Bhante Missaka (Mihintale) Kamalasiri, a Sri Lankan scholar monk well known as a guided meditation teacher working in association with the Buddhist retreat centres of  the Star of the North and the Metta Meditation Center, Minnesota, USA, made some important revelations about the elusive Ariyamagga character in an authoritative 15-minute presentation in Sinhala, which I viewed on a YouTube video uploaded in November 2021. It reveals Ariyamagga as a former LTTE supporter who, having fled from Sri Lanka and arrived in Norway as a refugee, now poses as a Sinhalese Buddhist monk, embarked on a mission to destroy the Sinhalese Buddhist history and cultural heritage of the country.

 ‘This mysterious Sinhalese Buddhist monk’ had travelled to Myanmar, UK, etc., from Norway, but he has never revealed himself publicly in Sri Lanka. There is no evidence of his having left the country either. But he claims that he has videos of Ariyamagga having discussions with the Shiv Sena organisation of India, where the latter declares that Buddha Gaya does belong to Buddhists, and that the Isipathana stupa at Sarnath, Benares (Varanasi), is a Shiva lingam.

The erudite thera further revealed that Ariyamagga (by that time/2021) had about twenty groups in Sri Lanka working for him including those under (bhikkhu impersonators) Waharaka Abayalankara and Meewanapalane Dharmalankara. Ariyamagga had convinced even Suriya Gunasekera (an acknowledged champion of traditional knowledge) to accept his fake ideology and co-opted him into his campaign of propagating the heresy.

The Eelamists were pursuing four goals:1) to try to validate the false Jambudipa concept by re-introducing certain carefully chosen ancient sacred places as central to a related fictitious history, 2) to bring in an allegedly authentic Tripitaka (different from what is traditionally accepted as the Theravada Tripitaka that was committed to writing at Aluvihare, Matale, in the first century BCE and introducing a new mode of scriptural interpretation, 3) to establish the power of the deluded supporters of the Hela Jambudipa idea within the Malwatte Chapter, and 4) to create a minority with a distincly different identity within the broader Sinhalese Buddhist society.

Masterminds behind disinformation

In his presentation, the venerable monk (Kamalasiri) pointed out that the masterminds of this disinformation project believe that the monks of the Malwatte Chapter are deficient in their knowledge of the Dhamma. That is their view, not his. Anyway, Bhante Kamalasiri said that there were already more than one hundred and fifty monks of the Malwatte Chapter who had embraced the erroneous ideology, and that some of them happen to be  relatives of the MahanayakeTheras. This means that there is an emerging, deeply alarming prospect of the most vitally important historic Buddhist shrines such as the iconic Atamasthanayas and the Solosmahasthanayas (the Eight and Sixteen Great Places of Worship, respectively) being in the future headed by Ariyamagga followers!

“The Buddha was born in Sri Lanka”

Believers in the ‘Buddha was born in Sri Lanka’ myth might be induced to sever even their sentimental links with places that they have to date correctly believed to be historic Buddhist places of worship in Sri Lanka and in India, some of them later built over by non-Buddhists. The misguided adherents of the fiction will forget the Sacred Buddha Gaya/Bodh Gaya in India, which our indefatigable Anagarika Dharmapala did much to reclaim for the world Buddhists.  Dharmapala believed that it was his historic responsibility as a Buddhist of Sinhale/Sihele/Ceylon to do so. This was because he knew that, about two centuries after the missionary Mahinda Thera introduced Theravada Buddhism to Sri Lanka, its scriptures that had been until then transmitted orally were committed to writing in the island in the 1st century BCE and were preserved for posterity, making the it the undisputed repository of Theravada Buddhism.

Dharmapala’s Success

By the end of the 19th century CE, Buddhism had almost entirely disappeared from India due to Muslim invasions as well as the dominance of Hinduism. Dharmapala could achieve only limited success, no doubt, but it was a great achievement, even an epoch-making one, considering his smallness when pitted against the powerful opponents he had to face in that Hindu dominated religious environment during the British Raj at the turn of the 20th century. Anagarika Dharmapala, in association with activists like journalist and poet Sir Edwin Arnold from the British intelligentsia, laid the foundation for the modern Buddhist revival in India. Today India is rediscovering and restoring its lost Buddhist heritage, for example in the form of rebuilding the ancient Buddhist monastic University of Nalanda (427-1197 CE) burned down by Muslim invaders in the 12th century. This made it possible for Prime Minister Modi to shout out to the world not long ago: “India gave to the world the Buddha, not yuddha (war)”. India honoured Anagarika Dharmapala by issuing a postage stamp commemorating him in 2014.

