History of the Guardian of the Flame Collection

Arizona State University is now the archival repository for the largest collection of Sri Lankan Buddhist palm leaf manuscripts outside of Sri Lanka and the British Library, thanks to an inaugural gift from the Guardian of the Flame collection. In December 2005, 116 manuscripts were donated to Arizona State University Libraries, and 274 more manuscripts on deposit are promised gifts. Most of these manuscripts date to the 18th and 19th centuries and include Buddhist commentaries in Pali and Sinhalese languages, grammars, and astrological and medicinal texts. Collectively, they offer insight into the textual communities of Sinhala Buddhism and their historical and cultural interpretations. In addition to their textual and historical value, the Guardian of the Flame Collection contains manuscripts with illuminated and decorated covers, augmenting their aesthetic and art historical significance.

The collection is significant due to its relative rarity, size and value to scholars of the history and culture of Buddhist texts and to art historians of South and Southeast Asia. Professor Stephen C. Berkwitz, an expert in Sinhala Buddhist history, examined the collection in April of 2005 and stated that many of the works are “not easily obtainable in North American libraries, while some others do not even have modern published editions anywhere in the world.” The collection has also been examined by Professor Sudharshan Seneviratne, Senior Advisor on Culture to Sri Lanka’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs and by Wijitha Bandara, a Fulbright scholar and doctoral candidate in Buddhist Studies at the University of Virginia. With preservation and access provided by the ASU University Libraries, and with faculty expertise in Asian and Buddhist studies already in place, ASU is poised to become a major center for the study of Sri Lankan history, religion, and culture. No such dedicated center presently exists in the US.

The Department of Religious Studies Professors Joel Gerboff and Juliane Schober, the Herberger College of Fine Arts Professor Claudia Brown and doctoral student Sherry Harlacher, and University Libraries Robert Spindler and Christopher Miller have already begun to collaborate on preserving the manuscripts and acquiring related published materials for the collection. Considerable ground has been covered with identification and initial ordering of the manuscripts thus far received. The Institute for Humanities Research, the Department of Religious Studies, the University Libraries and the Center for Asian Studies jointly sponsored consultant visits in 2005 and early 2006 for preliminary cataloguing of the collection.

The research consultation on October 6 and 7, 2006 is entitled Buddhist Objects: Knowledge, Ritual and Art. It will bring international attention to the collection and scholarly expertise to construct an intellectual location and academic context for this collection at ASU. Presentations will explore Buddhist manuscript studies in regional religious and cultural contexts, as well as their artistic expressions.