Features

The Licchavis, their Stupa, and its Relics

Published

3 years ago

2023/05/7

Thilina Walpola

The Licchavis, their Stupa, and its Relics

Bhante S. Dhammika of Australia

After the Buddha died, the Mallas of Kusinara organised an elaborate week-long funeral for him culminating in the cremation of his body. In the meantime, news of the Buddha’s demise had been spreading, and representatives from several kingdoms, chiefdoms and clans began arriving in Kusinara to claim the mortal remains. The Sakyans wanted them because, as their representative said: “The Tathagata was the greatest of our clan”. The envoy of the king of Magadha said that his master was entitled to the ashes because he was of the warrior caste and so was the Buddha. The Mallas, arguing from the standpoint of possession being nine-tenths of the law, said: “The Tathagata attained final Nirvana in the precincts of our town, and we will not give up his bones”.

In all, eight claimants were involved in this unseemly dispute, the others being the Licchavis of Vesali, the Buliyas of Allakappa, the Koliyas of Ramagama, the Mallas of Pava, and a mysterious brahmin from Vethadipa, known only from this single reference in the Tipitaka. Given that the Buddha had spent much of his last two decades in Kosala, and its king. Pasenadi, was one of his most important patrons, it is curious that no representative from Kosala was amongst the claimants.

A brahmin named Dona happened to be visiting Kusinara and seeing the impasse he offered to arbitrate between the quarreling parties. He addressed the assembled worthies, saying: “The Buddha’s teaching is about patience, and it is not right that strife should come from sharing out the remains of the best of men. Let us all come together in harmony and peace and in a spirit of friendship, divide the remains into eight”. This appeal was accepted, probably reluctantly by some, and it was agreed that Dona should divide the remains according to what he thought fair.

After the division, as a gesture of gratitude for his services, he was given the vessel in which the remains had been held and measured out. The division having been made to everyone’s satisfaction, an envoy from the Moriya clan turned up and demanded a portion of the remains, and Dona came to the rescue again, suggesting that these latecomers be given the ashes from the funeral pyre. This was done, each recipient undertook to build a stupa over their share of the remains, and thus the first stupas came to be constructed.

This is the account of the Buddha’s funeral and the events that followed it as related in the Tipitaka. But is it true and is there any material evidence to prove it, or at least to prove parts of it?

In the last 150 years, archaeologists have been able to identify, with differing degrees of certainty, at least five of the original ten stupas. The stupa built by King Ajatasattu has been identified but it was built over and re-purposed several times in subsequent centuries so that little of the original remains. The stupa built by the Sakyans in Kapilavatthu (modern Piprahwa) was excavated in 1898 and again more thoroughly in 1971-73 and yielded what are almost certainly genuine relics. There are several contenders for the stupas erected by Dona and the Koliyas of Ramagama although which of them is the originals is still uncertain. However, the stupa erected by the Licchavis of Vesali had been identified with certainty, carefully excavated and studied, and is available for all to see.

The soapstone casket found inside the stupa

In the after-glow of the Buddha Jayanti of 1956, the Archaeological Survey of India was given generous funding by the Indian government to identify, excavate and preserve various sites associated with the Buddha, and one of the places on the agenda for this undertaking was Vesali. The site of ancient city of Vesali had first been identified by the archaeologist Alexander Cunningham in 1861 using the travel account of the Chinese pilgrim Xuanzang who visited the place in the sixth century and left a detailed description of it.

Various places among the ruins were excavated in 1902, 1904, 1912-13, 1950, but most importantly and more thoroughly between 1958 and 1962 by the eminent archaeologists Bindeshwari Sinha and S. R. Roy. A detailed account of their findings – with charts, diagrams and photographs – was published in 1969. Of the numerous finds Sinha and Roy made the most significant was the stupa erected by the Licchavis shortly after the distribution of the Buddha’s ashes.

