Entry #5

• Ranasinghe, R.H.I.S. (2008)  "How Buddhism Influenced the Origin and Development of Libraries in Sri Lanka (Ceylon): From the Third Century BC to the Fifth Century AD."  Library History, 24 (4), 307-312.
• A "Dig Deeper" article from Early Libraries
• Accessible online at http://bit.ly/2lxiJC4

It's common to hear how Christian ideals influenced literacy in Western Europe.  And in the assigned book for this class, Muhammad's emphasis on Muslims being able to read and write themselves, enabling them to think critically on Islam.  (This, despite the fact that Muhammad himself was illiterate, which should've convinced people that he was truly speaking/writing Allah's word, he said.)  So I was interested to read how Buddhism affected literacy.

Similar to Western history, education fell under the purview of monks in Sri Lanka.  "All education, sacred as well as secu-lar, was in the hands of the monks. They had the monopoly of learning and of the leisure to impart it. They were the only custodians and bearers of the Buddhist culture."  Buddhist scriptures were handed down orally, until famine and civil unrest in the first century CE drove monks away from their traditional temples.  During their flight, to protect their traditions, monks finally wrote their scriptures down.  From this would grow a new emphasis on handwriting.  "Buddhist scholars were motivated to write religious books, as it was considered to be a meritorious act."  This idea of writing as "a meritorious act" also similar to how copying was viewed in Christianity and Islam.  Libraries then developed, of course with large collections of religious texts.

What really helped spread literacy was the Buddhist ideal of writing down all meritorious acts of a person's life.  Beauty, health, intelligence, wealth, and the like were believed to be bestowed in the next life for these good deeds which would be recorded and then read on the deathbed.  Monks handled this themselves as a temple service but eventually began teaching the general public, taking it as a new tenet.  Buddhist kings would also eventually adopt this sense of responsibility:

"Further, Sinhala Buddhist kings did much work to develop the learning activities of the citizens and provide facilities for both adults and children to learn. They took responsibility for the welfare of citizens. They thought that educating citizens was a duty of royalty. In order to enlighten the public, some of the kings built preaching halls in every village of the kingdom and kept Buddhist books in them."

It was interesting to see how the Buddhist attitude towards literacy, initially jealously guarded, grew outwards.  The written texts that would accumulate in Sri Lanka would continue spreading outward as Buddhist scholars from India and China would come to study and then make copies to go home with them.