation is determined by the executive branch of government which can starve the judicial branch of resources. It is the function of the legislature to correct such misallocation.

Allocating massive sums over two decades to projects that overran their originally budgeted resources and construction periods ensured that those projects would bring about waste of capital and minimal rates of economic growth. Of some 5,000 head of cattle imported from New Zealand to Chauristan 90 percent died within a year. Good project management could have eliminated all this waste. In fact, some parts of Chaurigrha brought out these dreadful facts but the mass in that august assembly could not make the connections.

The government of Chauristan is a swamp that drains the flood of unemployed in the economy. Politicians continually widen and deepen that swamp to keep their noses above water. There is roughly one government employee for every 15 persons in the population. There is roughly one teacher per 15 students in schools. More than 20 percent of the labour force in the country work overseas and the recent higher rate of outflow from the country is raising the stock. In the face of this stark evidence, purohits in the land blame the education system for unemployment in the economy. They don’t ask how China, Korea, Thailand, Malaysia, Mauritius recently and Europe, over centuries, employed large increases in their labour force at rising levels of productivity. They did so because governments and entrepreneurs employed increasing populations. And Chauristan is distinguished by its repetitive kleptocratic governments, the scarcity of productive enterprises and the plenitude of unproductive labour.

The stranger exhaled a long breath, looked the young man in the eye and said: ‘Every prospect in this land pleases me but the dominant elites, whatever robes they wear, disgust’. And the traveller weary, wended his wayward way.

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Opinion

“Pot calling the kettle black?” A response

Published

2 days ago

2026/05/15

Thilina Walpola

I was taken aback by the response of the well-known academic Uswatte-Aratchi (U-A) to my article “Achievements of the Hunduwa”, which appeared in The Island on 15 March. In his piece, titled “Pot calling the kettle black?” (The Island, 23 April) U-A accuses me of belittling Sri Lanka in just the same way President Anura Kumara Dissanayake (AKD) did with his reference to Sri Lanka as a hunduwa. Being an academic of repute, U-A’s comments cannot be ignored and before I proceed further to explain, let me state that I am very sorry if what I stated appeared in any way to be derogatory; my intentions were otherwise.

U-A states, “Most sensible people, even uneducated, judge that the volume of a little drop (of whatever) is smaller than that of a hunduwa; so is weight. When the learned doctor emphatically maintains ‘we are not a hunduwa’ but ‘a little drop in the ocean’, is the pot calling the kettle black or worse?” He implies that my ‘insult’ is worse. Whilst conceding that a drop is smaller than a hunduwa, what baffles me is how an academic overlooked the fact that comparisons should be made based on context. Whereas AKD used hunduwa in the parliament to belittle the country, I used the term ‘little drop’ to highlight our achievements, which are disproportionate to our size. In contrast, AKD used hunduwa to trifle with the country.

“Surely, this little drop in the Indian ocean performed well beyond its size to have gained international recognition way back in history,” I said in my article. This cannot in any way be considered derogatory. In fact, what U-A stated in his article about the achievements of countries, either smaller or with populations smaller than ours, only supports my view that there is no correlation between a country’s size and its achievements.

U-A casts doubt on the assertion that Sri Lanka was once the ‘Granary of the East’; he cites instances of drought and famine. There may have been bad periods, as we are at the mercy of nature, but it does not negate the fact that there were periods of plenty too. Our rulers in days of yore did everything possible to feed the populace by building tanks and extensive irrigation systems. In addition to major works, there were networks of small projects, Uva being referred to as ‘Wellassa’; the land of one hundred thousand paddy fields fed by small tanks. What has the present government done to ease farmers’ burden? Absolutely nothing! Whilst farmers are struggling to eke out a living, rice millers are importing super-luxury vehicles and even helicopters!

I agree with U-A that unfortunately the contribution of the ordinary people is not well recorded in history. This is a universal problem, not limited to Sri Lanka. When one watches some of Prof. Raj Somadeva’s programmes, it becomes clear how ordinary people helped complete gigantic projects. Although there are many documentaries on how the pyramids were built, no one seems interested in exploring how Great Stupas in Anuradhapura were built with millions of bricks.

