Reading and listening material for the Vesak season
Professor Sunanda Mahendra
VESAK:
With the dawn of the Vesak season, quite a number of creative activities
are observed helping the masses to gather knowledge creatively via
interpersonal group and mass communication means.
This has existed since times immemorial as the history records. In
the first instance, there is preparation on the part of the adults to
disseminate knowledge on aspects of the significance of Vesak, which
marks the birth, the attainment of Buddhahood, and entering the
Parinibbana or the passing away of Buddha.
Traditionally these are the most significant and most sacred two days
in the life of a Buddhist.
It is not only the mere celebration that is significant to the lay
Buddhist, but also the search for the insight into various aspects of
the doctrine via textual material available.
As such, the adult communicators make it a point to educate and also
to entertain the masses via print, visual and sound media.
The Buddha's birth stories have been the stock in trade of most
creative communicators, for they make use of these materials in many
ways. In village temples the habit of reading birth stories by
well-versed monks, in the appropriate tonal expressions, with others
listening to it, has been a popular oral tradition handed down the
centuries from King Dutugemunu's era. The King was so delighted in
getting the services of the Buddhist priesthood to read them loudly.
Presumably it is this form that had given way to the Bhakthi Gita
(devotional songs) tradition that we hear so often by groups of singers
during the Vesak season.
Habit of reading
These monks having inculcated the habit of reading aloud mixing a
style of prose and verse with tonal variations, selected the birth
stories as the subject matter; these monks were vernacularly known as
Jataka Bhanakas, the reciters of birth stories.
The Bhanaka tradition is also utilized as a faith healing exercise.
In this manner the reading aloud the birth stories have been one of the
main items adhered even by the later laymen and then gradually
transferred to poetical expressions or versifications giving way to a
special ballad creation called Jataka Kavi Katha, the ballads based on
birth stories.
During the Kandy period of Sinhala literature, these ballads were
proliferated by the learned as well as minor poets not much versed in
the language. The birth stories, on versification, enable the listener
to remember well the religious essence of the original work.
The poets too believed that it is a way to gain merits if one
versifies a birth story and make it available to masses. The later
scribes, who transferred the original versifications from the oral
sources to the palm leaf manuscripts, were regarded as merit givers and
those who listened as merit gatherers.
Similarly episodes from such Sinhala works as Pujavaliya, Saddharma
Ratnavaliya and Buthsarana were versified into the simplest forms of
communication enabling common readers and listeners to be more
knowledgeable in the doctrinal matters at a higher plane of
understanding.
The main intention, it is observed, is to create a sense of faith or
Saddha, a primary way to achieve higher goals of doctrinal insights.
This too is the intention of the temple painter when he delves in the
painting of episodes of birth stories and the life of Prince Siddhartha
the would be Buddha, his renunciation, the achievement of Buddhahood,
and the various challenges brought about by rivalries symbolizing the
prevention of this achievement, for example, the onslaughts of Mara, the
death and his daughters, Tanha, Rathi and Ranga, who attempted to entice
the mind of the Buddha by their various worldly mundane pranks.
For the common man full of Saddha, this is known as Mara Parajaya or
Mara Yuddhaya, the battle against the death.
Dealing with the versifications of Dhamma, utilized by the masses in
the Buddhist society, one cannot undermine the two Sinhala works Lovada
Sangarava and Budu Guna Alankaraya.
Although these two works were meant to be used by the masses in the
day-to-day life, the literary critics over the years have not evaluated
them as great pieces of literary works as they contain, more or less,
didactic commentarial references to good living alluding to the life of
the Buddha and the events that followed.
But it is observed that these two works, though not acclaimed as
classics, were the common poetry that lived with the masses in search of
Buddhist insights inspiring the way to more and more poetical lyrical
and dramatic creations that remain as memorable creations up to this
day.
Lovada Sangarava
The Lovada Sangarava refers to various types of merits and demerits
via the utterances of the Buddha, and helps save one's life style from
all sins.
One such utterance: 'if one is sinful, the very act at the spur of
the moment is like the partaking of honey which is sweet, but when the
very same person receives its retribution it is like the burning from a
glowing' (karana kalata pav miriya meese vindina kalata duk dadivei
ginise).
The subject matter in Budu Guna Alankaraya is the plague that
infested the city of Visala to which the poet sought the reasons being
the demerits of not only the kings and the rest of beings but also
absence of faith and mutual human understanding that should emerge
through the insights of the words of the Buddha.
According to the poet, the layman should make it a point to realise
the virtues of the Buddha, and recite them day in day out as a necessary
expression.
The poet selects the historical episode where the Buddha recited the
Ratana Sutta in order to avert the evils that befell the city of Visala,
and expands the theme to suit all conditions of human misbehaviour.
In this manner we see that the season of Vesak had given way to a
special entity where the masses are made to feel more enlightened on
Dhamma insights via reading and listening.
Special local publications are made available to address these
insights; Dinamina Vesak Kalapaya is one such example. Many publishers
feel that it is a merit-gathering venture to bring out reading material
on religious matters especially on this occasion.
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