Amarapura Nikaya

The Amarapura Nikaya is a Sri Lankan monastic fraternity (gaṇa or nikāya) founded in 1800. It is named after the city of Amarapura, Burma, the capital of the Konbaung Dynasty of Burma at that time. Amarapura Nikaya monks are Theravada Buddhists.

By the mid-18th century, upasampada - higher ordination as a bhikkhu (monk), as distinct from sāmaṇera or novitiate ordination - had become extinct in Sri Lanka. The Buddhist order had become extinct thrice during the preceding five hundred years and was reestablished during the reigns of Vimaladharmasuriya I of Kandy (1591-1604) and Vimaladharmasuriya II of Kandy (1687-1707). These reestablishments were short lived. On the initiative of Weliwita Sri Saranankara Thero (1698-1778) the Thai monk Upali Thera visited Kandy during the reign of Kirti Sri Rajasinha of Kandy (1747-1782) and once again reestablished the Buddhist order in Sri Lanka in 1753. It was called the Siam Nikaya after a name for Thailand.

However, in 1764, merely a decade after the reestablishment of the Buddhist order in Sri Lanka by reverend Upali, a group within the newly created Siam Nikaya succeeded in restricting upasampada only to the Govigama caste. This was a period when the Vinaya had been virtually abandoned and some members of the Sangha in the Kingdom of Kandy privately held land, had wives and children, resided in the private homes and were called "Ganinnanses". It was a period when the traditional nobility of the Kingdom of Kandy was decimated by continuous wars with the Dutch rulers of the Maritime Provinces. In the maritime provinces too a new order was replacing the old. Mandarampura Puvata, a text from the Kandyan perid, narrates the above radical changes to the monastic order and shows that it was not a unanimous decision by the body of the sangha. It says that thirty two ‘senior’ members of the Sangha who opposed this change were banished to Jaffna by the leaders of the reform.

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