The Modernization of Sinhalese Buddhism as Reflected in the Dambulla Cave Temples

Abstract This chapter will argue that modern Sinhalese Buddhism begins not with the arrival of the British, much less with the 1957 watershed elections, but during Kandyan times (1649–1815), especially during the reign of Kirti Sri Rajasinha (1747–1780). As John C. Holt has shown in his masterful book The Religious World of Kirti Sri, a close examination of Kirti Sri’s renovations of the Dambulla cave temples, among several other sites, reveals themes, concerns, and motifs typically associated with modern Buddhism. Holt sees Kirti Sri as a transitional figure, a revivalist rooted in his late medieval era. Of his meaning for modern Sinhalese Buddhism, Holt writes, “Yet his response remains relevant in modern Sri Lanka, despite the fact that it is a late medieval, revived form of classical religion and, as such, is not completely synchronized (in fact, is often at odds) with the emphases and orientations of twentieth-century, urban Buddhist modernism.”While obviously Sinhalese Buddhism has changed over the past two and a half centuries, it is in precisely this revival of classical themes that Kirti Sri so closely resembles the nation’s Buddhism modernists.