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| Sunday, 7 December 2003 |
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POYA MEDITATION : Sanghamitta Day Lankan nuns ordained bhikkhunis in China by Sumana Saparamadu Tomorrow the full-moon day of the month of Unduvap is also known as Sanghamitta Day, for it was on this full moon day 2300 odd years ago, that the 'Theri' (nun) Sanghamitta bringing a branch of the Maha Bodhi, the tree under which the Buddha was seated when he attained Enlightenment, landed in Lanka at the port Dambakola in the northern peninsular. Some reckon, it is the present day Kayts or a harbour closeby.
So inseparably are the nun and the bough linked, that every drawing, painting, and sculpture of the nun depicts her holding a begging bowl - the kind used by monks - with a bo-sapling in it. From Nanda Lal Bose, the famous Indian artist to present day media artists in Sri Lanka, they all depict her in the same pose. It is the bringing of the Bodhi bough that has captured and got impressed in folk memory. But the main purpose of Theri Sanghamitta's coming to Lanka, as the country was known then, was to ordain Sinhala women who wished to join the bhikkhuni order. Bringing of the Bodhi bough was incidental. When King Devanampiya Tissa's sister-in-law, the Princess Anula, expressed a desire to enter the order, the King told the Thero Mahinda of her wish. He explained to the King that the Vinaya did not permit monks ordaining women and suggested that the King invites his sister Sanghamitta who was a nun - an erudite nun - living in Pataliputra, his father King Asoka's capital. Being a nun she could ordain the princess. The thera Mahinda also Told the King to request King Asoka to send a branch of the Maha Bodhi. It was a perilous journey by boat across the Bay of Bengal noted for storms. Weathering storms and overcoming many disasters Theri Sanghamitta accompanied by eleven other nuns arrived safely at Jambukola or Dambakola port. Meanwhile Princess Anula and a number of women of the palace giving up the household life had donned yellow robes and observing the ten precepts were awaiting the arrival of Theri Sanghamitta in a special house built for them by the King. Sanghamitta and her company of nuns also took up residence in this home which was known as Upasika vihara. The princess and all the court ladies who had followed her to the Upasika vihara were ordained after the ceremonial planting of the Bodhi bough on the site where it stands to this day. Theri Sanghamitta had twelve other halls added to the Upasika vihara which was now a mehenavara, a nunnery. In three of these halls she had the mast, the rudder and the oar of the ship in which she came, displayed. Why in three different halls and not all three in one, one is tempted to ask. Dr. Thelma Gunawardana, the former Director of the National Museum has this to say about the theri's decision to preserve and display parts of the ship in which she made the historic voyage: "Today the concept of a Museum is to preserve things that are considered worthy of being preserved and to conserve, shelter, display to communicate with the public and let them share the experience. "This concept is well adhered to in this display as early as the 3rd century BC in Sri Lanka with the preservation, conservation, shelter and display of the three artifacts - parts of the ship used by Theri Sanghamitta. "Even the display is in keeping with today's vision where we do not crowd all the artifacts in one show case... Here the chosen parts were displayed separately in three different halls, focusing the attention of the viewer on each artifact. "I came to know that it is recorded in the Belgium Archives that Sri Lanka had the first public museum in the world, as early as the 3rd century BC. (Daily News 6.12.95). This Upasika vihara became the home and the headquarters of the orthodox Sinhala bhikkhunis, just as the Mahavihara was the headquarters of the orthodox Sinhala Sangha. The Mahavamsa states that even when, in later days, other sects viz the Dhammarucika arose these 12 buildings were always used by the Hatthalhaka bhikkuni. How the name Hatthalhaka originated is an interesting story. The Upasika Vihara was becoming crowded and noisy, what with droves of women coming, some in earnest to learn the dhamma and others curious to see the newcomers from overseas and perhaps to see the artifacts on display. Sanghamitta theri longed to get away to a quiet place where she could meditate. Once in her wonderings she found a cool grotto with a meandering brook close by, at some distance from the centre of the city. She was taken up by the quiet and remoteness and she stayed the day through. Soon it became her daily routine to go there. One day, when the King came to the Upasika Vihara to pay his respects to the theri, he was told that she had gone thither, and he forthwith went there. On hearing of the theri's reasons for retiring to that remote spot he immediately ordered dooms erected for the theri and any others who would like to come there. Since this home was built on the land where the post for tethering the state-elephant had stood, it was known as the Hatthalhaka (elephant-post) vihara and the nuns as the Hatthalhaka bhikkhunis. This became Sanghamitta theri's residence, and it was here that