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Krasnodembskaya N. Commemorative Techniques for Preserving Historical Values in South Asia: the Sinhalese Practices (Sri Lanka)

Nina Krasnodembskaya
Peter the Great Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography (Kunstkamera) of the Russian Academy of Sciences
Saint Petersburg, Russian Federation
ORCID: 0000-0003-0193-3905
E-mail: nigekrasno@mail.ru

 

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ABSTRACT. The accumulation of national/ethnic values takes place over a long period of time, among ancient peoples — for centuries. There are many changes, sudden events, borrowings and reformations, achievements and recessions in the historical process. Preserving achievements and acquisitions (for the sake of self-identification) is a difficult task, and collective memory develops special techniques and methods. The Sinhalese of Sri Lanka (formerly Ceylon), over more than 2000 years of their history, have developed several commemorative techniques, both typologically similar and unique. Being now, apparently, on the periphery of the civilizational massif of South Asia, the Sinhalese have experienced disturbances, transformations and borrowings in the processes of interaction with many peoples — from Western Europe and Northern Africa to the Far East and Southeast Asia. This determined some original features of their culture which also preserved rarities that were once characteristic of their long-time contactees. The Sinhalese hold sacred the knowledge of their ancestral origins. In this they are helped by their folklore and their religion, the Buddhism of the southern branch. Their Buddhist chronicles especially contributed to the original feature of the Sinhala mentality — historicism of thinking (rare among the peoples of South Asia). Buddhism and Buddhist science still play an important role in the system of preserving the cultural memory. The Sinhalese etiquette traditions are still strong. There are examples of a unique technique: the transfer of a cultural phenomenon from one sphere of culture to another.

 

KEYWORDS: Sri Lanka, commemorative practices, identity, Buddhism, historical values

 

FOR CITATION: Krasnodembskaya N. Commemorative Techniques for Preserving Historical Values in South Asia: the Sinhalese Practices (Sri Lanka). Kunstkamera. 2024. 3(25): 226–232. (In Russian). doi 10.31250/2618-8619-2024-3(25)-226-232

 

DOI 10.31250/2618-8619-2024-3(25)-226-232
UDC 394(548.7)

 

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