Amarapura Nikaya
Encyclopedia
The Amarapura Nikaya is a Sri Lanka
n monastic fraternity (a lineage of ordained monks) founded in 1800. It is named after the city of Amarapura
, Myanmar
(then Burma), the former capital of the Burmese kingdom. Amarapura Nikaya monks are followers of the Theravada
tradition.
(higher ordination, as distinct from samanera
or novice
ordination) had become extinct in Sri Lanka again. The Buddhist order had become extinct thrice during the preceding five hundred years and was re-established in the reigns of Vimala Dharma Suriya I (1591 - 1604) and Vimala Dharma Suriya II (1687 - 1707) as well. These re-establishments were short lived. On the initiative of Ven. Weliwita Saranankara (1698-1778) the Thai monk Upali Thera
visited Kandy during the reign of king Kirti Sri Rajasinghe (1747 - 1782) and once again reestablished the Buddhist order in Sri Lanka in 1753. It was called the Siyam Nikaya after the "Kingdom of Siam".
However in 1764, merely a decade after the re-establishment of the Buddhist order in Sri Lanka by reverend Upali, a group within the newly created Siyam Nikaya conspired and succeeded in restricting the Nikaya's higher ordination only to the Govigama
caste. This was a period when Buddhist Vinaya
rules had been virtually abandoned and some members of the Buddhist Sangha in the Kandyan Kingdom privately held land, had wives and children, resided in the private homes and were called Ganinnanses. It was a period when the traditional nobility of the Kandyan Kingdom was decimated by continuous wars with the Dutch rulers of the Maritime Provinces. In the maritime provinces too a new order was replacing the old. Mandarampura Puvata, a text from the Kandyan perid, narrates the above radical changes to the monastic order and shows that it was not a unanimous decision by the body of the sangha. It says that thirty two ‘senior’ members of the Sangha who opposed this change were banished to Jaffna
by the leaders of the reform.
The Govigama exclusivity of the Sangha thus secured in 1764 was almost immediately challenged by other castes who without the patronage of the King of Kandy or of the British
, held their own upasampada
ceremony at Totagamuwa Vihara in 1772. Another was held at Tangalle in 1798. Neither of these ceremonies were approved by the Siam Nikaya
which claimed that these were not in accordance with the Vinaya
rules.
As a consequence of this ‘exclusively Govigama’ policy adopted in 1764 by the Siyam Nikaya, the Buddhists in the Maritime provinces were denied access to a valid ordination lineage. Hoping to rectify this situation, wealthy laymen from the maritime provinces financed an expedition to Burma to found a new monastic lineage. In 1799, Ambagahapitiye Gnanavimala Thera a monk from the Salagama
caste
, from Balapitiya on the south western coast of Sri Lanka, departed for Burma with a group of novices to seek a new succession of Higher ordination. The first bhikkhu
was ordained in Burma in 1800 by the sangharaja
of Burma, his party having been welcomed to Burma by King Bodawpaya
.
The initial mission returned to Sri Lanka in 1803. Soon after their return to the island they established a udakhupkhepa sima (a flotilla of boats moved together to form a platform on the water) at the Maduganga river
, Balapitiya and, under the most senior Myanmar bhikkhu who accompanied them, held an upasampada ceremony on Vesak Full Moon Day. The new fraternity came to be known as the Amarapura Nikaya, from the then capital of Burma.
Several subsequent trips to Burma by Karava and Durava
monks as well, created by 1810 a core group of ordained monks and provided the required quorum for Higher Ordination of Amarapura Nikaya monks in Sri Lanka. The higher ordination denied to them in 1764 by the Govigama conspirators had been regained and they were soon granted recognition by the colonial British government. However the radical change of ordination rules by the Siyam Nikaya in 1764, and its continuance despite it being contrary to the teachings of the Buddha
, plagues the Sri Lankan Buddhist Sangha, and the Sangha remains divided on caste lines.
of a dedicated group of Buddhist laymen. The Amarapura Nikaya was thus both independent of government and royal power, and more closely tied to its patrons in the growing middle class. This presaged both the growing power of the middle class in Sri Lanka during the 19th and 18th Centuries, and the rise of so-called Protestant Buddhism among the Sinhalese middle class- a modernized form of Buddhism in which increasing power and authority were vested in the laity, rather than monastic authorities.
