A.D. 209.The obligation, to maintain the religion of Buddha was as binding as the command to abstain from assailing that of its rivals, and hence the kings who had treated the snake-worshippers with kindness, who had made a state provision for maintaining "offerings to demons," and built dwellings at the capital to accommodate the "ministers of foreign religions," rose in fierce indignation against the preaching of a firm believer in Buddha, who ventured to put an independent interpretation on points of faith. They burned the books of the Wytulians, as the new sect were called, and frustrated their irreligious attempt.[1] The first effort at repression was ineffectual. It was made by the King Wairatissa, A.D. 209; A.D. 248.but within forty years the schismatic tendency returned, the persecution was renewed, and the apostate priests, after being branded on the back were ignominiously transported to the opposite coast of India.[2]
1: The Mahawanso throws no light on the nature of the Wytulian (or Wettulyan) heresy (ch. xxvii. p. 227), but the Rajaratnacari insinuates that Wytulia was a Brahman who had "subverted by craft and intrigue the religion of Buddha" (ch. ii, p. 61). As it is stated in a further passage that the priests who were implicated were stripped of their habits, it is evident that the innovation had been introduced under the garb of Buddha.—Rajaratnacari, ch. ii. p. 65.
2: TURNOUR'S Epitome, p. 25, Mahawanso, ch. xxxvi. p. 232. As the Mahawanso intimates in another passage that amongst the priests who were banished to the opposite coast of India, there was one Sangha-mitta, "who was profoundly versed in the rites of the demon faith ('bhuta')," it is probable that out of the Wytulian heresy grew the system which prevails to the present day, by which the heterodox dewales and halls for devil dances are built in close contiguity to the temples and wiharas of the orthodox Buddhists, and the barbarous rites of demon worship are incorporated with the abstractions of the national religion. On the restoration of Maha-Sen to the true faith, the Mahawanso represents him as destroying the dewales at Anarajapoora in order to replace them with wiharas (Mahawanso, ch. xxxvii. p. 237). An account of the mingling of Brahmanical with Buddhist worship, as it exists at the present day, will be found in HARDY'S Oriental Monachism, ch. xix. Professor H.H. WILSON, in his Historical Sketch of the Kingdom of Pandya, alludes to a heresy, which, anterior to the sixth century, disturbed the sangattar or college of Madura; the leading feature of which was the admixture of Buddhist doctrines with the rite of the Brahmans, and "this heresy," he says, "some traditions assert was introduced from Ceylon."—Asiat. Journ. vol. iii. p. 218.
The new sect had, however, established an interest in high places; and Sangha-mitta, one of the exiled priests, returning from banishment on the death of the king, so ingratiated himself with his successor, that he was entrusted with the education of the king's sons. One of the latter, Maha-Sen, succeeded to the throne, A.D. 275.A.D. 275, and, openly professing his adoption of the Wytulian tenets, dispossessed the popular priesthood, and overthrew the Brazen Palace. With the materials of the great wihara, he constructed at the sacred Bo-tree a building as a receptacle for relics, and a temple in which the statue of Buddha was to be worshipped according to the rites of the reformed religion.[1]
1: Mahawanso, ch. xxxvii. p. 235.
A.D. 275.So bold an innovation roused the passions of the nation; the people prepared for revolt, and a conflict was imminent, when the schismatic Sangha-mitta was suddenly assassinated, and the king, convinced of his errors, addressed himself with energy to restore the buildings he had destroyed, and to redress the mischiefs chiefs caused by his apostacy. He demolished the dewales of the Hindus, in order to use their sites for Buddhist wiharas; he erected nunneries, constructed the Jaytawanarama (a dagoba at Anarajapoora), formed the great tank of Mineri by drawing a dam across the Kara-ganga and that of Kandelay or Dantalawa, and consecrated the 20,000 fields which it irrigated to the Dennanaka Wihare.[1] "He repaired numerous dilapidated temples throughout the island, made offerings of a thousand robes to a thousand priests, formed sixteen tanks to extend cultivation—there is no defining the extent of his charity"—and having performed during his existence acts both of piety and impity, the Mahawanso cautiously adds, "his destiny after death was according to his merits."[2]
1: TURNOUR's Epitome, p. 25.
2: Mahawanso, ch. xxxiii. p. 238.
A.D. 302.With King Maha-Sen end the glories of the "superior dynasty" of Ceylon. The "sovereigns of the Suluwanse, who followed," says the Rajavali, "were no longer of the unmixed blood, but the offspring of parents, only one of whom was descended from the sun, and the other from the bringer of the Bo-tree or the sacred tooth; on that account, because the God Sakkraia had ceased to watch over Ceylon, because piety had disappeared, and the city of Anarajapoora was in ruins, and because the fertility of the land was diminished, the kings who succeeded Maha-Sen were no longer reverenced as of old."[1]
1: Rajavali, p. 289.