It was found that the stupa was originally surprisingly modest, being only 26 ft. 6 in, or a little more than eight meters, in diameter, made of earth, and with a platform for offerings at each of the four cardinal directions of which only two still existed. Judging from the slope of the side of the stupa its dome would have been 11 ft. 4 in. or 3.4544 meters high. The stupa had been enlarged three times over the centuries. The first enlargement was made of brick, outside of which was found fragments of polished Chunar sandstone, a type usually associated with Mauryan period, indicating that the earthen stupa enclosed by this enlargement must be have been built before this time.

On the western side of this enlargement was a breach indicating that someone had opened the stupa during the Mauryan period. This breach had been carefully cut and had gone to the center of the stupa and had been subsequently filled in with earth and in the filling was found a small polished soapstone casket containing a small conch shell, glass beads, gold leaf, and some ash thought to be burned bone. The casket’s lid had been cracked by the weight of the masonry above it. The second enlargement, also made of brick, increased the stupa’s diameter to 12.192 meters. The third and final enlargement seems to have been mainly to buttress the stupa. Sinha and Roy conjectured that the nearby Gandak River had at one time inundated the surrounding area causing subsidence in the stupa and the buttressing was meant to strengthen it and prevent it from collapsing.

The casket and the Buddha’s ashes in the Patna Museum today

As for dating, the archaeologists concluded that the first and original stupa dated from the beginning of the 5th century BCE, i.e. around the time of the Buddha, the first enlargement from the Mauryan period, most likely during the reign of King Asoka (304-232 BCE), the second enlargement from the 1st century BCE, and the third enlargement from the 1st century CE. These findings are quite remarkable because they fit well with what the Tipitaka tells us and even something of what Buddhist tradition says. The Licchavis received a one eighth share of the Buddha’s bones and in their city enshrined them within a stupa. As for the breach in the second enlargement, this would seem to be evidence for the tradition that King Asoka opened some of the original stupas to remove parts of the relics so he could enshrine them in the many new stupas he was building.

Some might be surprised to learn that one of the original stupa raised over the Buddha’s ashes was of such a modest size and made only of earth, when they are familiar with the sometimes huge, spired and brick or cement stupas of today. But like many things, stupas evolved from small and simple to large and complex over time. The earliest reference to something like stupas is found in the Satapatha Brahmana, a pre-Buddhist work, where they are called smansana. It mentions the bones of kinsmen being buried under circular earthen mounds, partly to commemorate them but also to prevent them from disturbing their families. The first Buddhists did not believe that the spirits of the dead could harass the living so they re-purposed these earthen mounds to both preserve the material remains of the Buddha and provide a place where honor and respect towards him could be conducted.

For decades the relic casket from the Licchavis stupa and the ashes it contained remained in the storeroom of the Patna Museum, neglected and half forgotten. But as the economic importance of tourism, and particularly Buddhist pilgrimage, came to be realized during the 2000s things started to change. Despite the Patna Museum’s outstanding collection of Buddhist artifacts, they were poorly displayed, lit and labeled while some of the best pieces languished in storage. But last year a major Rs.158 million refurbishing of the museum was finished which has transformed it into a world class attraction. For Buddhists, the highlight of the collection is the creatively designed stupa-shaped display case displaying the relic casket and the sacred ashes.

All News Advertisement

Features

Ranking public services with AI — A roadmap to reviving institutions like SriLankan Airlines

Published

2 days ago

2026/03/13

Thilina Walpola

Efficacy measures an organisation’s capacity to achieve its mission and intended outcomes under planned or optimal conditions. It differs from efficiency, which focuses on achieving objectives with minimal resources, and effectiveness, which evaluates results in real-world conditions. Today, modern AI tools, using publicly available data, enable objective assessment of the efficacy of Sri Lanka’s government institutions.

