Dénesi Tamás (szerk.): Collectanea Sancti Martini - A Pannonhalmi Főapátság Gyűjteményeinek Értesítője 8. (Pannonhalma, 2020)
II. Gyűjteményeinkből
Szingaléz kézirat Pannonhalmán 137 a major illness. It addresses several deities of Sri Lankan Buddhism, including Upalvan (identified with Vishnu), his wife Lakshmi and the Lord Skanda, as well as the Buddha. Among Seneviratne’s virtues, it emphasizes his richness, his wealth, his strength and his justice. Seneviratne’s honorific title mantri could indicate a minister or a member of parliament. I suggest that he may have been Albert L. De Alwis Seneviratne, who was the Sinhalese unofficial member of the Legislative Council of Ceylon at the end of the 19th century, apparently in the years 1881–1899. The sources that are currently at my disposal, especially Wenzlhuemer (2008), 187–189, do not provide full names, so I cannot exclude the possibility that a relative with the same surname should have preceded or succeeded Albert L. De Alwis Seneviratne in the same office. But it is clearly here that we should look for the Seneviratne mantri mentioned in the manuscript at Pannonhalma, as the family did not reach such a high position again in the colonial administration of British Ceylon. How did this manuscript reach Pannonhalma? I owe to P. Gáspár Csóka OSB, former archivist (1967–1981) and director (1981–2012) of the Archives of the Abbey of Pannonhalma, the information that the manuscript was given to the archives by a monk who lived in the Pannonhalmi Szociális Otthon (Pannonhalma Commu nity Home) during the Communist dictatorship in Hungary (1948–1989). This institution was founded in 1951 at the abbey as a care home for elderly and ill monks and nuns, after most religious orders in Hungary had been disbanded by the government; but it also appears to have served as a kind of social centre and refuge for religious who were unable to adjust to life as laymen or who had spent time in prison due to the political persecution they suffered. In three decades and a half, it received 428 religious from 19 male and 12 female orders. One of them gave this rare manuscript to the abbey archives. It remains a mystery how the manuscript left Sri Lanka and reached the monk in Hungary.
