Sinhala Religion

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SINHALA RELIGION

SINHALA RELIGION . The Sinhala of Sri Lanka are for the most part Buddhists, yet their practical religion is a composite system derived from a variety of sources, including pre-Buddhist indigenous beliefs, Indic astrology, popular Hinduism, Brahmanism, and Dravidian religion, especially that of South India. Over many years these seemingly non-Buddhist beliefs have been incorporated into a Buddhist framework and ethos. The religious beliefs that have derived from non-Buddhist sources have been labeled "spirit cults." This is a heuristically useful label if one does not make the mistake of defining them as non-Buddhist or anti-Buddhist. Some aspects of the spirit cults, such as the beliefs in preta s, or the malevolent spirits of departed ancestors, are very ancient popular beliefs that have been assimilated by Buddhism. Furthermore, Buddhist canonical texts are full of references to pious laypersons who on death have become reborn as gods, which means that, as Marasinghe puts it in Gods in Early Buddhism (Colombo, 1974), the karman theory is a kind of machine that can create its own gods. The theory of karman can, at the very least, easily justify the creation or continuing existence of the many kinds of supernatural beings that inhabit the behavioral universe of Buddhist nations in South and Southeast Asia. The crux of the issue is not whether these beliefs are Buddhist or non-Buddhist: It is that one can remain a Buddhist, and a citizen of Sri Lanka or Burma or Thailand, without subscribing to a belief in the spirit cults. The latter is not a necessary condition to being a Buddhist. Being a Buddhist is necessary for one's ethnic and national identity in the Theravāda societies of South and Southeast Asia, whereas the spirit cults have little or no bearing on one's larger identity. One is not a "heretic" if one rejects the popular religions; indeed, in some instances it may indicate affirmation of Buddhist orthodoxy and the ideal cultural values of the group.

To place the Sinhala spirit cults in a larger perspective it is useful to begin with a consideration of Vädda religion as described by C. G. Seligmann and Z. Seligmann in The Veddas (Cambridge, 1911). These aboriginal inhabitants of Sri Lanka speak a Sinhala dialect and were at least peripherally part of the traditional political system, owing allegiance to the king of Kandy. Although they were Sinhala-speaking, and their spirit cults showed considerable overlap with that of Sinhala Buddhists, most Väddas never converted to Buddhism. An examination of Vädda religion will help us understand more fully the nature of the Sinhala spirit cults and their relationship with Buddhism.

Cult of the NÄ Yakku

The Väddas, unlike the Sinhala Buddhists, had as the basis of their religion a system of ancestor worship. Väddas who die are said to become deities known as nä yakku (sg., yakā ), literally "kinsmen deities"; the transformation of a person's spirit to a yakā occurs a few days after his or her death. Ancestral spirits help the living but show wrath if neglected.

Complementing the spirits of the recently dead is a pantheon of major Vädda deities. This pantheon is headed by Kandē Yakā ("lord of the mountain"). Ancestral spirits are considered to be feudal attendants of Kandē Yakā and have his warrant to assist or punish the living. The concept of permission or warrant (varan ) and the system whereby the higher gods engage lower deities as attendants are identical with Sinhala beliefs.

Kandē Yakā then is a benevolent deity who brings prosperity and wealth to Vädda society. He is sometimes propitiated as Kandē Vanniya (Lord Kandē). Several other major deities are propitiated in Vädda collective rituals. There is Bam̆bura Yakā, a grim spirit who presides over yams, and for whom a mimetic ritual of the boar hunt is performed; In̆digolle Yakā, also called Galē Yakā ("lord of the rock"), who is often propitiated with his spouse In̆digolle Kiri Ammā; and Bilin̆di Yakā, an infant deity also widely propitiated in Vädda country (nowadays in parts of the Eastern and Uva provinces). In addition there is a whole class of female deities called kiri ammā ("milk mother, grandmother"). These kiri ammā are the spirits of eminent Vädda women, generally the wives of Vädda headmen or chiefs, many of whom are thought to haunt mountain springs and rocky hillsides. A few of these kiri ammā are prominent enough to have individual names. These named kiri ammā are often invoked for curing children's diseases and for sickness in general. In addition to these major deities are minor deities, all of whom are the spirits of prominent deceased Väddas. Thus, the Vädda religion recognizes a pantheon that is comprised of individual ancestors as well as a special class of deities who are deified heroes. Although these deified ancestors and heroes are an important element in Vädda worship there are also Vädda deities such as In̆digolle Yakā, who are believed to have come from across the oceans. These latter beliefs—those of deified ancestors and foreign deities—directly link Vädda religion with that of their Sinhala neighbors, at least in parts of the Northwestern and North Central Provinces, and in Uva and in the Central Province (the Kandyan region).