Among key public bodies, the Supreme Court of Sri Lanka emerges as the most efficacious, outperforming the Department of Inland Revenue, Sri Lanka Customs, the Election Commission, and Parliament. In the financial and regulatory sector, the Central Bank of Sri Lanka (CBSL) ranks highest, ahead of the Securities and Exchange Commission, the Public Utilities Commission, the Telecommunications Regulatory Commission, the Insurance Regulatory Commission, and the Sri Lanka Standards Institution.

Among state-owned enterprises, the Sri Lanka Ports Authority (SLPA) leads in efficacy, followed by Bank of Ceylon and People’s Bank. Other institutions assessed included the State Pharmaceuticals Corporation, the National Water Supply and Drainage Board, the Ceylon Electricity Board, the Ceylon Petroleum Corporation, and the Sri Lanka Transport Board. At the lower end of the spectrum were Lanka Sathosa and Sri Lankan Airlines, highlighting a critical challenge for the national economy.

Sri Lankan Airlines, consistently ranked at the bottom, has long been a financial drain. Despite successive governments’ reform attempts, sustainable solutions remain elusive.

Globally, the most profitable airlines operate as highly integrated, technology-enabled ecosystems rather than as fragmented departments. Operations, finance, fleet management, route planning, engineering, marketing, and customer service are closely coordinated, sharing real-time data to maximise efficiency, safety, and profitability.

The challenge for Sri Lankan Airlines is structural. Its operations are fragmented, overly hierarchical, and poorly aligned. Simply replacing the CEO or senior leadership will not address these deep-seated weaknesses. What the airline needs is a cohesive, integrated organisational ecosystem that leverages technology for cross-functional planning and real-time decision-making.

The government must urgently consider restructuring Sri Lankan Airlines to encourage:

=Joint planning across operational divisions

=Data-driven, evidence-based decision-making

=Continuous cross-functional consultation

=Collaborative strategic decisions on route rationalisation, fleet renewal, partnerships, and cost management, rather than exclusive top-down mandates

Sustainable reform requires systemic change. Without modernised organisational structures, stronger accountability, and aligned incentives across divisions, financial recovery will remain out of reach. An integrated, performance-oriented model offers the most realistic path to operational efficiency and long-term viability.

Reforming loss-making institutions like Sri Lankan Airlines is not merely a matter of leadership change — it is a structural overhaul essential to ensuring these entities contribute productively to the national economy rather than remain perpetual burdens.

By Chula Goonasekera – Citizen Analyst

Features

Why Pi Day?

Published

2 days ago

2026/03/13

Thilina Walpola

International Day of Mathematics falls tomorrow

The approximate value of Pi (π) is 3.14 in mathematics. Therefore, the day 14 March is celebrated as the Pi Day. In 2019, UNESCO proclaimed 14 March as the International Day of Mathematics.

Ancient Babylonians and Egyptians figured out that the circumference of a circle is slightly more than three times its diameter. But they could not come up with an exact value for this ratio although they knew that it is a constant. This constant was later named as π which is a letter in the Greek alphabet.

Archimedes

It was the Greek mathematician Archimedes (250 BC) who was able to find an upper bound and a lower bound for this constant. He drew a circle of diameter one unit and drew hexagons inside and outside the circle such that the sides of each hexagon touch the sides of the circle. In mathematics the circle passing through all vertices of a polygon is called a ‘circumcircle’ and the largest circle that fits inside a polygon tangent to all its sides is called an ‘incircle’. The total length of the smaller hexagon then becomes the lower bound of π and the length of the hexagon outside the circle is the upper bound. He realised that by increasing the number of sides of the polygon can make the bounds get closer to the value of Pi and increased the number of sides to 12,24,48 and 60. He argued that by increasing the number of sides will ultimately result in obtaining the original circle, thereby laying the foundation for the theory of limits. He ended up with the lower bound as 22/7 and the upper bound 223/71. He could not continue his research as his hometown Syracuse was invaded by Romans and was killed by one of the soldiers. His last words were ‘do not disturb my circles’, perhaps a reference to his continuing efforts to find the value of π to a greater accuracy.

