A Study on Punya Lekhana Tradition in Sri Lanka: with reference to Kandyan Era

Abstract

From the ruler to the ordinary citizens, the documents that record the meritorious deeds can be called 'Punya Lekhana'. The history of writing these documents can be traced back to time immemorial. The primary influence of these writings was the belief in meritorious acts of man, and the ideas and ideologies on good deeds and as shaped up by tradition. The aim of this research was to study the charity writing tradition in Sri Lanka and the research question was whether this tradition continued during the Kandyan Period. Historical methodology was applied for this research. It seems that the idea of keeping a record of the merits done by oneself started at the beginning of the Kandyan era, and 'Punya Lekhana' was compiled to record the merits done by the king and the ordinary people. It was a custom to prepare and keep the most common pious writings written in a temple using palm leaf medium as an appendix to a palm leaf manuscript or as a palm leaf manuscript. Since there are charitable documents of various natures, classification is possible according to their nature. These are Punyanumodhana Patra, Pundyanumodhana Sandesa, Punya Pustaka and Punya Ayadeum Patra. It is evident that these charity writings can be useful to genealogists to obtain information on genealogy. However it can be said that these documents were not been used as primary sources in historical research. This study underlines the fact that these are a unique source of literature in studying the religious, political and socio-economic history of the kandian Period.