Features

A Sociology and Historiography of Buddhism: Some Reflections on Vesak

Published

2 years ago

2024/05/24

By Uditha Devapriya

By the 6th century BC, the centre of Indian civilisation had shifted to the Ganges Valley. Social and economic conditions had made possible the rise of several religions which posed as alternatives to Brahmanism. By the end of the 5th century BC, the number of these sects had come down. Among those that survived were Jainism and Buddhism.

The Gangetic Basin soon became the centre of the second urbanisation of ancient India, following the Indus Valley phase from 3300 to 1800 BC. This second urbanisation unfolded in two stages, the first going back to the 6th to 5th century BC and the second to the last few centuries of the first millennium BC. By the 7th century, before the rise of cities in the region, 16 small states had sprung up, bordering the Ganges Valley.

Alexander Cunningham, founder of the Archaeological Survey of India, retraced the route taken by the Chinese pilgrims Fa-Hsien and Xuanzang to the sites of several of these cities, including Mathura, Ahicchatra, Sankisa, Kanauj, Kausambi, Ayodhya, Sravasti, Kusinagara, Varanasi, Vaisali, Pataliputra, Bodhgaya, Rajagaha, Nalanda, Champa, and Tamralipti.

Within 150 years, these small “republics” or janapadas would decrease to four, while within the next two centuries they would collapse into one empire, Magadha. Bimbisara and Ajasattu, its most illustrious rulers, were among the most influential patrons of the Buddha, who spent much of his life there; the language he used was, after all, Maghadi Prakrit.

The story of Buddhism and its rise is therefore, at one level, the story of the economic and social changes unravelling throughout India. In the Mauryan Empire, Indian civilisation faced its first “universal monarchy”, while arguably its greatest king Asoka would adopt Buddhism as the state religion in the aftermath of a bloody, violent war.

Jean Darian notes that the rise of Buddhism emerged from two historical trends: the withering away of tribal republics and the formation of kingdoms, and the rise of a merchant class which was more conducive to the growth of empires than a priestly class/caste.

Prince Siddhartha with Mahaprajapati Gotami (Sarlis)

Buddhism hence did not emerge in a vacuum: there were conditions that stimulated its rise over not just those priestly sects but sects which, while sharing some of its key tenets, nevertheless emphasised a more ascetic and extreme lifestyle.

Indeed, Siddhartha Gautama’s first two teachers, Alara Kalama and Uddaka Ramaputta, were followers of these creeds: under Alara Kalama he attained the “Realm of Nothingness” (Akincannayatana), and under Uddaka Ramaputta he attained the “Realm of Neither Perception nor Non-Perception” (Neva Sanna Nasannayatana).

How did urbanisation come about, and what influence did it exert on Buddhism, a religion which in Sri Lanka finds its truest expression, as eminent writers like Martin Wickramasinghe and Gunadasa Amarasekara have observed, in the village?

The transition from the Indus Valley to the Ganges was accompanied and even driven by the emergence of a Vedic culture, the product of a semi-nomadic people who called themselves Arya, which European scholars, including William Jones and Max Muller, anachronistically linked to European culture. We know a lot from literary sources and at the same time so little from actual inscriptions about the nature and the character of these people.

The little we do know is that in their hands, the Ganges Valley, which Brahmanical and Buddhist texts referred to as the Majjhimadesaya or the Middle Kingdom, transformed from a fertile agricultural enclave to a highly developed civilisation. The valley was the site of a stratified society, which was divided into castes and occupational groups; its transformation into a highly urban civilisation compelled a breakdown in the traditional rural order.

Abanindranath Tagore, The Victory of Buddha

Buddhists texts attest to the commercialisation of life in the 5th century BC. The Jataka stories tell us of a “flourishing urban society” in North India. This spurt of commercialisation centred on Rajagaha, the capital of Magadha. A steady rise in the number of people in urban settlements there led to the rise of an urban consciousness and the formation of towns, markets, and trade guilds, including of woodworkers, ironworkers, leatherworkers, and painters.

