The Ravana Mandiraya in Colombo

Presenter:

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Abstract

This paper evaluates the relevance of a Ravana shrine for the post-war phenomenon of Ravanisation and the methodological advantages of conducting ethnographic research at a shrine. The past five years I have conducted research on the post-war (after 2009) interest in Ravana among Sinhalese Buddhists in Sri Lanka and I have introduced the concept Ravanisation to coin this phenomenon. So far, only some very explorative research has been conducted on this phenomenon and others have framed it as ‘a rewriting of the island’s history’ and a ‘narrative’. I, in contrast, conducted in-depth research at two sites to investigate this phenomenon in detail. One of the sites was the urban Buddhist temple site the Sri Devram Maha Viharaya in Colombo where a Ravana mandiraya (palace) was inaugurated in 2013 at the shrine section. In the first part of this paper I discuss how the materialising and ritualising of Ravana in this Buddhist shrine contributes to place Ravana, a mythological figure mainly known from Hindu mythology, in a Buddhist timeframe, worldview, and devotional framework. The second part of this paper evaluates the methodological advantages of selecting a shrine to study a recent phenomenon on grassroots level. I employ in that section the concept solidification (of a tradition) as introduced by Juergen Schaflechner in his monograph on the Hinglaj Devi Hindu shrine in Pakistan. I discuss how the Ravana mandiraya in Colombo plays a diverging and converging role in disseminating (emerging) ideas and what the methodological advantages are of selecting shrines as case-studies.