Francis P. Gunasekera

Vesak festival brings out from some countries some of the colourful stamps. Stamps from Japan and Thailand together with those featuring Lord Buddha and also from Yemen Republic can be seen. Sri Lanka’s Vesak stamps of 1987 featured some of Vesak lanterns and they are shown above. World famous Buddha Statue at Kamakura, Japan is also seen in one of the stamps from Sharjah and those of Japan.

Vesak being the premier Buddhist festival of the majority of the Sri Lankans, it has given us many stamps of extra-ordinary interest and significance. These stamps which have turned over a new page in our lives, urge that more and more such stamps should be brought about for greater glory of Buddha Sasana.

There was a time when temple paintings were taken to be the most suitable for Vesak festival stamps. A large number of far away countryside temples had their very old paintings shown in our Vesak stamps. However, as the times went on, many other symbols of Buddhist significance were taken up as proper and more symbolic of the land of Buddhists.

One important thing that is observed in the context of these Vesak festival stamps happens to be that these stamps are not available at least two weeks before the dawn of the Vesak Poya. Vesak greeting cards should necessarily find this most appropriate stamps, without having the people to undergo difficulties in obtaining them.

More over, the users of Vesak greeting cards have to be told that Vesak festival stamps are meant for prepayment of postage especially during Vesak season. But, what is to be seen is affixing whatever stamps that could be had from post offices and other outlets.

During the last few years, we have had many Vesak festival stamps featuring Buddhist flags together with some of the most famous and historical Buddhist Stupas (or Dagobas) which some of children saw more clearly only from our stamps. Such stamps are, therefore considered to be most useful and of great educational value for children of all religions because, buy studying about them one gets a glimpse of our history intertwined with Buddhist culture of unbroken 2,500 years or more.

Now, about the Buddha appearing in stamps of Japan and Thailand, Sri Lankans' way of thinking has to be rational and liberal too. They who take much innocent pride to show the images of the Buddha in stamps may not like to see them cancelled to obliterate the stamps. However, ardent collectors go out all the way in purchasing those stamps as an honour to the Thrice-Blessed one, no matter what difficulty they have to encounter.

Collecting MINT (as sold at the post office counter) stamps, as done mostly in USA may be a prudent alternative to the misuse of cancelled stamps of whatever sort.

Wishing you all a happy and peaceful Vesak Festival!

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