The Magadha period saw much development in mercantile practices and skills, in the trade and transport of items such as silk, jewellery, and armour, and of a special ceramic called the Northern Black Polish Ware, which made its first appearance in 500 BC in the Ganges valley. D. D. Kosambi puts all this against the backdrop of Buddhism’s ascent:

“The 1,500 years of the full cycle of the rise, spread, and decline of Buddhism saw India change over from semi-pastoral tribal life to the first absolute monarchies and then to feudalism.”

It was under these monarchies that the faintest outlines of a market economy emerged for the first time in India. The rule of these monarchs was linked inextricably to the rise of a merchant class, among which were the famed sresthi, the financiers. These merchants contributed to the undercutting of the caste system. No longer tied to the land like their ancestors, they forwent on their allegiance to the rigid texts of the Vedas.

Not surprisingly, injunctions against and condemnations of city life run through traditional religious texts: cities are described as places “where the Vedas are not recited”, and householders completing their studies are warned against “spending too much time in the city”, since urban dwellers “cannot attain salvation, despite their austerities.”

The rulers, on the other hand, found in merchants a ready means of accumulating capital for large public works, which Marx and Engels noted as the distinguishing mark of Indian (and Asiatic) civilisation. To sustain this, they needed to free capital from the upper castes. At the same time, they required a polity, and a religious doctrine, which would discourage too much wealth accumulation, especially “in the hands of potentially rival groups.”

Buddhism was one among many creeds that witnessed this spate of urbanisation, but it was the most adaptable to these changes. It evolved from a long trajectory. The religious revolutions of the Gangetic Basin, which is where many of India’s religions evolved, can be traced to Ajita Kesakambali, a materialist philosopher who, in contrast to the Brahmins and the Vedas, believed that the body turned to dust and nothing else upon death.

Mara in a Gotami Viharaya mural

This evolved into still other sects. Of these, the Samkhyians were among the first to propound that the soul was distinguishable from the body. Alara Kalama was a follower of this creed. The Jains under Mahaviraswami adhered to a rigid ideology which forbade drinking “without straining or filtering” and in-breathing, since they could kill life-forms in water and in the air. Uddaka Ramaputta is considered to have been a Jain.

The achievement of Buddhism was its avoidance of both materialism and asceticism. The Middle Way, the “Majjhimapatipadawa”, suited a civilisation rooted in trade practices liberated from caste constraints on the one hand, and in a clergy and lay following which believed in staying away from accumulating too much wealth on the other. Buddhism’s innovation lay in its appeal to both streams, through its espousal of a “Middle Path.”

The founder of the doctrine, whose birth, enlightenment, and passing away we commemorate today, was in many respects a representative of the transitions of the period he was born to. While much of his life remains shrouded in mystery, there is certainly no lack of biographies, including the Pali Canonical texts, the Tripitakaya, Buddhagosa’s Aththakatha or Commentaries, and Asvaghosa’s Buddhacharitha.

His life story has long become an enigma. Orientalists and Pali scholars, including Carl Koeppen (Die Religion des Buddha und ihre Entstehung, 1857), W. Wassiljew (Der Buddhismus: Seine Dogmen, Geschichte, und Literatur, 1860), Hermann Oldenberg (Buddha: Sein Leben, seine Lehre, seine Gemeinde, 1881), and Edward Thomas (The Life of the Buddha as Legend and History, 1908), not to mention Edwin Arnold (The Light of Asia, 1879) and Hermann Hesse (Siddhartha, 1927), have published one biography after another.

These texts, including the Canonical ones, differ on certain points. Michael Carrithers, for instance, argued that the Sakyans were not strictly speaking kings, but were instead oligarchs “or councils of elders, or some mixture of the two”, or leaders of tribal republics that were yielding place to the Maghada Empire. At the First Buddhist Council after the Mahaparinibbana, the interpreters were divided over whether Gautama saw the “four sights” in one go and day or over several days: the “Digabhanakas”, entrusted with the study of the Digha Nikaya, supposedly made the case for the former view, while other groups favoured the latter.

