ABSTRACT
King Dutugamunu became the ruler who brought the whole of Sri Lanka under the shade of a single canopy or umbrella. Dutthagamani brought the whole island under the shade of his canopy as a Sinhala-Buddhist ‘nation’. In the Buddha’s time, cetiya had the more general meaning of cenotaph but by Dutugemunu’s time in Sri Lanka, a cetiya, stupa or dagaba was exclusively a place where Buddha or arahant relics were enshrined. In Sri Lankan thought one customarily expresses reverence for one’s parents, gurus and other idealized figures by wishing them eventual Buddhahood. The troubled conscience of the king, however, has been a troublesome one for Buddhists, and especially for monks. The eminent Buddhist scholar-monk Walpola Rahula responds to this event in both pragmatic and unequivocally moral terms. Ashoka, the great Buddhist king of India, was guilt-stricken at the conquest of Kalinga, but the trigger must be distinguished from the deeper instigator of the action.
