By Rohana R. Wasala

Reading the detailed news article under the title ‘First Sri Lankan Buddhist monk in 105 years joins Oxford for MPhil in Buddhist Studies’  (The Island/December 6, 2024) was a refreshing experience for me, as it should’ve been for others among the readers who feel concerned about the future of the young bhikkhu community of the country. No one else but the young bhikkhus themselves can play the leading role that has been historically assigned to the Maha Sanga over the millennia in safeguarding our invaluable but currently threatened Buddhist cultural heritage in these rapidly changing modern times. There is much to be reformed in the Buddhist Order to ensure its survival into the future, but the key to that long overdue, potentially convoluted process, is the proper education of young monks. It is in that context that I wholeheartedly congratulate Ven. Wadigala Samitharathana Thero on his many scholastic achievements. 

However, the claim that Ven. Wadigala Samitharathana Thero has become the ‘first Sri Lankan Buddhist monk in 105 years to study at Britain’s University of Oxford’ is not quite correct. The late great scholar monk Ven. Dr Labuduwe Siridhamma Thero, the then Chief Incumbent (1957-1985) of Getambe Sri Rajopawanaramaya temple near Peradeniya, had earned his PhD from Oxford University, UK. This fact I know because I used to see Dr Siridhamma’s official letterheads printed with his name followed by ‘PhD (Oxon)’. He was reputed to have been a supreme master of five languages including English. It was he who founded the Dharma Chakra Vidya Peetaya closely connected to the monastery that became an internationally known centre of higher education for young local and foreign bhikkhus. It even catered to secular intellectuals from around the world who took an interest in Buddhist philosophy and meditation..  

As a young English tutor serving at the nearby Peradeniya University I was introduced to Dr Siridhamma Thero by a friend of mine. For, as he was starting the Dharma Chakra Vidya Peetaya, he wanted a suitably qualified person to help his student monks improve their English.  That’s how I was given the honour of briefly working with him more than fifty years ago. He was a very dedicated educator of young Buddhist monks and a strict disciplinarian. This was in the late 1970s, only about two years into late president J.R. Jayawardane’s first term.  

Dr Siridhamma requested me to train a class of some young monks who already had a fairly good knowledge of English (at least two of them were assistant lecturers in the Arts Faculty of the Peradeniya University, where I taught at the sub department of English) in speaking and writing English and in translating Dhamma passages into English. I fondly remember now how I arranged and moderated debates in English between teams of monks, and sometimes was required to mediate when tempers flared up during heated exchanges. As these were all in English, the occasional lapses in language usage provided some diversion and lighter moments.

That was a little digression. Let’s get back to the topic.  Ven. Siridhamma told me that he wanted these monks to be able to engage in Buddhist missionary work abroad. He himself had connections with foreign universities. I occasionally saw him conducting meditation classes and leading Dhamma discussions with some European participants. My own English classes with the young monks continued only for a short few months, however, as required by the eminent head of the Dharma Chakra Vidya Peetaya. 

Subsequently, not long after that time, I myself resigned from my university service to accept an appointment on contract basis to work under the Ministry of Education of the government of the Sultanate of Oman. It was while there that I heard that Ven. Siridhamma was facing the wrath of the president (JRJ) over some severely critical remarks he had been provoked to make against the latter concerning the way he handled the Tamil separatist problem. The erudite monk, though not a partisan politician, was a passionate nationalist and a patriot. It was suggested in the media that the president’s animosity resulted in certain impediments being placed on the fortunes of Sri Rajopawanaramaya and the functioning of the Dharma Chakra Vidya Peetaya. The venerable monk was presumably quite advanced in age, I think, though I didn’t notice it during the brief period I associated with him. It was later reported that Ven Siridhamma Thera passed away after a brief illness. This was probably in 1985. I don’t know anything about the present situation of his legacy at Sri Rajopawanaramaya, as I am not living in Sri Lanka any longer. 

Strangely, Wikipedia offers little or no information about this renowned scholar monk, though his name is mentioned in connection with a school named after him, established a decade later in 1995 in his native village of Labuduwa, Galle. This is Siridhamma Vidyalaya/Siridhamma College at Labuduwa in the Akmeemana electorate, ceremonially opened by the then prime minister Sirimavo Bandaranaike at the invitation of the then minister of education Richard Pathirana on February 6, 1995. The information I gleaned from Wikipedia about this school mentions Ven. Dr Siridhamma as the first Buddhist monk to graduate from Oxford University. This seems to overlook the fact that Ven. Suriyagoda Sumangala got admission to Oxford University in 1919 and thus became the first Lankan Buddhist monk to do so. The information about Ven. Suriyagoda Sumangala as the first Lankan Buddhist monk to be admitted to Oxford University is mentioned in the December 6th article in The Island to which I am responding here. So it is clear that the distinction of being the first Buddhist monk to study at Oxford goes to Suriyagoda Sumangala Thera, and not  to Labuduwe Siridhamma Thera, who undoubtedly followed him many years later. In other words, Ven. Labuduwe Siridhamma Thera was the first Buddhist monk to enter Oxford University in 105 years, and Ven. Wadigala Samitharathana Thera only the second to do so.. 

Isn’t the mysterious consignment of Dr Siridhamma Thera, a renowned national figure, to near oblivion food for thought for those young and old Sri Lankans alike concerned with the future of their country? Danno danithi, it is no secret to the properly informed.

(Note by RRW: An edited version of the original article was carried in The Island daily (Sri Lanka) on December 9, 2024.)