Archimedes can be considered as the father of geometry. His contributions revolutionised geometry and his methods anticipated integral calculus. He invented the pulley and the hydraulic screw for drawing water from a well. He also discovered the law of hydrostatics. He formulated the law of levers which states that a smaller weight placed farther from a pivot can balance a much heavier weight closer to it. He famously said “Give me a lever long enough and a place to stand and I will move the earth”.

Mathematicians have found many expressions for π as a sum of infinite series that converge to its value. One such famous series is the Leibniz Series found in 1674 by the German mathematician Gottfried Leibniz, which is given below.

π = 4 ( 1 – 1/3 + 1/5 – 1/7 + 1/9 – ………….)

The Indian mathematical genius Ramanujan came up with a magnificent formula in 1910. The short form of the formula is as follows.

π = 9801/(1103 √8)

For practical applications an approximation is sufficient. Even NASA uses only the approximation 3.141592653589793 for its interplanetary navigation calculations.

It is not just an interesting and curious number. It is used for calculations in navigation, encryption, space exploration, video game development and even in medicine. As π is fundamental to spherical geometry, it is at the heart of positioning systems in GPS navigations. It also contributes significantly to cybersecurity. As it is an irrational number it is an excellent foundation for generating randomness required in encryption and securing communications. In the medical field, it helps to calculate blood flow rates and pressure differentials. In diagnostic tools such as CT scans and MRI, pi is an important component in mathematical algorithms and signal processing techniques.

This elegant, never-ending number demonstrates how mathematics transforms into practical applications that shape our world. The possibilities of what it can do are infinite as the number itself. It has become a symbol of beauty and complexity in mathematics. “It matters little who first arrives at an idea, rather what is significant is how far that idea can go.” said Sophie Germain.

Mathematics fans are intrigued by this irrational number and attempt to calculate it as far as they can. In March 2022, Emma Haruka Iwao of Japan calculated it to 100 trillion decimal places in Google Cloud. It had taken 157 days. The Guinness World Record for reciting the number from memory is held by Rajveer Meena of India for 70000 decimal places over 10 hours.

Happy Pi Day!

The author is a senior examiner of the International Baccalaureate in the UK and an educational consultant at the Overseas School of Colombo.

by R N A de Silva

Features

Sheer rise of Realpolitik making the world see the brink

Published

3 days ago

2026/03/12

Sahan Weerasooriya

A combined US-Israel attack on Iran.(BBC)

The recent humanly costly torpedoing of an Iranian naval vessel in Sri Lanka’s Exclusive Economic Zone by a US submarine has raised a number of issues of great importance to international political discourse and law that call for elucidation. It is best that enlightened commentary is brought to bear in such discussions because at present misleading and uninformed speculation on questions arising from the incident are being aired by particularly jingoistic politicians of Sri Lanka’s South which could prove deleterious.

As matters stand, there seems to be no credible evidence that the Indian state was aware of the impending torpedoing of the Iranian vessel but these acerbic-tongued politicians of Sri Lanka’s South would have the local public believe that the tragedy was triggered with India’s connivance. Likewise, India is accused of ‘embroiling’ Sri Lanka in the incident on account of seemingly having prior knowledge of it and not warning Sri Lanka about the impending disaster.

It is plain that a process is once again afoot to raise anti-India hysteria in Sri Lanka. An obligation is cast on the Sri Lankan government to ensure that incendiary speculation of the above kind is defeated and India-Sri Lanka relations are prevented from being in any way harmed. Proactive measures are needed by the Sri Lankan government and well meaning quarters to ensure that public discourse in such matters have a factual and rational basis. ‘Knowledge gaps’ could prove hazardous.