The Sinhala Buddhists have no system of ancestor worship like that of the nä yakku, but they do believe in a cult of deified ancestors and foreign deities, which Parker, in his Ancient Ceylon (London, 1904), has labeled the baṇḍāra cult. Baṇḍāra means "chief," and this cult is that of a group of deities who are viewed as "lords" or "chiefs." Parker has called this a form of ancestor worship, but this is an erroneous identification, for the Sinhala do not deify their immediate ancestors. Rather, deified heroes or leaders of a local area or region constitute a major part of the cult. The striking feature of the baṇḍāra cult, however, is that all deities, both local and foreign, were originally human beings who have been deified. Many of them have the title baṇḍāra ("lord"); all of them are viewed as lords or chiefs and are subordinate to the great gods or deva s of the Sinhala Buddhist pantheon, who are viewed as kings or world rulers (cakravartin s).

The BaṆḌĀra Cult among the Sinhala

The baṇḍāra cult has been formalized in many parts of the Kandyan region into a cult of the Dolaha Deviyo ("twelve gods"). The Twelve Gods are individually and collectively propitiated in group rituals. The operative pantheon in most parts of the Kandyan region thus consisted of the baṇḍāra cult, formalized into a numerological category of the Twelve Gods. Many of these gods have in fact demonic attributes and are often referred to in rituals as devatā ("godling"), a composite of the demonic and the divine. The Twelve Gods are associated with most of the social, economic, and personal needs of the worshiper—hunting, animal husbandry, and rice cultivation, as well as individual afflictions such as illnesses due to demonic incursions.

There is, then, a striking similarity between the Vädda gods and the Sinhala pantheon of the baṇḍāra. The deities in both pantheons are chiefs or lords (but not kings); they are euhemerized beings, often ancestral heroes. In collective rituals the Väddas propitiate their gods with meat offerings; among the Sinhala, however, only some of these deities (those possessing demonic qualities, like Gange Baṇḍāra) are offered meat (impure) offerings. Furthermore, and this is of crucial significance, both Vädda and Sinhala pantheons show considerable overlap. Thus, Kiri Ammā is the operative female deity among both the Vädda and the Kandyan Sinhala. The Vädda god Kandē Yakā, the benevolent deity of the hunt, is perhaps none other than Kandē Deviyō of the Kandyans. In Kandyan rituals Kandē Deviyō also appears as the god of the hunt. The Vädda term yakā appears to have been transformed into dēviyō ("god") by the Sinhala, since yakā clearly means "demon" in Sinhala. Several other deities are shared by both Vädda and Sinhala. In addition, many ritual terms are common to both cultures: han̆gala (priest's robe), ayuda (arms, ornaments of the deity), kapurāla (priest), aḍukku (meal served to the deity), doḷa (offering to demons), and puda (offering to gods). These terms, as well as the baṇḍāra cult itself, are not confined to the Kandyan area exclusively but constitute (or historically constituted) a series of overlapping circles covering most of Sinhala-speaking Sri Lanka. Even when the numerological category of twelve was not used (as in the North Central Province), there was throughout Sri Lanka a system of local village worship of baṇḍāra s, or lords, who constituted a pantheon of euhemerized ancestors or heroes.

Both Vädda religion and the baṇḍāra cult of the Kandyan Sinhala show striking resemblances to the nat cultus of the Burmese and the Thai cult of the phī. Worship of both nats and phī constitutes an indigenous cult of ancestors, having a role similar to the cult of the Kandyan baṇḍāra. Note that baṇḍāra means "lord," which is exactly what nat (from the Sanskrit nātha ) means. Furthermore, the nat s are associated with natural phenomena, as are many Kandyan and Vädda deities. It is indeed likely that a form of euhemerism was the old indigenous, pre-Buddhist religion, not only of Sri Lanka, but of other Theravāda nations of this region. The full significance of nat or baṇḍāra comes out clearly in relation to the great, often Brahmanic-derived deva s, who constitute the upper level of the pantheon. These deva s are kings or cakravartin s; the baṇḍāra s are lesser beings and thus are chieftains or lords who owe formal suzerainty to the "god-kings."