Sri Lanka
Sri Lanka, officially the Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka is a country off the southern coast of the Indian subcontinent. Known until 1972 as Ceylon , Sri Lanka is an island surrounded by the Indian Ocean, the Gulf of Mannar and the Palk Strait, and lies in the vicinity of India and the...
n monastic fraternity (a lineage of ordained monks) founded in 1800. It is named after the city of Amarapura
Amarapura
Amarapura is a former capital of Myanmar, and now a township of Mandalay. Amarapura is bounded by the Ayeyarwady river in the west, Chanmyathazi township in the north, and the city of Innwa in the south...
, Myanmar
Myanmar
Burma , officially the Republic of the Union of Myanmar , is a country in Southeast Asia. Burma is bordered by China on the northeast, Laos on the east, Thailand on the southeast, Bangladesh on the west, India on the northwest, the Bay of Bengal to the southwest, and the Andaman Sea on the south....
(then Burma), the former capital of the Burmese kingdom. Amarapura Nikaya monks are followers of the Theravada
Theravada
Theravada ; literally, "the Teaching of the Elders" or "the Ancient Teaching", is the oldest surviving Buddhist school. It was founded in India...
tradition.
History
By the mid 18th century, upasampadaUpasampada
Upasampadā literally means "approaching or nearing the ascetic tradition." In more common parlance it specifically refers to the rite of ordination by which one undertakes the Buddhist monastic life....
(higher ordination, as distinct from samanera
Samanera
A samanera ) may be translated as novice monk in a Buddhist context. The literal meaning is 'small samana', that is, small renunciate where 'small' has the meaning of boy or girl. In the Vinaya monastic discipline, a man under the age of 20 cannot ordain as a bhikkhu, but can ordain as a samanera...
or novice
Novice
A novice is a person or creature who is new to a field or activity. The term is most commonly applied in religion and sports.-Buddhism:In many Buddhist orders, a man or woman who intends to take ordination must first become a novice, adopting part of the monastic code indicated in the vinaya and...
ordination) had become extinct in Sri Lanka again. The Buddhist order had become extinct thrice during the preceding five hundred years and was re-established in the reigns of Vimala Dharma Suriya I (1591 - 1604) and Vimala Dharma Suriya II (1687 - 1707) as well. These re-establishments were short lived. On the initiative of Ven. Weliwita Saranankara (1698-1778) the Thai monk Upali Thera
Upali Thera
Upali Thera was a Thai Theravada monk and founder of the Siam Nikaya order of Buddhism in Sri Lanka. He visited Kandy in 1753 and there performed upasampada for a group of Sinhala monks. The upasampada was not observed in Sri Lanka for centuries until this time...
visited Kandy during the reign of king Kirti Sri Rajasinghe (1747 - 1782) and once again reestablished the Buddhist order in Sri Lanka in 1753. It was called the Siyam Nikaya after the "Kingdom of Siam".
However in 1764, merely a decade after the re-establishment of the Buddhist order in Sri Lanka by reverend Upali, a group within the newly created Siyam Nikaya conspired and succeeded in restricting the Nikaya's higher ordination only to the Govigama
Govigama
Govi, Govigama, Goigama, Goygama, Goyigama, Goviyo is the most influential and the dominant Caste in Sri Lanka and certainly comes as the leading cast in the hierarchy of cast system in Sri Lanka.The term Govi denotes farmer.From time immemorial the Govigama have been the landlords and have been...
caste. This was a period when Buddhist Vinaya
Vinaya
The Vinaya is the regulatory framework for the Buddhist monastic community, or sangha, based in the canonical texts called Vinaya Pitaka. The teachings of the Buddha, or Buddhadharma can be divided into two broad categories: 'Dharma' or doctrine, and 'Vinaya', or discipline...
rules had been virtually abandoned and some members of the Buddhist Sangha in the Kandyan Kingdom privately held land, had wives and children, resided in the private homes and were called Ganinnanses. It was a period when the traditional nobility of the Kandyan Kingdom was decimated by continuous wars with the Dutch rulers of the Maritime Provinces. In the maritime provinces too a new order was replacing the old. Mandarampura Puvata, a text from the Kandyan perid, narrates the above radical changes to the monastic order and shows that it was not a unanimous decision by the body of the sangha. It says that thirty two ‘senior’ members of the Sangha who opposed this change were banished to Jaffna
Jaffna
Jaffna is the capital city of the Northern Province, Sri Lanka. It is the administrative headquarters of the Jaffna district located on a peninsula of the same name. Jaffna is approximately six miles away from Kandarodai which served as a famous emporium in the Jaffna peninsula from classical...
by the leaders of the reform.