she passed away at the ripe old age of 79 in the 9th year of King Uttiya who succeeded King Devanampiya Tissa. As more and more women joined the order - princesses, women of the nobility and daughters of commoners, more nunneries were built by kings, queens and ministers. Nunneries were favourite objects of endowments with the women. From its inception the Bhikkhuni Sasana was a great success and such was its reputation that even royalty came from abroad seeking peace and refuge in Sinhala nunneries. At the beginning of the 7th century when the Chalukyas attacked Kalinga the sight of so many bodies in the battlefield filled the prince of Kalinga with so much remorse and grief "he came hither to our island with his 'mahesi' (queen) and his minister resolved to renounce the world." The thera Jothipala ordained all three. The Mahavamsa says that when King Aggabodhi's consort was so impressed by the Kalinga mahesi's renunciation that she got the Ratna Vihara (a nunnery) built for her and saw to all her comforts. The nuns were a remarkably learned lot. Many had specialised in the Vinaya. The Dipavamsa mentions five famous nuns - Mahila, Samanta, Girikali, Dasi and Kali, who were pre-eminent among Vinaya scholars. They came to Anuradhapura from distant Ruhuna especially to teach the Vinaya. The first two were daughters of King Kavantissa and half-sisters of Dutugemunu. Girikali was the daughter of the King's purohita, the Grand Vizier, while Dasi and Kali were daughters of commoners. In the first century of the Christian era, Lanka was hit by a severe drought and famine. Monks and nuns fled either to India or to the hilly districts in the island. When at long last the famine was over and Walagamba ascended the throne after years of war, he had to get down monks and nuns from India. Many returned when they heard that the peril was over. The first to teach the Vinaya - the Dipavamsa tells us - were sixteen bhikkhunis. All women who joined the order were not urged by a desire for the higher life. There were women who had neither the desire nor the aptitude for an ascetic life. King Agbo Salamevan could not have been the only father who found in the nunnery a solution to his predicament. Sangha, his daughter, was married to the Regent of the Dakkhina Desa. Once in a fit of anger the Regent hit her and the princess went back to her father and wept bitterly: "Without reason, the husband thou gavest me tortures me." The King was in a quandry. He could not displease his son-in-law and Regent; nor could he allow his daughter to be maltreated. As he pondered he saw a way out of this situation - send Sangha to a home for bhikkhunis. So Sangha entered the nunnery, and quite against her will, became a bhikkhuni. This is part of an interesting episode narrated in the Mahavamsa. When young women were popped into nunneries in this way, moral lapses, as are reported in the commentaries were inevitable. Such incidents were not unusual. The commentaries mention instances of monks and nuns falling in love when they met each other at festivals or recitals of Suttas. Apparently in those early days there was no stigma attached to monks or nuns leaving the order. A Sinhala vamsa katha (a chronicle) says that when Sumitta, a Mauryan prince who came as guardian of the Bo-tree to Lanka was unable to find a suitable bride among the royalty and nobility here, the King asked one of the young nuns - a Samaneri - who had come with Sanghamitta to give up robes; and she was given in marriage to this prince. The Mehenavara dynasty which played an important part in politics in the latter part of the Anuradhapura period, was known by that name because it was descended from Prince Sumitta and the ex-nun. It is strange that none of the chronicles, in Pali or in Sinhala, mention the missionary activities of the Sinhala nuns abroad, even though this took place in the 5th century, a period covered by the Mahavamsa. It is from Chinese records that we learn that two batches of Sinhala nuns went to China one in 429 AD and the other in 433 AD, in a ship captained by one Nandi from India. This Nandi took them to Nanking, the capital of the Sung dynasty, and in the second batch was a nun by the name of Devsara. When the second group arrived the first group was very fluent in Chinese and there were now enough nuns for a quorum to perform the upasampada or higher ordination. 300 Chinese Samaneri nuns were given the upasampada in batches, the ceremony overseen by bhikkhu Gunawarman, a Kashmiri monk. The bhikkhunis who played an important part in the Anuradhapura period of our history even braving stormy seas to go to distant China carrying the message of The Buddha, disappeared from the scene with the fall of the Anuradhapura kingdom in 1017 AD. There is no mention of nunneries or even of solitary nuns after that in any of the chronicles. As one writer has said "they left the stage as silently as they came." When Vijaya Bahu wrested the Raja Rata from the Cholas who were ruling there for about 70 years and set himself as king in Polonnaruwa, he enlisted the help of Burma - now Myanmar to re-establish the Bhikkhu Sasana, but he made no attempt, nor did any of the rulers after him, to revive the order of bhikkhunis - the Bhikkhuni Sasana in the island. |
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