As institutionalized at the village and tribal level, the form of village religion described above is intrinsically associated with that of the inspired priest acting as a medium or mouthpiece of the apotheosized ancestor or hero. The Seligmanns and other anthropologists writing on tribal India refer to him as "shaman." This designation is somewhat misleading since "shamanism" in South and Southeast Asia is different from the classic Siberian type. In the latter the soul of the shaman leaves the body. In the South Asian type this rarely happens; the deity possesses the priest and the god is thus physically "present" in the human community. Furthermore, the extreme individualism of classic shamanism is not found here. The possessed priest activates a formal, publicly accepted pantheon of deities; he rarely has personal guardian gods or individual spirits as in classic shamanism.

Traditional Sinhala religion probably coexisted, as it does today, with other forms of religious belief and practice, such as witchcraft, sorcery, and divination. When the great historical religions like Buddhism were introduced into this region the older religion had to adapt itself to the new situation. The basic mechanism whereby non-Buddhist beliefs were incorporated into Buddhism was the theory of karman. Deified ancestors could easily be incorporated through the theory of karman so that the death of the ancestor and his subsequent rebirth as a deity could be explained in terms of his good and bad actions in previous births. Over and beyond this, the older system of spirit cults had to be integrated with those of the great traditions, which included the great Brahmanic deva s and the Buddha himself. This relationship between the older spirits and the deva s and Buddha was expressed in the political idiom of the secular state.

The BaṆḌĀra Cult and the Worship of Devas

The baṇḍāra cult, or the cult of the Twelve Gods, was the operative folk religion of many villages in the Kandyan kingdom for many centuries. But the cult of the baṇḍāra s was in turn enveloped in the cult of the deva s, the superordinate god-kings of the pantheon. What then is the relationship between the baṇḍāra cult and the great deva s, most of whom derived historically from Brahmanism? To appreciate the full significance of this relationship one must shift one's ground from the narrow perspective of Vädda or Kandyan religion to the larger perspective of a Sinhala Buddhist nation. The baṇḍāra s were local or regional deities, and although some of them, such as Maṅgara and Devatā Baṇḍāra, were widely dispersed they were viewed as chieftains, not kings. The deva s by contrast were national deities, viewed as kings, holding jurisdictional sway over Sri Lanka; they were protectors of that Sinhala Buddhist nation. The baṇḍāra s are subservient to the deva s, and the latter, according to popular religion, are in turn subordinate to the Buddha. The deva s have a warrant (varan ) from the Buddha himself, whereas the lesser baṇḍāra s generally exercise their authority with permission from the deva s.

The concept of divine protectors of the secular and sacred realm is an ancient one in Sri Lanka. First, there was the ancient Buddhist doctrinal notion of the guardians of the four quarters of the universe. In addition to this there developed in Sri Lanka the idea of four guardians of the state. If the Buddhist guardians protected the cosmos the deva s were protectors of the nation, and therefore were of great significance in the practical religion. The concept of the four gods (hatara dēviyō) and the four shrines (hatara dēvāle) were clearly established in the kingdoms of Kōṭṭe (fifteenth century) and in Kandy. In popular usage the term hatara varan dēviyō ("gods of four warrants"), which should in theory have referred to the four Buddhist guardians of the universe, came to be synonymous with the concept of the Four Gods—the guardians of the kingdom.

In relation to the concept of the Four Gods, numerology is once again very important. There have always been four guardian gods, but the deities occupying these positions show considerable variation. In general one would say that the positions of the Four Gods from the fifteenth century onward were filled from the following list of deva s: Viṣṇu, Nātha, Vibhiṣaṇa, Saman (Lakṣmaṇa), Skanda, and the goddess Pattinī. If the baṇḍāra s were part of the operative village religion, the deva s, in particular the Four Gods, were part of the state cultus. In the Kandyan kingdom, for example, the Four Gods were paraded in the annual state procession along with the tooth relic. The king, the chiefs, and their retinue also participated in this event. The procession reflected in microcosm the larger macrocosmic structure of the Kandyan state.