The Govigama exclusivity of the Sangha thus secured in 1764 was almost immediately challenged by other castes who without the patronage of the King of Kandy or of the British
British Empire
The British Empire comprised the dominions, colonies, protectorates, mandates and other territories ruled or administered by the United Kingdom. It originated with the overseas colonies and trading posts established by England in the late 16th and early 17th centuries. At its height, it was the...
, held their own upasampada
Upasampada
Upasampadā literally means "approaching or nearing the ascetic tradition." In more common parlance it specifically refers to the rite of ordination by which one undertakes the Buddhist monastic life....
ceremony at Totagamuwa Vihara in 1772. Another was held at Tangalle in 1798. Neither of these ceremonies were approved by the Siam Nikaya
Siam Nikaya
The Siam Nikaya is a monastic order within Sri Lanka, founded by Upali Thera and located predominantly around the city of Kandy. It is so named because it originated within Thailand...
which claimed that these were not in accordance with the Vinaya
Vinaya
The Vinaya is the regulatory framework for the Buddhist monastic community, or sangha, based in the canonical texts called Vinaya Pitaka. The teachings of the Buddha, or Buddhadharma can be divided into two broad categories: 'Dharma' or doctrine, and 'Vinaya', or discipline...
rules.
As a consequence of this ‘exclusively Govigama’ policy adopted in 1764 by the Siyam Nikaya, the Buddhists in the Maritime provinces were denied access to a valid ordination lineage. Hoping to rectify this situation, wealthy laymen from the maritime provinces financed an expedition to Burma to found a new monastic lineage. In 1799, Ambagahapitiye Gnanavimala Thera a monk from the Salagama
Salagama
Salagama is the name of a caste in Sri Lanka. The community was traditionally associated with the cultivation and management of cinnamon, and also as soldiers,and are found mostly in Southern coastal areas, especially in the villages around Rathgama , Boossa and Balapitiya in Galle...
caste
Caste
Caste is an elaborate and complex social system that combines elements of endogamy, occupation, culture, social class, tribal affiliation and political power. It should not be confused with race or social class, e.g. members of different castes in one society may belong to the same race, as in India...
, from Balapitiya on the south western coast of Sri Lanka, departed for Burma with a group of novices to seek a new succession of Higher ordination. The first bhikkhu
Bhikkhu
A Bhikkhu or Bhikṣu is an ordained male Buddhist monastic. A female monastic is called a Bhikkhuni Nepali: ). The life of Bhikkhus and Bhikkhunis is governed by a set of rules called the patimokkha within the vinaya's framework of monastic discipline...
was ordained in Burma in 1800 by the sangharaja
Sangharaja
Sangharaja is the title given in many Theravada Buddhist countries to a senior monk who is the titular head either of a monastic fraternity , or of the Sangha throughout the country...
of Burma, his party having been welcomed to Burma by King Bodawpaya
Bodawpaya
Bodawpaya was the sixth king of the Konbaung Dynasty of Burma. Born Maung Shwe Waing and later Badon Min, he was the fourth son of Alaungpaya, founder of the dynasty and the Third Burmese Empire. He was proclaimed king after deposing his nephew Phaungkaza Maung Maung, son of his oldest brother...
.
The initial mission returned to Sri Lanka in 1803. Soon after their return to the island they established a udakhupkhepa sima (a flotilla of boats moved together to form a platform on the water) at the Maduganga river
Maduganga River
The Maduganga river is a shallow water body in south-west Sri Lanka, which enters the sea at Balapitiya.The Buddhist Amarapura Nikaya sect had its first upasampada on a fleet of boats anchored upon it in 1803...
