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Going back to felicitate a scholar monk
By D.C. Ranatunga
It was 'house full' at the Sri Lanka Foundation Institute auditorium on Sunday, September 18. We had gathered to felicitate a much loved teacher and scholar – Ven. Professor Dhammavihari Thera then Jotiya Dheerasekera. It was a memorable journey back to our Peradeniya university days. Professors, lecturers as well as our contemporaries were present in full strength.

We went back 50 years. The time the smart young lecturer, dressed in immaculate white, (full suit was the order of the day) used to come down the steps of Jayatilaka Hall, where he was sub-warden, and drive off to lectures are still vivid in our memories.

Retired civil servant Vincent Pandita reminded us that light blue was his favourite colour. The brand new Triumph Mayflower that he bought was light blue as well. Just as he used to dress smartly, he was prim and proper in everything that he did. Pandita recalled the day he occupied the sub-warden's room when he succeeded Dr. Dheerasekera who moved into a house at Mahakanda. He had left behind a vase with dried flowers. When he was told about it, his reply was "I left it for you. That's what life is."

As Pandita reminisced, I could picture my own experience at Jayatilaka Hall where his task was to discipline us along with Dr. S. Vithyananthan, the senior sub-warden. He would listen to our tales of woe, which invariably were about the quality of meals given to us by caterer Suwaris, and advise us to be patient. Many were the issues he settled in his calm and quiet manner. Never did he refuse an exeat - the permit we needed to be out of the campus after 10 in the night or to get away for the week-end.

Ven. Dhammavihari Thera was visibly moved by what he heard from his one -time fellow lecturers, and students among whom were two Chancellors – Ven. Welimitiyawe Kusaladhamma Nayaka Thera of the Kelaniya University and Ven. Bellanwila Wimalaratana Thera. His service at Peradeniya and as Director, Post-Graduate Institute of Pali & Buddhist Studies, and Editor of the Buddhist Encyclopedia, was referred to, and of course, his service to the Sasana as an erudite monk spreading the Dhamma at international level. He continues to be a prolific writer too with 98 publications to his credit, in addition to the regular articles he contributes to the newspapers and journals.

Ven. Dhammavihari Thera traced the progress he made in life. He was grateful to Professor Gunapala Malalasekera for inviting him to join the Pali Department although he had got his first degree in Sanskrit. "Dr. Malalasekera and Sir Ivor Jennings (then Vice Chancellor) plotted and sent me to Cambridge to do my post-graduate work. I got an opportunity to study Chinese there which became useful in later years," he recalled. He told us how he spent 34 years as a bachelor and another 34 years as a married man before he decided to don the robes. He is now 83.

"When I entered the Vajirarama Forest Solitude (the 'aranyaya' founded by Ven. Ampitiye Sri Rahula Maha Thera at upper Hantane) I felt such a relief. I was not going to be ordained straightaway, I had to wait six months in banian and sarong. It was a new experience amidst jungle fowl and the 'polangas' who became my friends," he reminisced.

The monk who guided him on the day he was ordained, Ven. Weligama Gnanaratana Thera, presently the Maha Nayaka Thera of the Amarapura Sri Dharmarakshita Nikaya announced that the Sangha Sabha of the Nikaya had decided to confer a title recognizing Ven. Dhammavihari's erudition. Going down on his knees, Ven. Dhammavihari accepted the 'sannas patraya' from the Maha Nayaka Thera.

As I walked out of the SLFI auditorium having listened to an array of distinguished speakers, I remembered Ven. Dhammavihari Thera’s advice to me 15 years ago, a few months before he was ordained. "My friend, renounce the world before the world renounces you."

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