8 - Patronage and religion

Summary

Introduction

So far, I have tended to concentrate on what separates Sinhala Catholics from Sinhala Buddhists. Yet it must have become clear in the course of previous chapters that to treat Sinhala Catholics as an isolated autonomous community is to oversimplify the situation. Ideas about demons and possession at Kudagama, for example, depend upon a fairly detailed knowledge and reworking of Sinhala Buddhist ideas about gods and demons. The forms of prayers used by lay exorcists are based on Sinhala Buddhist prototypes, a fact well known to and appreciated by those who use them. Ideas about asceticism and holy men discussed in the last chapter owe at least part of their power to the Sinhala Buddhist tradition, and even the most ardent Catholics express at times their admiration for the ascetic feats of forest-dwelling monks. Furthermore, Catholics attend Buddhist shrines, and despite their vigorous anti-Buddhist aspects, shrines such as Kudagama do attract some Buddhists. Thus whilst at one level such shrines are concerned with parochial Catholic interests – a hankering after a vision of an older style of Catholicism and a world in which Catholics regained their lost privileges – at the same time all who attend these shrines are Sri Lankans and, no matter what their religious identity, all share certain common experiences and common problems.

Turning for a moment to Sinhala Buddhists, here too we find a series of changes in religious practice over the last few decades which parallel those found amongst Sinhala Catholics (see Gombrich and Obeyesekere 1988; Obeyesekere 1970a, 1975a, 1977, 1978a).