History
Among the early Western residents were the Venerables Vappo, Mahanama, Assaji and Bhaddiya. The founder dāyaka (lay supporter) was William Mendis Wijesekera. He and other lay supporters from around Dodanduwa conveyed alms food and other requisites to the hermitage by boat every morning. In 1913 a dānasāla (refectory) was constructed.
It was not until 1914 that the Island Polgasduwa actually came into the legal possession of the Sangha, having been bought and donated from Ven. Nyanatiloka's Swiss supporter, Monsieur Bergier. Since that time, though interrupted by two world wars, Western as well as Sinhalese monks and laymen have lived, studied, practiced, and spread the Dhamma from the Island Hermitage. On the outbreak of World War I in 1914, the German monks were first permitted to stay at the Island Hermitage under surveillance. However, after four months, they were taken into civil internment in Sri Lanka and then sent to Australia. When Ven. Nyanatiloka was finally able to return to Sri Lanka in 1926, he found his beloved Island Hermitage in utter ruin and had to rebuild it all anew.
As soon as the restoration was completed and it was making rapid progress the Second World War broke out in 1939. Ven. Nyanatiloka and his German disciples were again interned in camps first in Sri Lanka and then in India. They were allowed to return in 1946. This time the Hermitage remained in a well preserved and even improved condition and now included the adjacent small island of Metiduwa which had already been used for some time, but was now donated by Lady Evadne de Silva, a longtime supporter of Ven. Nyanatiloka.
A detailed account of the history of the Island Hermitage and the monks who lived on it can be found in The Life of Nyanatiloka Thera: The Biography of a Western Buddhist Pioneer, Bhikkhu Nyanatusita & Hellmuth Hecker, Kandy 2008.
Read more about this topic: Island Hermitage
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“A country grows in history not only because of the heroism of its troops on the field of battle, it grows also when it turns to justice and to right for the conservation of its interests.”
—Aristide Briand (1862–1932)
“Regarding History as the slaughter-bench at which the happiness of peoples, the wisdom of States, and the virtue of individuals have been victimized—the question involuntarily arises—to what principle, to what final aim these enormous sacrifices have been offered.”
—Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831)
“Postmodernism is, almost by definition, a transitional cusp of social, cultural, economic and ideological history when modernism’s high-minded principles and preoccupations have ceased to function, but before they have been replaced with a totally new system of values. It represents a moment of suspension before the batteries are recharged for the new millennium, an acknowledgment that preceding the future is a strange and hybrid interregnum that might be called the last gasp of the past.”
—Gilbert Adair, British author, critic. Sunday Times: Books (London, April 21, 1991)