AKD is doing just the opposite of what he preached whilst in Opposition and does not seem to have any sense of shame. His hunduwa reference, possibly, makes him the only President to have demeaned the country.

by Dr Upul Wijayawardhana

Opinion

Openness, not isolation, is the bedrock of the West

Published

2 days ago

2026/05/15

Thilina Walpola

Recent statements from Washington show how global politics is being increasingly framed along civilisational terms. The U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio has referred to the idea of a shared “Western civilisation,” describing the U.S. and Europe as bound by common history, cultural heritage, and institutional traditions. At the same time, U.S. President Donald Trump has amplified comments about countries such as India, China, and Iran in the context of migration and geopolitical competition that reinforce a tendency to interpret global politics in civilisational terms. Taken together, these statements point to a broader shift: global affairs are being interpreted not only through the language of power and interest, but also through civilisational identities.

The appeal of such framing is understandable. It offers a sense of clarity in an era of rapid technological disruption, demographic change, and geopolitical uncertainty. But apparent clarity is not the same as analytical accuracy. Moreover, it is not an entirely new framing either. As early as the 1990s, political scientist Samuel Huntington had argued that global politics would evolve into a “clash of civilisations,” where cultural and religious identities would become the principal fault lines of international relations.

Civilisational explanations can obscure more than they reveal, particularly when they imply that cultural cohesion, rather than institutional adaptability, is the primary source of national strength. A historical record of the modem West suggests otherwise.

A look at history

Much of the West’s post-Cold War dynamism has rested not on homogeneity, but on openness — to talent, ideas, capital, and global competitive pressures. Its advantage has been institutional: the capacity to absorb diversity and convert it into innovation within rules-based systems.

Nowhere is this more evident than in today’s innovation economy. AI, in particular, has become the defining frontier of global competition, shaped by deeply international talent flows and research ecosystems. Companies such as Microsoft, Open Al, and NVIDIA exemplify systems in which breakthroughs depend on globally sourced expertise, cross-border collaboration, and the ability to attract the most capable minds regardless of origin.

The COVID-19 pandemic underscored this complementary reality: innovation now operates through globally distributed production systems. Rapid vaccine development and distribution, by firms such as Modema and AstraZeneca, depended on international research networks and global manufacturing ecosystems. In the case of AstraZeneca, large-scale production through partnerships such as that with the Serum Institute of India illustrated how innovation and industrial capacity now operate across borders.

This is not an argument against immigration control. Immigration must be governed effectively, and civic norms must be upheld. But managing diversity is fundamentally different from retreating from it.

In an era of intensifying geopolitical competition, openness remains a critical strategic asset. The West’s advantage lies not only in military alliances or economic scale, but in institutional resilience and its capacity to attract, integrate, and retain talent. Civilisational framing, by contrast, risks misdiagnosing this advantage —privileging identity over capability and boundaries over performance. Demographic realities reinforce this point. Many advanced economies face ageing populations. In this context, immigration is not simply a cultural or political issue, but an economic necessity.

Without sustained inflows of sldlled labour and human capital, growth slows, fiscal pressures increase, and innovation ecosystems weaken.

Openness as an advantage

The defining challenges of the 21st century —including AI governance and climate change —further highlight the limits of civilisational thinking. These are problems that cannot be addressed within cultural silos. Against this backdrop, framing global politics in terms of civilisational hierarchy carries risks. It encourages a narrowing of identity at precisely the moment when cooperation and adaptability are essential.

The question, therefore, is not whether identity matters. It dearly does. Societies require shared norms, institutional trust, and continuity. The more important question is whether democracies can manage change without losing confidence in the openness that has sustained their development. The strength of the West has historically rested on its ability to combine stability with adaptation — to absorb new influences while preserving core principles such as the rule of law, individual liberty, and accountable governance.

Therefore, the policy challenge ahead is not to retreat into notions of cultural purity, but to govern openness with clarity and purpose. This requires strengthening integration frameworks and reinforcing institutional trust. It also requires recognising that engagement with other civilisational spaces is not a concession, but a necessity in a globally interconnected world.

In a world of intensifying geopolitical rivalry, it may be tempting to define strength in narrower terms. But doing so risks undertnining one of the West’s most important strategic assets. Openness — disciplined, governed, and anchored in strong institutions — is not a vulnerability. It is a source of sustained advantage.

(Milinda Moragoda –Former Sri Lankan Cabinet Minister, diplomat and the Founder of the Pathfinder Foundation, a strategic affairs think tank. The Hindu – 08, May 2026)

By Milinda Moragoda

Opinion

Palm leaf manuscripts of Sri Lanka – 2

Published

2 days ago

2026/05/15

Thilina Walpola

Ola leaves

Palm leaf manuscripts are now valued as historical documents and collections of palm leaf manuscripts are carefully preserved in libraries, in Sri Lanka and abroad. Most of the palm leaf manuscripts available in these collections date only from the 18th and 19th century. The palm leaf is a perishable item. Manuscripts of an earlier period are rare and are greatly valued.