Meanwhile, there could be no doubt that Sri Lanka’s sovereignty was violated by the US because the sinking of the Iranian vessel took place in Sri Lanka’s Exclusive Economic Zone. While there is no international decrying of the incident, and this is to be regretted, Sri Lanka’s helplessness and small player status would enable the US to ‘get away with it’.

Could anything be done by the international community to hold the US to account over the act of lawlessness in question? None is the answer at present. This is because in the current ‘Global Disorder’ major powers could commit the gravest international irregularities with impunity. As the threadbare cliché declares, ‘Might is Right’….. or so it seems.

Unfortunately, the UN could only merely verbally denounce any violations of International Law by the world’s foremost powers. It cannot use countervailing force against violators of the law, for example, on account of the divided nature of the UN Security Council, whose permanent members have shown incapability of seeing eye-to-eye on grave matters relating to International Law and order over the decades.

The foregoing considerations could force the conclusion on uncritical sections that Political Realism or Realpolitik has won out in the end. A basic premise of the school of thought known as Political Realism is that power or force wielded by states and international actors determine the shape, direction and substance of international relations. This school stands in marked contrast to political idealists who essentially proclaim that moral norms and values determine the nature of local and international politics.

While, British political scientist Thomas Hobbes, for instance, was a proponent of Political Realism, political idealism has its roots in the teachings of Socrates, Plato and latterly Friedrich Hegel of Germany, to name just few such notables.

On the face of it, therefore, there is no getting way from the conclusion that coercive force is the deciding factor in international politics. If this were not so, US President Donald Trump in collaboration with Israeli Rightist Premier Benjamin Natanyahu could not have wielded the ‘big stick’, so to speak, on Iran, killed its Supreme Head of State, terrorized the Iranian public and gone ‘scot-free’. That is, currently, the US’ impunity seems to be limitless.

Moreover, the evidence is that the Western bloc is reuniting in the face of Iran’s threats to stymie the flow of oil from West Asia to the rest of the world. The recent G7 summit witnessed a coming together of the foremost powers of the global North to ensure that the West does not suffer grave negative consequences from any future blocking of western oil supplies.

Meanwhile, Israel is having a ‘free run’ of the Middle East, so to speak, picking out perceived adversarial powers, such as Lebanon, and militarily neutralizing them; once again with impunity. On the other hand, Iran has been bringing under assault, with no questions asked, Gulf states that are seen as allying with the US and Israel. West Asia is facing a compounded crisis and International Law seems to be helplessly silent.

Wittingly or unwittingly, matters at the heart of International Law and peace are being obfuscated by some pro-Trump administration commentators meanwhile. For example, retired US Navy Captain Brent Sadler has cited Article 51 of the UN Charter, which provides for the right to self or collective self-defence of UN member states in the face of armed attacks, as justifying the US sinking of the Iranian vessel (See page 2 of The Island of March 10, 2026). But the Article makes it clear that such measures could be resorted to by UN members only ‘ if an armed attack occurs’ against them and under no other circumstances. But no such thing happened in the incident in question and the US acted under a sheer threat perception.

Clearly, the US has violated the Article through its action and has once again demonstrated its tendency to arbitrarily use military might. The general drift of Sadler’s thinking is that in the face of pressing national priorities, obligations of a state under International Law could be side-stepped. This is a sure recipe for international anarchy because in such a policy environment states could pursue their national interests, irrespective of their merits, disregarding in the process their obligations towards the international community.

Moreover, Article 51 repeatedly reiterates the authority of the UN Security Council and the obligation of those states that act in self-defence to report to the Council and be guided by it. Sadler, therefore, could be said to have cited the Article very selectively, whereas, right along member states’ commitments to the UNSC are stressed.

However, it is beyond doubt that international anarchy has strengthened its grip over the world. While the US set destabilizing precedents after the crumbling of the Cold War that paved the way for the current anarchic situation, Russia further aggravated these degenerative trends through its invasion of Ukraine. Stepping back from anarchy has thus emerged as the prime challenge for the world community.