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The Consecration of a Buddhist Image

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 March 2011

Richard Gombrich
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Extract

Sinhalese Buddhists state that their religion was founded by the Buddha, who was a human being and is now dead. Cognitively this position is held by every Buddhist from the most learned monk to the most ignorant layman. Yet they usually behave as if the Buddha appears to them as a powerful and omnibenevolent god, a supreme being who is still in some way present and aware. (Perhaps we might say that cognitively the Buddha is dead, but affectively he is alive.) For instance, if assailed by dangerous demons a pious Buddhist will recite the qualities of the Buddha and thus keep any malevolent forces at bay. If asked to explain the apparent inconsistency, Buddhists say that the gods and demons are restrained by respect for the Buddha—but it is respect for his memory or for his doctrine, not for his active power. Moreover, Buddhists have dealings with the Buddha in which they behave as if he were at least numinously present; in particular, offerings are made before statues of the Buddha.

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Articles
Information
The Journal of Asian Studies , Volume 26 , Issue 1 , November 1966 , pp. 23 - 36
Copyright
Copyright © The Association for Asian Studies, Inc. 1966

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References

1 On this one point I have greatly oversimplified the belief system, as an accurate discussion would lead me far from my main topic. Strictly speaking, the security which Sinhalese Buddhists feel from the abuse of supernatural power they often ascribe to the vigilance and potency of the higher deities who have been appointed guardians of the Buddha's moral law. For an authoritative outline and analysis of the Sinhalese religious belief system see Obeyesekere, G., “The Great Tradition and the Little in the Perspective of Sinhalese Buddhism,” Journal of Asian Studies XXII No. 2, 139–153Google Scholar. For the derivation and use of the power of supernatural beings see especially pp. 145–146.

2 Western terminology is a little confusing. A monastery is not merely where monks live (pansala) but the complex of buildings associated with such living quarters. This complex includes a temple (vihāraya or vihāragedara) containing Buddha images and other religious art.

3 Knox, Robert, An Historical Relation of Ceylon, originally published in London, 1681Google Scholar, now available as Ceylon Historical Journal Vol. VI (Ceylon, 1958), 130 (original folio p. 82).

4 Ibid., 116 (folio p. 73). When I first wrote my analysis, I was not acquainted with these passages.

5 Coomaraswamy, A., Mediaeval Sinhalese Art (Broad Campden, 1908), p. 70Google Scholar. On p. 73 he also quotes a sixteenth-century edict which mentions that the ceremony was performed for a painting of the Buddha on cloth (see note 10, fin.).

6 For a general account of the traditions and functions of these craftsmen see Coomaraswamy, op. cit. For a reference to their subgroupings, probably comparable rather to craft guilds than to subcastes, see Pieris, R., Sinhalese Social Organization (Colombo, 1956), p. 182Google Scholar. In the Low Country and the towns carpentry is no longer—if it ever was—a caste-bound profession. For a discussion of this break-down of caste traditions, as well as of the status of navandannō, see Ryan, B., Caste in Modern Ceylon (New Brunswick, N. J., 1953), pp. 111–113Google Scholar. This information is not known to the villagers in the area of the ceremony described, where navandannō are not indigenous; they thought that sittaru were members of the drummer caste.

7 Samantapāsādikā, introd., Vinayapiṭakaṃ, ed. Oldenburg, H., III (London, 1881), 300Google Scholar.

8 Mahāvaṃsa ed. Geiger, W. (London, 1908), V 94Google Scholar.

9 Cūlavaṃsa ed. Geiger, W. (Vol. I, London, 1925; Vol. II, London, 1927)Google Scholar. This carries the story of Ceylon through to the late eighteenth century. The only clear references to a nētra pinkama (called in the Pali nettapūjū and nettamaha), which unambiguously refer to the modern form of the festival, occur in the last chapter (Chapter C), which deals with King Kirti śrī Rājasiṃha (1747–82) the great reviver and patron of Buddhism.

10 Cūlavaṃsa LXXIII 78. This is the only indisputable passage to state that a king put in the eyes himself. Coomaraswamy (see note 12) translates the passage “paints,” but the Pali word ṭhapetuṃ merely means “to place.” His other two references to painting by the king are also dubious. The one, Cūlavaṃsa C. 191, merely says the king “caused the eyes to be placed” (nette paṭiṭṭhāpetvāna). The other is an edict in the name of Vikrama Bāhu, a king of Kandy in the early sixteenth century, which refers explicitly to a nētra pinkama with the placing of pots (i.e. kumbhasthāpanē, see below), and says that after the ceremony the king washed his hands and bestowed lands on the painters. The question is whether we are entitled to infer from the king's washing his hands that he himself painted the eyes. However that may be, if the edict is authentic—and in 1890 it satisfied a court of law—it is the earliest certain reference to the modern form of the ceremony.

11 Knox, p. 131 (folio p. 82).

12 Coomaraswamy, pp. 70–75 (Appx. II to Chapter III).

13 Nearly four thousand pounds. An unskilled laborer earns three rupees (nearly five shillings) a day.

14 Bās is in origin the Dutch word baas (“boss”), and is now widely applied to craftsmen and builders; unnähe is a polite Sinhalese pronominal form for “he,” used as a common courtesy title in the low country, but not idiomatic in central Ceylon.

15 The translation is necessarily not literal, but attempts to give the effect of the original despite the unnaturalness of such a word order in English.

16 Duṭugämuṇu (Pali: Duṭṭhagamuṇu), Sinhalese national hero. This is the local women's organization.

17 In Coomaraswamy's version these altars are dedicated to the deities guarding the four quarters and the four intermediate directions, i.e. E, SE, etc. This sounds like an original detail. No doubt the altars were symmetrically erected at appropriate points around the temple. He adds eight further altars for the attendants of these deities.

18 The design in the ceremony described by Coomaraswamy is different, a kind of eight-pointed star, and there were eighty pots, arranged in two groups of forty, one group for Brahma and one for Vi⊡ṇu.

19 Coomaraswamy writes: “At about 6 p.m. on the previous evening, a beginning was made with the recitation of Kōsala-bimba-varṇanāva.” On this he adds a note: “A sixteenth or seventeenth century work in Sinhalese prose, relating how in Buddha's time, King Kosala used frequently to visit Him with his retinue, to offer gifts and hear the doctrine. On two occasions Buddha was away from His cell, and the retinue began to grumble at their long journey in vain. Upon the next occasion the King asked from the Buddha whether, in order that they might not again be disappointed altogether, he might get made a beautiful image as a representation of Himself. … The image was of red sandal wood (rat haňdum pilima).” The aetiological myth is interesting. I was not aware that such a recitation had taken place earlier in the evening, but it may have happened and I not been told of it.

20 According to Coomaraswamy the craftsman who paints in the eyes is dressed up as a prince, which reflects the custom that sometimes the king himself did the painting (but see my note 10); his assistant was also dressed up, but less elaborately; both had cloths over their heads to act as veils as soon as the work was over. I assume that inside the temple before painting the eyes the craftsman resumed the costumes they wore while giving offerings to the eight Bahiravas, which correspond fairly closely to the costumes described at that point by Coomaraswamy.