Sri Lanka has the greatest number of these palm leaf manuscript collections. This indicates the value placed on palm leaf manuscripts in this country. The largest collection in Sri Lanka and possibly in the world, is in the National Museum Library, Colombo. The collection exceeds 5000. It includes the collections of H.C.P. Bell, W.A. de Silva, Ananda Coomaraswamy and E.B Gunaratne as well as the poetry section of the Hugh Neville collection. In 1938, W.A. de Silva prepared a “Catalogue of palm leaf manuscripts in the Library of the Colombo Museum.” This was published by the Museum.

The Museum library has the oldest palm leaf manuscript in the country, the Cullavagga, dated to 13 century. Cullavagga gives an account of the religious life of the sangha and the legal confines of their conduct. The last chapter carries the earliest known account of the Buddhist Great Council at Rajagaha.

The library has a copy of Buddhaghosa’s commentary on Digha nikaya. The cover is of silver embossed with white sapphires. The library has a copy of Sumangala Vilasini , one of the Bodhiwamsa (Ref No 1823) in Sinhala giving the history of the Sri Maha Bodhi, and the Mahavagga, copied by the Peramuna rala of Siyambalapitiya Galboda korale, completed on October 1802 and offered to Malwatte.

The Museum library has approximately 300 medical manuscripts Saddharmaratnavaliya manuscript says that doctors had to be paid for their services and travelling expenses. It said that physicians jealously guarded their knowledge of medicine and kept their prescriptions for medical remedies in safe custody.

University of Peradeniya has the next largest collection of 4000 items. Peradeniya has the UNESCO recognised copy of the Mahavamsa and the 13 century Visuddhi Magga Tika. The library has the de Saram and Hettiarachchy collections and several collections of palm leaf manuscripts donated to it.When I was studying at Peradeniya in the 1960s, the Main Library displayed palm leaf manuscripts and their decorative covers, in a case, upstairs, by the staircase, where the readers would not miss it. That was our introduction to palm leaf manuscripts.

The National Library of Sri Lanka (est. 1990) has a small but distinctive collection of 523 items which include Sinhala vedakam, Sinhala bana katha and Yantra mantra gurukam . It has a rare literary manuscript, Diya Savol Sandeshaya, dated April 26, 1904. It begins with the evocative phrase “Sarada Sarada Somi Paharusamu.” It provides a unique glimpse into the late-modern period of Sinhala literature. The manuscript is in good condition, with beginning and end intact. It measures 50 cm in length.

Other state institutes also have collections. The Institute of Indigenous Medicine, Rajagiriya has 700 palm leaf manuscripts. The collection includes Besajja Manjusa , the oldest medical manuscript in Sri Lanka . The collection also has a very old, valuable manuscript on acupuncture, written in Sinhala. The manuscript is reproduced in full in the book “Palm leaf manuscripts of Sri Lanka” by Sirancee Gunawardana. She comments, it is well illustrated. The human form is drawn clearly and acupuncture points indicated.

There are valuable private collections of palm leaf manuscripts, acquired by knowledgeable collectors. University of Kelaniya has digitised and made available the manuscripts of 13 private collections. The Danton Obeyesekera collection includes an ath-veda-pota containing prescriptions. James D Alwis collection has a copy of the Jataka Atuwa getapadaya. L.S.D Pieris has an extensive collection of Yantra manuscripts and medical manuscripts as well as a copy of the Rajavaliya. It was noted that SWRD Bandaranaike also had a collection of palm leaf manuscripts .

Private collectors seem to have been specially interested in the pansiya panas jataka. K.V.J. de Silva’s collection had a magnificent pansiya panas jataka. The collection assembled by Rohan de Silva and Jacques Soulie at the Suriyakantha Centre for Art & Culture, Handessa, also has on display a palm leaf manuscript of the Jataka stories, dated to late Kandyan period, in exceptional condition. Its clarity of script, leaf preparation, and intact binding show the highest standards of Sri Lankan scribal craftsmanship, the Centre said.