Despite these differences and disagreements, the outline of Buddhism has survived to this date, and continues to exert a tremendous influence over Asia, in particular Sri Lanka. To admit that, however, is to understate the reality, for Buddhism inspired in the latter not just its marvels of architecture and art, but its very civilisation. Its tolerant character enabled it to incorporate and absorb facets of other cultures, including Hinduism and Christianity.

Newton Gunasinghe saw in the transformation of Buddhism from an urban theology in India to a folk religion in Sri Lanka an ideological paradigm shift, one which suited the dominant social patterns of both countries. Hence, from the emperor and urban-dweller Buddhism came to be patronised, in Sri Lanka, by the king, landlord, and peasant.

By the turn of the 19th century, when urbanisation made inroads through British colonialism, Buddhism in Sri Lanka faced its second awakening: the Buddhist Revival, led by Theosophists and “Protestant” in its outlook. Yet despite its urban trappings, even this remained bonded to the rural origins of the religion. As in the Ganges Valley and the Middle Kingdom of India, the teachings of the Buddha adjusted to their environment, and with that to entirely new patterns of life, without letting go of their cultural and civilisational roots.

Uditha Devapriya is a writer, researcher, and analyst who writes on topics such as history, art and culture, politics, and foreign policy. He is one of the two leads in U & U, an informal art and culture research collective. He can be reached at udakdev1@gmail.com.

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Features

Trump’s tariffs, AKD’s gazette and Sri Lanka’s diplomatic slumber

Published

1 day ago

2026/07/17

Thilina Walpola

“We are rather respectable in Colombo. We go to bed fairly early, and we remain there till morning. “

According to Sri Lanka’s diplomatic folklore, the late S.W. R. D. Bandaranaike uttered these words while explaining the reasons for Sri Lanka’s abstention on the UN resolution condemning the Soviet invasion of Hungary. Apparently, SWRD’s foreign ministry officials were asleep at home when the diplomatic cable seeking instructions was received from New York. In those days, there were no cell phones, Internet, or even fax or telex machines. The diplomatic cables were sent through post offices. Decoding them was a slow and time-consuming process. Thus, the government could not provide appropriate instructions to our mission in New York in time, and the Sri Lankan delegation abstained on that sensitive UN vote.

Sri Lanka’s Absence from Section 301 Consultations

But then, how does one explain Sri Lanka’s absence from the crucial bilateral consultation held in Washington by the Office of the United States Trade Representative (USTR) during March-April on “Forced Labour” under the Section 301 of the US Trade Act of 1974? Didn’t our foreign and trade ministries send appropriate instructions to Washington in time? Even if the instructions from the foreign ministry were transmitted to our embassy in Washington by pigeon carriers, there was enough time for Sri Lanka to participate in those meetings.

In March, the USTR initiated these 301 investigations on 60 trading partners, and invited all of them for confidential consultations. Out of the 60, 46 participated in these consultations. Sri Lanka was not one of them. Other countries that didn’t participate in these consultations included China, Russia, and Venezuela! In addition to that, the Section 301 Committee conducted a public hearing with interested parties on April 28 and 29. Washington-based diplomats, representatives from few trade ministries as well as representatives from many foreign trade associations and chambers participated in these hearings. Sri Lanka was once again conspicuously absent.

As a result, when the USTR published the proposed forced labour tariffs on June 2nd, Sri Lanka ended up with a 12.5% duty. Pakistani and Indonesian diplomats participated in these consultations and took appropriate follow-up measures, and managed to enter the 10% duty category. As even a threat of a modest tariff hike could disrupt supply chains and reduce competitiveness, particularly in an industry such as garments, I discussed this issue on 15 June and underscored the importance of Sri Lanka’s participation at the next hearing, which was scheduled to be held from July 7th .