, Balapitiya and, under the most senior Myanmar bhikkhu who accompanied them, held an upasampada ceremony on Vesak Full Moon Day. The new fraternity came to be known as the Amarapura Nikaya, from the then capital of Burma.
Several subsequent trips to Burma by Karava and Durava
Durava
Durave or Durava are Southern Sinhalese caste in Sri Lanka.-Origins:Sinhalese people claim Indian ethnic origins and are primarily engaged in agriculture...
monks as well, created by 1810 a core group of ordained monks and provided the required quorum for Higher Ordination of Amarapura Nikaya monks in Sri Lanka. The higher ordination denied to them in 1764 by the Govigama conspirators had been regained and they were soon granted recognition by the colonial British government. However the radical change of ordination rules by the Siyam Nikaya in 1764, and its continuance despite it being contrary to the teachings of the Buddha
Gautama Buddha
Siddhārtha Gautama was a spiritual teacher from the Indian subcontinent, on whose teachings Buddhism was founded. In most Buddhist traditions, he is regarded as the Supreme Buddha Siddhārtha Gautama (Sanskrit: सिद्धार्थ गौतम; Pali: Siddhattha Gotama) was a spiritual teacher from the Indian...
, plagues the Sri Lankan Buddhist Sangha, and the Sangha remains divided on caste lines.
Significance
The establishment of the Amarapura Nikaya was significant because it singled a change in the social dyanmic of Buddhism in Sri Lanka. For the first time, a monastic lineage had been created not through royal patronage of a Buddhist king, but through the collective actionCollective action
Collective action is the pursuit of a goal or set of goals by more than one person. It is a term which has formulations and theories in many areas of the social sciences.-In sociology:...
of a dedicated group of Buddhist laymen. The Amarapura Nikaya was thus both independent of government and royal power, and more closely tied to its patrons in the growing middle class. This presaged both the growing power of the middle class in Sri Lanka during the 19th and 18th Centuries, and the rise of so-called Protestant Buddhism among the Sinhalese middle class- a modernized form of Buddhism in which increasing power and authority were vested in the laity, rather than monastic authorities.
Sub-orders
The Amarapura maha nikaya is divided into no less than 21 sub-orders. These sub orders are believed to have been formed along cast divisions- Amarapura Sirisaddhammawansa Maha Nikaya
- Amarapura Mulawamsika Nikaya
- Udarata Amarapura Nikaya
- Amarapura Sabaragamu Saddhamma Nikaya
- Saddhamma Yutthika (Matara) Nikaya
- Dadalu Paramparayatta Amarapura Nikaya
- Amarapura Mrammawansabhidhaja
- Amarapura Vajirawansa Nikaya
- Kalyanavansika Sri Dharmarama Saddhamma Yuttika Nikaya
- Sri Lanka Svejin Maha Nikaya
- Sabaragamu Saddhammawansa Nikaya
- Amarapura Ariyavansa Saddhamma Yuttika Nikaya
- Culagandhi Nikaya
- Udarata Amarapura Samagri Sangha Sabhawa
- Uva Amarapura Nikaya
- Amarapura Sri Dhammarakshita Nikaya
- Udukinda Amarapura Nikaya
- Sambuddha Sasanodaya Sangha Sabhawa
- Amarapura Maha Nikaya
- Amarapura Nikaya
- Sri Kalyaniwansa Nikaya
See also
- Siam NikayaSiam NikayaThe Siam Nikaya is a monastic order within Sri Lanka, founded by Upali Thera and located predominantly around the city of Kandy. It is so named because it originated within Thailand...
- Ramanna NikayaRamanna NikayaRamanna Nikaya is one of the most orthodox Buddhist orders in Sri Lanka. It was founded in 1864 when Ambagahawatte Saranankara, returned to Sri Lanka after being ordained by the Neyyadhama Munivara Sangharaja of Ratnapunna Vihara in Burma.-Similar orders:Ramanna Nikaya is said to be similar to the...
- Sri Lankan BuddhismSri Lankan BuddhismBuddhism in Sri Lanka is primarily of the Theravada school, and constitutes the religious faith of about 70% of the population.- History :...
- Weligama Gnanaratana Maha Nayaka Thera