400-page book

I came across a 400-page book written in Sinhala about this ‘Buddha was born in Sri Lanka’ argument, probably first advanced by a local Sinhalese Buddhist nationalist zealot. It probably got communicated to some highly motivated Eelamist intellectuals, and they must be working behind Ariyamagga. The title of the book translates as “Evidence to prove that the land of the Buddhas is none other than this Heladiva or Sri Lanka: Debunking myths” (2018) by a writer named S. Ariyaratne. It is full of information misquoted and garbled by him through misinterpretation. The book  contains a lot of interesting but scientifically unauthenticated details both about the dhamma and Sri Lanka’s history without any serious supporting evidence or rational elucidation.

In some instances, Ariyaratne quotes from the Mahavansa, which he seems to modify in his own interpretation to suit his thesis that the Buddha was born, lived, and died in Sri Lanka. One example is the following: In Mudaliyar L.C. Wijesinghe’s translation (1889) of the Mahavansa, the last verse of Chapter VI is: “This prince named Vijaya, who had then attained the wisdom of experience, landed in the division Tambapanni of this land Lanka, on the day that the successor (of former Buddhas) reclined in the arbour of the two delightful sal trees, to attain nibbana”. (Incidentally, Wijesinghe, being probably a non-Buddhist ignorant of Buddhism, substitutes nibbana for parinibbana found in the original Pali Mahavansa text. But the error has no significance for us here.) The verse means that the Buddha’s passing happened in Kushinagar in modern northern India the same day that Vijaya landed in Tambapanni or Lanka. But Ariyaratne mistranslates the same Pali verse into Sinhala. His version can be rendered into English thus: “Prince Vijaya of steady wisdom arrived the day that the Tathagata, in Lanka or Tamrapanni, lay down to attain parinibbana (in the shade) between two sal trees whose branches were intertwined” (Page 210 of Ariyaratne’s book).

Between pages 112-132, Ariyaratne looks at Anagarika Dharmapala’s work in India from his own uninformed biased point of view. His unconvincing, idiosyncratic argument is that the Lankan Buddhist  missionary, misled by the Suddas (Whites/Europeans), mistakenly identified  Bodh Gaya in India as the birthplace of the Buddha, but  that towards the end of his life, he showed signs that he realized his mistake. It need hardly be said that this is only an erroneous assumption on Ariyaratne’s part. He further asserts that the Bodhi tree found there is not the Bodhi tree under which ascetic Gotama attained enlightenment. He thinks that Alexander Cunningham (the pioneer of what later became the Archaeological Survey of India)  planted the extant Bodhi tree  in 1870!

“Relighting the lamp”

Regarding this, Ariyarathne mentions ‘Relighting the Lamp’ by Australian monk Bhante S. Dhammika (who, by the way, is no stranger to Sri Lankans, especially, to the readers of The Island. The Island (October 1st Wednesday) announces that Bhante Dhammika has recently arrived in Sri Lanka on a visit, and is publishing an interview with him). But Ariyaratne doesn’t seem to have carefully read what he makes reference to. Actually, ‘Relighting the Lamp’ is only the last (or 4th) section of that monk’s 241 page book ‘The Navel of the Earth: The History and Significance of Bodh Gaya’ (BPS, Kandy, 1996)’ between pp. 119-171. In that part of the book, Bhante Dhammika  has included a fairly detailed account of Dharmapala’s legitimate and heroic struggle to acquire the sacred place for Buddhists. Dharmapala played a key role in ‘relighting the lamp’ in India.

Bhante Shravasti Dhammika outlines the historical importance of Bodh Gaya in his preface to ‘The Navel of the Earth …..’:

“…. Bodh Gayā’s historical significance is due to it having a longer and more complete history than almost any other place in the subcontinent, a history supplemented by epigraphical and literary sources from China and Tibet, Burma, Thailand and Sri Lanka. Nor is this history merely an outline of events or a list of doubtful dates, as so often encountered in the study of India’s past. Rather, it includes detailed descriptions of Bodh Gayā’s now vanished temples and shrines, accounts of the elaborate ceremonies and doctrinal disputes that once took place there, and even details of how time was kept in its monasteries. This history is also made more interesting by the participation of some of Asia’s greatest personalities, from Asoka to Curzon, from Xuanzang to Anāgārika Dharmapāla ….”