Awakening from Diplomatic Slumber and AKD’s Gazette

Fortunately, Sri Lanka finally awoke from weeks of diplomatic slumber, and Ambassador Mahinda Samarasinghe participated in the public hearing on 9 July, and promised, “…. · We have agreed to the text in our negotiations with the USTR on forced labour, …. The gazette as we speak is being printed and I’m getting the gazette tomorrow morning, and the gazette will be shared with USTR as I get it“.

As promised, President Anura Kumara Dissanayake issued a gazette on 10 July banning the imports of goods produced by forced labour. These new regulations are very similar to what Pakistan and Indonesia enacted in April, after their consultations with USTR in March. Why couldn’t we do it in April? Why did we wait till the very last minute?

Challenges ahead

“War is too important to be left to generals alone,” is a famous saying attributed to former French Premier Georges Clemenceau. Similarly, monitoring our main markets is too important to be left to diplomats alone. The United States is the largest single-country market for Sri Lanka. Therefore, Sri Lankan trade chambers and associations should become more proactive in these markets and participate in these events. For example, the chairman of the Pakistani apparel exporters association participated in the April hearings. Similarly, representatives from the Indian Agricultural and Processed Food Products Export Development Authority, the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry, the Confederation of Indian Industry, and Reliance Industries also participated in July hearings. At an event where each speaker is given only five minutes (strictly enforced), having a number of speakers from a country is an advantage. The presence of industry representatives in these kinds of events also help them understand the market dynamics and the future challenges. This is important, particularly because there will be many more challenges with Trump’s tariffs.

With the gazette issued on 10 July, Sri Lanka has imposed a prohibition on the importation of goods produced with forced labour. Now, the challenge will be to effectively enforce the prohibition. And what are the goods produced with forced labour? The USTR list only focuses on aluminum, cotton, electronics, lithium-ion batteries, rice, and tobacco. However, according to the U.S. Department of Labour, the list is much longer. Hence, this list may change continuously during the next two years and tariffs may fluctuate once again.

So, this is definitely not the time to slumber.

(The writer, a retired public servant, can be reached at senadhiragomi@gmail.com)

by Gomi Senadhira ✍️

Features

Tales of Mystery and Suspense 10 Casino for Sale

Published

1 day ago

2026/07/17

Thilina Walpola

After the overwhelming grotesquerie of J K Rowling’s latest Cormoran Strike novel (written, I should have noted, as the others were, under the pseudonym Robert Galbraith), I thought I should return to the world of fun, and also a much shorter description since this thriller moves quickly without the layers of detail that Rowling engages in.

I then move to the second comic thriller by Caryl Brahms and S J Simon. This, their second story to feature Vladimir Stroganoff and Adam Quill, was Casino for Sale, as lunatic a romp as the first, though without the emphasis on the ballet that characterized A Bullet in the Ballet.

This one begins with the impresario Stroganoff buying a casino cheap from Baron Sam de Rabinovich, only to find that it was a rundown place, not the grand casino of La Bazouche, a resort on the Frenc+h Riviera, as he had initially thought. The grand one belonged to Lord Buttonhooke, and Stroganoff could not compete, until he thought of bringing the Ballet Stroganoff to the casino – which of course leads to Buttonhooke deciding to have ballet performances in his Casino too.

Stroganoff invites Quill to visit him, which Quill decides to do since he has left Scotland Yard, having come into a legacy. No one believes this, and he has to face questions as to what he did to have been sacked, with sympathy for having been found out.

Caryl and Simon

The day he arrives in La Bazouche there is a murder, of a vitriolic critic called Citrolo, in Stroganoff’s office. He had been going to write a damning review of the opening night of the ballet and Stroganoff, when he realizes Citrolo cannot be swayed, drugs him and dictates the review himself to the papers. He leaves Citrolo sleeping and finds him shot the next morning, whereupon he decides to muddy the waters and leave a suicide note and lots of other murder weapons. So much overkill, as it were, of course ensures that he is arrested.