Underlying the organization of the pantheon is a political idiom, very much like that found in the nat cultus in Burma as described by Melford Spiro in Burmese Supernaturalism (Englewood Cliffs, N. J., 1967): The Four Gods are the kings and guardians of Buddhism and the secular state and the Twelve Gods are the chiefs, attendants, or ministers or the god-kings. The order in the pantheon is based on the idea of order in the political state. Crucial to the feudal idiom underlying the pantheon is the notion of sīmā ("limit, boundary"), which has several meanings in the political sphere. First, in relation to territory, it indicates the boundary or border of a kingdom, province, or village; second, in relation to authority and control, it is the limit of a political domain, for example, the king has sīmā over the kingdom, the chief over a province, and the headman over a village; third, in relation to time, it means a "time limit" (kāla sīmāva ) on the exercise of political authority, that is, the kāla sīmāva for the king is the king's lifetime, for a chief only a year. All these meanings of sīmā, so important in the political idiom, are transferred intact to the religious context. Thus, the deities in the pantheon all have their sīmā in terms of territory, authority, and time. The baṇḍāra s have the village, region, or province as their sīmā. However, these boundaries are not permanently fixed: A regional deity may eventually come to have a national reputation and worship, as in the case of Kiri Ammā and Maṅgara, and more recently of Dēvatā Baṇḍāra. Nevertheless the ideology that the baṇḍāra s are regional chiefs is important in that it defines their status in the overall religious system of the Sinhala. The Four Gods by contrast have as their sīmā the whole of Sri Lanka, but they also have their special sīmā over which they have more direct control. These generally are the regions surrounding the pilgrimage center(s) of each deity.

Demons, Gods, and the Buddha

At the lowest level of Sinhala religion are such demons and evil spirits as preta s, who are viewed as the malevolent spirits of dead kinsmen. All these evil spirits embody Buddhist notions of spiritual and ethical hindrances, such as craving (taṇhā), hatred (krodha), greed (lobha), defilements (kleśa), and enmity (vaira). Evil beings, like good beings, are karman -bound creatures who, because of their propensity to cause harm, are caught in a situation where salvation is difficult if not impossible. They cause illness, both physical and psychic, and may possess people, especially women. They are born in blood and violence, and they must be propitiated with meat and other impure substances. In the western and southern parts of Sri Lanka they are propitiated in elaborate ritual dramas, described by Paul Wirz (1954) and more recently by Bruce Kapferer (1983).

The demons are under the authority of the deva s (i.e., the great gods of the pantheon), who must control them to ensure a just social order. The deva s are essentially rational and just deities, viewed by Sinhala Buddhists as future Buddhas or bodhisattva s. These deva s (as well as the lesser baṇḍāra s) are bound to the worshiper in a nexus of mutual obligation: The god protects humans, their cattle, and their crops, and ensures the common weal; humans in turn expresses their gratitude by transferring the merit they have earned to the gods and thus hastening the nirvāṇa and Buddha-aspiration of the latter. These transactions are formally expressed in the annual post-harvest thanksgiving rituals where the myths of the gods are sung, where ritual dramas celebrating their lives are enacted, and where thanks are offered to them by the village community.

Over and above the cults of the gods and demons is the worship of the Buddha. The Buddha himself is viewed as the supreme deity and totally benevolent, reigning over the rest of the pantheon. In his role as overlord of the pantheon he is referred to as "king"; in his role as the teacher of salvation he is "monk." In public parades known as perahära, the Buddha's role as king is predominant; in the rituals and prayers addressed to him inside the vihāra, his role as monk comes to the fore. These latter prayers and rituals in the Buddhist temple are standard throughout the nation, whereas there exist regional variations in the cult practices associated with the gods and demons. If the rituals to the gods and demons have to do with this world (health, wealth, fertility), the Buddhist rituals have to do with the next world, or with one's rebirth and the eventual realization of nirvāṇa. The unity of the Sinhala Buddhists as a moral community is expressed in Buddhist symbolism. The omnipresence of the Buddha in Sri Lanka is expressed in the symbolism of his sacred footprint embedded at Srī Pada Mountain (known also as Adam's Peak), the visible presence everywhere of monks and dagoba s or stūpa s containing relics of the Buddha or the saints of the early Buddhist church, and the sacred places of Buddhist pilgrimage where people from different regions come together to celebrate their collective unity as Buddhists. Sinhala religion as a totality has been adapted, through its long history, into a Buddhist framework.

