An Pitiya and April New Year Celebrations and Buddhist Traditions

 An Pitiya and April New Year Celebrations, and Buddhist Traditions

This is again in response to a YouTube guy who is raising caste systems in Public. 

It is of poor taste. 

This pieces should read in connection with the piece where  "Cast System is Endemic in Ceylon".

Ampitiya is a corruption of "An Pitiya".

I would use the term "Log Horns" instead of "Lock Horns"  to translate this Sinhala term to English.

Ann is horns.

Pitiya is the ground where they had "Tug of War" in the past  when new year was celebrated.

British of course, distorted the Kandyan history for their advantage.

I must state two things before expanding on, bulls and buffaloes in a different piece.

My father comes from Elkaduwa where they made swords ,knives and kris-knives for battle ready soldiers.

My mother comes from Ann Pitiya now Ampitiya where the standard name of the clan was  Heath. 

My dearest friend and elder relative's name is Asoka Herath. 

 He is well versed in local traditions like our Indika Thotawatta. 

If I miss a point I always ask him for clarification.

There is a stretch of paddy fields from the foothills of the Ann Pitiya hills down to the 3rd mile post and beyond to to Gururdeniya. 

I am not sure from where it originates. 

There is a stream that runs at the foot of the hill and that stream provides water for the paddy fields. He was a good paddy farmer. 

Every week he walks down to the Temple, Diwrum Bodhiya and having made an appointment with him, I walk with him to the temple.

We used to cut through the foot paths crossing the paddy fields and come to the main road and to the Ampitiya Roman Catholic School where they tried to convert me to Christianity.

Now the crunch points.

All what is writings (British Adaptation) about our last King except that he was of Tamil in Origin are cooked up stories. He used to come to the Temple named, Diwrum Bhodiya (take a pledge to defeat the British soldiers). The paddy fields stretch behind the temple. When the British destroyed the Nuwara Wela in Kandy at the foot hill of Dharmaraja (means Buddha) Kanda, the farmers moved to alternative sites.

One of my maternal uncles represented the sixth Buddhist Council  and he was the head monk of this Temple.  

I used to visit him regularly and he was one made me to improve English and persuaded me to take up Medicine as career.

It is time for us to have the seventh council now since guys like Umandava and Mahamevna are  fast at work destroying DHAMMA.

Ranil and Harini have taken the political and financial bidding with backing from India.

 Sixth Burmese Council (1954)
The Sixth Council was called at Kaba Aye in Yangon (formerly Rangoon) in 1954, 83 years after the fifth one was held in Mandalay. It was sponsored by the Burmese Government led by the then Prime Minister, the Honourable U Nu. He authorized the construction of the Maha Passana Guha, the "great cave", an artificial cave very much like India's Sattapanni Cave where the first Buddhist Council had been held. Upon its completion The Council met on 17 May 1954.

As in the case of the preceding councils, its first objective was to affirm and preserve the genuine Dhamma and Vinaya. However it was unique insofar as the monks who took part in it came from eight countries. 

These two thousand five hundred (2500) learned Theravada monks came from Myanmar, Thailand, Cambodia, Laos, Vietnam, Ceylon, India, and Nepal. 

Germany can only be counted as the nationality of the only two western monks in attendance: 

Venerable Nyanatiloka Mahathera and Venerable Nyanaponika Thera (they founded the Buddhist Publication Society, BPS in , Kandy). 

They both were invited from Sri Lanka. The late Venerable Mahasi Sayadaw was appointed the noble task of asking the required questions about the Dhamma of the Venerable Bhadanta Vicittasarabhivamsa who answered all of them learnedly and satisfactorily. 

By the time this council met, all the participating countries had had the Pali Tripiṭaka rendered into their native scripts, with the exception of India.

The traditional recitation of the Buddhist Scriptures took two years, and the Tripiṭaka and its allied literature in all the scripts were painstakingly examined and their differences noted down and the necessary corrections made and all the versions were then collated. 

It was found that there was not much difference in the content of any of the texts. Finally, after the council had officially approved them, all of the books of the Tipitaka and their commentaries were prepared for printing on modern presses and published in the Burmese script. This notable achievement was made possible through the dedicated efforts of the two thousand five hundred monks and numerous lay people. Their work came to an end on the evening of Vesak, 24 May 1956, exactly two and a half millennia after Buddha's Parinibbana, according to the traditional Theravada dating.

Ordinary guys were all bare foot soldiers.

Some were spies who  crept inside the "Kithul Trunks" and listened to the conversations of British soldiers on boots.

coming to my topic on caste, in spite of many "Rajakari Tradesman", they were only two teams in tug of war and the teams were made on random association.

Never caste based.

This system was destroyed by the British and established the "Divide and Rule Principle". 

The Catholic Church accelerated this process of Divide and Rule of the British. 

It is happening to this day.

It degenerated into political parties. 

Buddhism was the only thing that united the Sinhala People.

Later of course Buddhist monks introduced this to the Sasana. 

I will make a brief comment here. The British had an Agreement with Buddhist Monks (British violated this right and left and middle ), not to interfere with Temples and their properties. So Kandyans guys with property donated them to the Temples and they did not stop at that. Several of them done the robe (none of them were of Upasampada) to run them. They carried their families with them had visited their wives on a regular basis and procreated, too. This is how the Sasana went into decadence and the Thai Monks had to come and reinstate Upasampada. 

In Buddhism or Sasana there is no caste system but these corrupt monks of the old, brought in the caste over time to Ceylonese Sasana which was the exact opposite of what Buddha wanted. 

In fact, these monks helped the British in the long run.

Umandawa Monk is the current epitome of these corrupt vestiges and he has no understanding of Dhamma and he should be described as a Planter. He is planting Mahayana traditions, too.

That is what he is doing on daily basis.  Upasamapada monks are prohibited from digging soil and planting trees. 

He is getting the gullible and stupid lay people to do that for him.

Aiding and abetting in British Law one is culpable and applying that to Dhamma is not a necessary prerequisite.

Hinduism united the Tamil people.

Coming to Ampitia, the British acquired this land and gave it to the Church to run the Seminary to train clergy.

Not only they destroyed our traditional sports but the culture associated with, too.