The 1988 Ramon Magsaysay Award for Journalism, Literature and Creative Communication Arts

CITATION for Veditantirige Ediriwara Sarachchandra

Ramon Magsaysay Award Presentation Ceremonies
Manila, Philippines

In much of Asia colonial rule weakened the traditional arts. Ruling classes and educated urbanites often favored Western ways. Old forms of drama, music, and dance withered, and powerful cultural moorings were lost. In Sri Lanka this process occurred over four centuries. By the 1950s only the villages kept the old traditions alive. VEDITANTIRIGE EDIRIWIRA SARACHCHANDRA rediscovered them there.

SARACHCHANDRA first encountered the rich cultural life of Sri Lanka's villages as a youth, moving from place to place with his father, a postmaster. Later he was inspired by India's independence movement and by the works of Rabindranath Tagore, India's great writer and poet. He qualified in Sanskrit, Pali, and Sinhalese at the University of Ceylon, and in Western philosophy at the University of London. In 1949 he received his doctorate in Buddhist Philosophy.

Theater has been his lifelong passion. As a young professor at the University of Ceylon, SARACHCHANDRA produced Sinhalese adaptations of Anton Chekov, Oscar Wilde, and Moliere. But Western plays, he decided, "never got to the roots of our people." He searched the villages for dramatic forms that did.

His 1953 book, The Sinhalese Folk Play, led to a fellowship to study the dramatic arts elsewhere in Asia and the United States. Witnessing the vitality of Noh and Kabuki theater in Japan, he yearned to resurrect classical Sinhalese drama for modern audiences.

In his 1956 play Maname, based on a well-known Buddhist myth, characters sing and speak rhythmic prose. A narrator and chorus comment on the story. Drums, cymbals, songs, and dances are used throughout. There is no set. Maname's sensational reception established SARACHCHANDRA's "stylized play" as a popular genre. A stunning revival of Sinhalese theater followed and Sinhalese dance and music were given new life.

SARACHCHANDRA continued experimenting. His 1961 masterpiece, Sinhabahu retells the Sinhalese origin myth. Pemato Jayati Soko, of 1969, is an opera set to North Indian-style music. Altogether he has written more than twenty-four plays. Maname alone has been performed some three thousand times.

Renowned as Sri Lanka's premier playwright, SARACHCHANDRA is also a prolific literary critic who has set new standards for Sinhalese writing. His own novels and short stories offer trenchant commentary on contemporary life. On social and political issues he speaks his mind fearlessly and often. From 1974 to 1977 he was Sri Lanka's ambassador to France. This experience prompted his English-language novel, With the Begging Bowl, depicting the plight of money-poor Third World diplomats.

Formally retired from the university, today seventy-three-year-old SARACHCHANDRA is director of the Sarvodaya Research Institute. A commission of scholars under his leadership is now investigating the deterioration of Sri Lanka's social fabric since independence.

SARACHCHANDRA believes that his society's most fundamental values remain endangered. The norms of today's marketplace, he points out, are incompatible with Buddhist teachings and work against the survival of once hallowed traditions.

Yet a healthy nation must live harmoniously with its past. SARACHCHANDRA, therefore, writes plays in form and content that transcend the present and speak to the permanent experience of his people.

In electing VEDITANTIRIGE EDIRIWIRA SARACHCHANDRA to receive the 1988 Ramon Magsaysay Award for Journalism, Literature, and Creative Communication Arts, the Board of Trustees recognizes his creating modern theater from traditional Sinhalese folk dramas and awakening Sri Lankans to their rich cultural and spiritual heritage.