Change in Sinhala Religion

Changes in the religious beliefs of the Sinhala have occurred in a variety of ways without radically affecting the formal structure of the pantheon, which has the Buddha at the apex, followed by four guardian gods of the realm, followed by the regional and village gods and godlings (baṇḍāra s), followed by the malevolent demons, spirits, and ghosts. The most common forms of change are as follows.

Migrations of peoples and cults from South India are a common phenomenon to this day. Hindu gods and deities are, however, incorporated into the Buddhist pantheon and given Buddhist legitimation. For example, Hindu gods like Viṣṇu and Saman (Laksmana) appear with their consorts in early Sinhala iconography. When they are converted into bodhisattva s in Sinhala religion they lose their consorts as befits good Buddhist salvation aspirants.
Sociopolitical and economic conditions may favor the rise or decline of a god. This the cult of the god Nātha, who was in charge of the sovereignity of the Kandyan kings, dramatically declined after the British conquest of Kandy in 1815. Similarly, a god may rise into prominence and eclipse others in terms of public popularity.
The external changes mentioned above are rationalized in terms of a dialectic of internal change in the pantheon. The more popular a deity, the more favors he grants his devotee; this in turn means that the devotee transfers merit to him, thereby bringing the god closer to his goal of Buddhahood. But the closer the god is to the Buddha model the less he is interested in the affaris of the world. Consequently, he must eventually become otiose, and more world-involved—even demonic—beings from the lower reaches of the pantheon move up to take his place. Thus, the logic of karman and the transfer of merit govern internal mobility in the pantheon.
Finally, social changes may produce radical changes in the formal structure of the pantheon. In The Cult of the Goddess Pattini by the author of this aritcle (pp. 290–291), it is noted that the politcal conditions of the Kōṭṭe Kingdom (1410–1544) in Sri Lanka resulted in the extension of the jurisdictional sway of the major guardian gods into the baṇḍāra s. Similarly, modern sociopolitical conditions, including the centralization and democratization of the state and the development of modern communications, have tended to erode the spheres of influence of minor gods and demons. Today, some gods are coming into especial prominence, while other gods and their cults are declining.

It is likely that modern socioeconomic and political conditions may produce radical changes in the formal structure of the pantheon as sketched above. Nevertheless, Sinhala religion will retain its basic core. The pantheon headed by the Buddha and the system of worship associated with him are not likely to change. Even if the cult of the Four Gods and the Twelve Gods should collapse, some deities will continue to preside over humanity's "this-worldly" destiny—and so will the belief in named demons and preta s, the spirits of dead ancestors. All deities will continue to embody Buddhist values and remain bound to each other and to humans by the ethics of karman and the transfer of merit.

Bibliography

The two most comprehensive books on Sinhala religion dealing with the demon and deva cults are Bruce Kapferer's A Celebration of Demons (Bloomington, Ind., 1983) and my The Cult of the Goddess Pattini (Chicago, 1984). Paul Wirz's Exorcism and the Art of Healing in Ceylon (Leiden, 1954), written in the thirties, is still a useful reference work, but better still is the excellent and little-known article by Dandris De Silva Gooneratne, "On Demonology and Witchcraft in Ceylon," Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, Ceylon Branch 4 (1865–1866): 1–117, both dealing with the demon and astrological cults. Michael M. Ames's article "Magical-Animism and Buddhism: A Structural Analysis of the Sinhalese Religious System," in Religion in South Asia, edited by Edward B. Harper (Seattle, 1964), and Richard F. Gombrich's Precept and Practice (Oxford, 1971) deal with the deva cults in the southern province and the Kandyan villages respectively and also discuss the articulation of the spirit cults and astrological beliefs with Buddhism. H. L. Seneviratne's excellent Rituals of the Kandyan State (Cambridge, 1978) is a comprehensive study of the state cultus of the sacred tooth relic and the worship of the Four Gods. For recent socioeconomic changes in Sinhala religion, read my "Social Change and the Deities," Man 12 (1977): 377–396, and Medusa's Hair (Chicago, 1981).