But the excitable French detective who makes the arrest follows up his suggestion that Buttonhooke was also involved, and so the two casino owners find themselves in cells next door to each other, with the detective Gustave quite happy to provide creature comforts for a fee.

Quill decides he must investigate, and finds Gustave most cooperative, since he has a laid back attitude to work. So it is Quill that finds a notebook which makes it clear Citrolo is an accomplished blackmailer, and that there are lots of possible murderers, including Stroganoff’s croupier, who was crooked, Rabinovich, who was now working for Buttonhooke, a confidence trickster called Kurt Kukumber, whose prospectus for a dud gold mine was found in the office and Prince Alexis Artishok who was engaged in a deal to buy diamonds from the ballerina Dyra Dyrakova.

Stroganoff had been trying to get Dyrakova to dance for him, but having done so previously she had refused. But then to Stroganoff’s chagrin she agreed to dance for Buttonhooke. The clearly crooked Artishok had told Buttonhooke’s mistress Sadie Souse, who was not very bright, that Dyrakova possessed diamonds she was willing to sell cheap, and Sadie was determined to have them.

Quill meanwhile finds out that there was a secret passage to Stroganoff’s office, the obvious solution to what had begun as a locked room mystery, and that this was known by almost everyone apart from Stroganoff himself. And then Rabinovich is murdered, just after Gustave had released his two original suspects, leading him to blame Quill for having insisted on that and thus allowing them to kill again.

Soon afterwards Dyrakova arrives, and the town is full of posters announcing that she will appear in the casinos, elaborate posters for either one, since Stroganoff is determined that she will dance for him, and if she does not come willingly, he has devised a scheme to make her do so unwillingly. So, though Buttonhooke has her taken off to his yacht immediately she arrives at the station, Quill along with Arenskaya gets her into a launch and to Stroganoff’s casino, where she performs to tumultuous applause, not knowing for whom she is dancing.

When Quill asked her about the diamonds, she said she had sold them long ago, and that gave Quill the solution to the mystery. Rabinovich had known about this, and Artishok had killed him to prevent Sadie learning it from him, he had killed Citrolo who had recognized him for an accomplished card sharper, not a Russian prince at all. But before he is arrested, he gets away in a boat, and the police launch that pursues him is on the point of catching him up when it runs out of petrol.

Again, lots of excitement, and entertaining references – Gustave grows marrows – and if not quite as brilliant as its predecessor, Casino was certainly a delightful read.

Features

The challenge of being positive about SAARC

Published

2 days ago

2026/07/16

Sahan Weerasooriya

The RCSS forum addressed by SAARC Secretary General Ambassador Md. Golam Sarwar in progress. (Pic courtesy RCSS)

It was a few years back that a former President of Sri Lanka took it on himself to pronounce SAARC ‘dead’. Since then there have been other sections of Sri Lankan opinion that have joined the critics of SAARC and taken the solemn stance that SAARC has indeed died what may be called a natural death.

Their fatalism is understandable. SAARC has failed to meet at heads of government or state level for the past several years to take the SAARC process notably forward. Regional cooperation has more or less been only an appealing idea. No substantive concrete projects have taken off to make the idea a hard reality. ‘Inner paralysis’ seems to be SAARC’s lot. Hence the fatalism in these circles.

However, being one of the worst cash-strapped regions of the world and a teemingly populated one with people virtually left to their devices, what choices do the ‘SAARC Eight’ have other than to try their best to band together and continue with their cooperation efforts, however small they may be?

There is no escaping the mounting debt trap for many of these countries and bankrupt Sri Lanka is a glaring example, but ‘throwing in the towel’ and abandoning themselves entirely to the diktats of the strongest economies and their agencies will prove a ‘living death’ for many countries in the SAARC fold.