The largest collection in a foreign library (western) is probably the collection in the British Library, London, which has around 2464 Sinhala palm leaf manuscripts . The major portion of this collection is the Hugh Neville collection of 2227 palm leaf manuscripts. Everybody has heard of the Hugh Neville collection and most think that this is the only collection of Sri Lanka palm leaf manuscripts in the world and that we must be grateful to Hugh Neville for collecting them. Some probably think he wrote them. They do not know of the much larger collections in Colombo and Peradeniya.

Hugh Neville (1869 – 1886) came to Sri Lanka during the British period as private secretary to the Chief Justice. He later became an Assistant Government Agent. He travelled across the country collecting palm leaf manuscripts. They were mainly 19 century manuscripts. Hugh Nevill observed that just one in his collection may be 100 years old. I have no copy over 200 years old, he said.[1]

Hugh Neville died in France, but London acquired the palm leaf collection at the instigation of D.M de Z. Wickremasinghe. They were catalogued by K.D. Somadasa and published in seven volumes, titled ‘Catalogue of the Hugh Nevill Collection of Sinhalese manuscripts in the British Library”. The British Library, in 2021, digitized and made freely available online, four Sinhalese palm leaf manuscripts from the Hugh Nevill collections, namely Dighanikaya, Majjhimanikaya and two copies of Mahavamsa.

The libraries of Cambridge and Oxford Universities have Sri Lanka palm leaf manuscripts. Bodleian Library in Oxford has the Mahavamsa manuscript which was used by Turner for his English translation. Jinadasa Liyanaratana has examined some of the manuscripts in Cambridge and has catagloued 24 Sinhala manuscripts of which 6 were medical texts, others were on Buddhism. This was published in Journal of the Pali Text Society, Vol. XVIII, 1993, pp. 131-47[2]

The John Rylands Library, University of Manchester holds over seventy manuscripts from Sri Lanka, “mostly on Theravada in the Pali language in Sinhalese script” . They are probably from the Rhys Davids collection. The manuscripts date from the 17th-19th centuries and include copies made in Sri Lanka for T.W. Rhys Davis. There are complete manuscripts of the Paṭṭhāna-Pakaraṇa and Nettipakaraṇa, which are rare even in Sri Lanka.

There are palm leaf manuscripts at Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris, the Azistische Kjust Museum, Amsterdam, and Bavarian State Library in Munich . Paris has the Talapata sent from the Udarata chiefs to Dutch governor Falck. Jinadasa Liyanaratne examined and wrote on the “Sinhalese Medical Manuscripts in Paris” for Bulletin de l’École française d’Extrême-Orient Année 1987 pp. 185-199[3] The Netherlands collection included 135 medical manuscripts.

The palm leaf manuscript collection in the Royal Library, Copenhagen is well known. It was obtained by Rasmus Rask who came to Sri Lanka in 1822 in search of them. The collection was catalogued by C.E. Godakumbure. The catalogue is available in Gunawardene’s “Palm leaf manuscripts of Sri Lanka”(p 339). This collection contains the manuscripts collected by Ven. Kapugama Dharmachandra who lived in Dadalla, Galle. He converted to Christianity and his extensive collection, went to Denmark, said Gunawardana.[4]

Small collections of palm leaf manuscripts are held in various other foreign libraries in the west. Casey Wood, (b 1856) an American ophthalmologist who had in interest in medical research, toured the world after retirement. In Sri Lanka he connected with Andreas Nell, also an eye surgeon, obtained palm leaf manuscripts, mainly medical, which he then donated to institutions and individuals all over North America. At least 50 different recipients have been identified.[5]McGill University has a collection of 27 palm leaf manuscripts gifted by him.[6] The Metropolitan Museum of Art, in New York has one manuscript on display[7]. (To be continued)

[1] Stephne C Berkwitz. Buddhist history in the vernacular. P . 115..

[2] https://hasp.ub.uni-heidelberg.de/journals/jpts/article/view/28096/27490

[3] https://www.persee.fr/doc/befeo_0336-1519_1987_num_76_1_1723

[4] Sirancee Gunawardana Palm leaf manuscripts of Sri Lanka . (1977 )p 1-9, 35,41-43,50,127,129,140-146,248,286-292,339-,

[5] https://findingaids.library.northwestern.edu/repositories/8/resources/1303

[6] https://hiddenhands.ca/sri-lanka-essays/

[7] ps://libmma.contentdm.oclc.org/digital/collection/p16028coll4/id/47247/.

by KAMALIKA PIERIS