The book also supplies information about the conspicuous presence of Buddhist monks from Simhale (Sri Lanka) and the construction of religious buildings in Jambudipa including Bodh Gaya under Sinhalese royal patronage. In the 4th century, Sinhalese king Meghavanne (304-332 CE) built a special monastery at the place of Buddha’s Enlightenment – the Bodh Gaya Monastery. It survived there for a millennium, functioning as a major monastic university complex. It operated along with two other Buddhist universities, the famous  Nalanda and Vikramashila monastic universities, which came into existence later.

The author of “The Navel of the Earth…” is an extremely more reliable authority on the history of the Buddha’s birthplace than Ariyaratne. In fact, the erudite Bhante S. Dhammika, who is additionally an alumnus of the Postgraduate Institute of Pali and Buddhist Studies, University of Kelaniya, Sri Lanka, has devoted many years of his life for researching the subject, even traveling on foot where Buddha walked across that part of north India to and fro, preaching his message. He has written and published over a dozen books. A book by Bhante Dhammika published in 2022 is ‘Lumbini’, which gives a short history of “Lumbini, the first of the four major holy places of Buddhism, being where the person who was born to become Buddha was born”.

No worthwhile academic

The truth is that, in my opinion, Ariyaratne is not at all worthy of comparison with Bhante Dhammika in this context. He has had no worthwhile academic training in either Buddhism or the history of Buddhism, not to speak about anything else that is ancillary such as the secular history of Sri Lanka and India. What may be taken as an autobiographical note on pp. 12-14 of Ariyaratne’s book mentioned above says that he was born in a small impoverished village in Nivitigala in 1972. At age 14, he was admitted to the Sangha order as a novice. He studied at a pirivena in Ratnapura, where he became a kind of loner allegedly trying to learn the dhamma in an unorthodox way, which meant  that he read material outside the prescribed syllabuses. Disgusted with the Sangha order at age 19 (i.e., before higher ordination), he disrobed, and became a layman again, reverting to his birth name Ariyaratne. But he claims that he continued his search in which he followed in the footsteps of such ‘Arya utuman’ (Arhants) as the infamous and totally ignorant  Waharaka (Abhayarathanalankara) and Meewanapalane (Siri Dhammalankara)!!

Meewanapalane has been officially excommunicated by the Malwatte Nikaya, but he continues to preach to a dwindled audience. Waharaka died in 2017 and his death was described as his ‘Parinibbana’, a term used only in the case of the passing away of an Arhant, most usually in referring to the death of the Buddha. It is an abomination to use that terminology to refer to the death of a sinful fake Arhant. (There is a great possibility, nay probability, that these are plants intended to destroy the Buddha Sasanaya, which is the breath and being of our over 2500 year old Lankan/Heladiva civilization. Those who bristle at this, please listen to the advice of the Buddha in the Kalama Sutta, and independently find out  their hollowness by studying samples of their preachings.)

Ariyamagga, who is the main motivator of the ‘We Rectify Our History’ project as well as  the leader of the so-called Ariya Kammattahna Organization, may belong to the same group of rogues in robes. (I googled the name Ariyamagga Thero, but failed to find any monk by that name or an organization he heads, except the name in Sinhala characters ‘Pujya K. Ariyamagga’.) The theme ‘We Rectify Our History’ probably comes from Ariyaratne’s book, p. 116, where the author writes “Let’s rectify mistakes in our history by ourselves”. Isn’t it possible that some eccentric uneducated zealots have also been recruited or are simply being used like some feral donkeys by the prime movers of a global conspiracy against the Sinhalese and their Buddhist culture?

It is true that the British stole many archaeological treasures including ola leaf manuscripts of inestimable value from Sri Lanka. At least some of them are being preserved in British libraries and museums. They are waiting to be reclaimed by us through proper channels. This is not the time to get them, as we can understand, given the debilitating economic and political difficulties Sri Lanka is experiencing. This task should actually be left to present and future young generations.

The more urgent need of the hour is to reclaim the nationalist success of 2009 against all odds. Concluded

by Rohana R. Wasala