The gains may be meagre but giving-up on SAARC cooperation in full would prove self-defeating for the organization and South Asia. Right now, the collective intention ought to be to salvage what the region could from the tenuous cooperative efforts. Moreover, such initiatives could go some distance to generate a degree of goodwill among the Eight and help in sustaining a dialogue process.

Given this backdrop it proved ‘a stich in time’ for the Regional Centre for Strategic Studies (RCSS), Colombo, to recently host the SAARC Secretary General Ambassador Md. Golam Sarwar to a round table discussion on the unifying potential of SAARC and its future possibilities, besides other related issue areas.

Held on June 24th and moderated by RCSS Executive Director and former ambassador Ravinatha Aryasinha, the forum brought together a vibrant, wide ranging audience comprising academicians, diplomats, senior public servants, civil society activists and many others. Following the presentation by Ambassador Golam Sarwar titled, ‘Reigniting SAARC: Achievements, Challenges and the Way Ahead’, a lively Q&A followed.

The above forum could be described as an act of lighting the proverbial ‘candle’ rather than ‘cursing the darkness.’ It surely is a ‘darkness’ that could be seen as daunting considering that the region’s pivotal powers, India and Pakistan, are failing to act in a spirit of accord but are engaged in bitter finger-pointing on a number of questions of vital importance to SAARC.

On the other hand, what is the rest of the region doing to bring the above sides together? It is disappointing that to date the rest of SAARC has failed to launch a major diplomatic drive to bring peace between the feuding regional heavyweights. It needs to act without delay and establish its earnestness and this effort would need to prove SAARC’s staying power in the unfolding months and even years.

In assessing SAARC’s seeming failure local opinion in particular has failed to factor in what could be described as weak leadership. Since Sheikh Mujibur Rahman of Bangladesh, the founding father of SAARC, the region has failed to produce a visionary leader who could advance the SAARC cause with charisma and drive.

Among other reasons, weak leadership accounts considerably for the faltering and stuttering status, as it were, of SAARC. Badly needed are leaders who could go the extra mile, think less of narrow national interests and work diligently towards the collective well being of the region but SAARC’s millions of ordinary people have been made to wait in vain for leaders of such stature. Instead, they have been burdened with politicians who seem to be relishing the apparently moribund state of SAARC.

Looking back, it could be said that it was the dynamic leadership factor that led to the launching of the Non-Aligned Movement and for its sustenance for a few decades. True, it could be seen in some quarters that NAM is no more, but as in the case of SAARC, the former too has been unfortunate to be burdened over the years with politicians who lack the vision and drive to unflaggingly advance the fortunes of the South. NAM and SAARC lack the dynamism and vision of leaders of the stature of Jawaharlal Nehru, for example, to give them the required guidance and intellectual depth.

The reasons are complex for there not being among us currently political leaders with the vision and the steadfast commitment to advance the legitimate interests of the South. However, it could be stated with conviction that the majority of Southern leaders have too easily caved in to the demands of the global North and its financial agencies.

These leaders have failed to see, for instance, that the largely market economy oriented Northern governments would not view with favour a centrist economic model that attaches priority to the interests of the dis-empowered publics of the South. This realization ought to have dawned on the current government in Sri Lanka, for instance, some while ago but it has no choice but to abide by IMF dictates since economic survival at present is unthinkable without the latter’s succour.

Accordingly for SAARC this should be the time for some soul-searching. Priority needs to be attached to ending the feuding between India and Pakistan since at present the material fortunes of the region hinge largely on these regional giants giving peaceful relations among them a try. This is no easy challenge to meet but some daring, visionary diplomacy needs to take hold among the rest of SAARC.

There is some sense in SAARC bringing the peoples of the region together through programs that address their best collective interests. A meeting of minds among SAARC nations could enable SAARC and its agencies to build a region-wide people’s movement for progressive political and economic change that could in turn lead to the region’s political leaders sensitizing themselves more to the neglected needs of their publics.

However, the time is ‘now’ for the initiation of these progressive changes and the voice of SAARC well wishers would need to drown out those of their critics.