Sinha Le, Anyone?

by Tisaranee Gunasekara

“…an anti-civilatory, myth-making nationalism…”
Karl Dietrich Bracher
(The German Dictatorship)

( February 14, 2016, Colombo, Sri Lanka Guardian) It beats the Grimm’s Tales and the Arabian Nights hollow, that story of a princess who runs away from her home and mates with a lion. Not a lion-like man, not a member of a tribe named after the ‘king of beasts’, but an actual man-eating lion. The Great Chronicle (Mahavamsa) takes considerable pains to make the point. The princess, described by Bhikku Mahanama as ‘fair’ and ‘amorous’, gives birth to twins. Sihabahu is so named because his hands and feet are ‘formed like a lion’s’. He eventually kills the father and marries the sister. Vijaya, the Sinhala Manu according to Mahavamsa, was a product of that incestuous union.

Thus Sinha Le, lion’s blood. A physical impossibility, an obvious fabrication, this is our version of creationism, our geo-centrism, which we continue to believe despite evidence to the contrary, because it is an article of faith. And for decades this story was taught in schools not as myth or even religion (the distinction depends on who is doing the looking) but history. It was also used by everyone, from anti-devolution politicians to hardline monks, from academics to military men, from novelists to lay people, to justify Sinhala Buddhist supremacism and to oppose any political concessions to the minorities.

In the teaching of Gautama Buddha there is no concept of holy war, no place for force/violence in the protection of either the Dhamma or those who practice it. Classical Buddhism does not provide a ruler with a mechanism to use religion to justify war, because the Buddha’s rejection of violence is absolute and non-negotiable. Classical Buddhism accepts that violence is a part of statecraft; but that violence cannot be perpetrated under cover of protecting or promoting Buddhism. A Buddhist ruler may have to pursue policies of violence but that violence must be of the secular and not religious variety.

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