A golden lion brandishing a sword stands emblazoned on the Sri Lankan national flag. At the ancient fortress of Sigiriya, two colossal stone paws flank the path leading up the sheer rock face, remnants of a massive gateway shaped like a beast of prey. Mythic origins run deep on the island, where traditional chronicles trace the Sinhala people to a union between an adventurous princess and a wild lion. The very name Sinhala translates as the lion people.
Yet alongside this fierce, predatory emblem lives another animal that commands deep reverence across the island. The humble cow represents maternal love, quiet nourishment, and the Buddhist ideal of universal harmlessness.
These two beasts embody a fascinating cultural tension. On one side sits the martial, carnivorous lion, proud and assertive. On the other stands the sacred cow, gentle and in need of human protection. For centuries, this duality has shaped how Sri Lankans think about the food on their plates, the morality of eating meat, and the spiritual duty to protect living beings.
Ancient chronicles reveal that animal protection was woven into the island’s founding stories. In the historical text known as the Mahavamsa, the recorded story of Buddhism in Sri Lanka begins with an interrupted hunt. King Devanampiyatissa was stalking a deer through the forest when the royal emissary Mahinda appeared before him, urging the monarch to lower his bow and embrace a doctrine of peace.
Other Sinhala legends tie the fate of the entire cosmos to how humans treat animals. One apocalyptic tale describes a future where humanity declines into greed and moral chaos. A strange rain turns corrupt people into beasts, sparking a frenzy of bloodshed. Only a handful of survivors emerge from hiding. Gazing across the ruined landscape, they feel a sudden wave of genuine compassion for the slaughtered creatures. That single virtuous thought generates enough spiritual merit to plant the seed for the arrival of the next Buddha. In this worldview, cosmic renewal begins with kindness toward animals.
Sri Lankan Buddhists frequently trace their dietary ideals back to ancient India. They revere Emperor Ashoka as the model of a righteous ruler whose third-century edicts carved in stone restricted the slaughter of animals for the royal kitchens.
Historical reality is often more nuanced than legend suggests. Ashoka curtailed royal banquets and prohibited hunting on specific sacred calendar days, yet he never eliminated meat entirely from court life. His policies reflected a widespread cultural respect for non-violence that crossed multiple philosophical traditions rather than a single doctrine.
In India, vegetarianism became deeply entwined with caste boundaries, where avoiding meat preserved ritual purity and guarded against pollution. In Sri Lanka, the vegetarian impulse developed along different lines. Sinhala commentators anchored their arguments in animal welfare, ethical compassion, and physical wellbeing rather than caste segregation.
When European colonizers arrived, food became a battleground of cultural identity. Sixteenth-century Sinhala accounts described Portuguese soldiers with genuine bewilderment, noting that the newcomers wore iron armor, drank blood, and ate hard stones. Scholars suggest this was a vivid description of foreigners drinking red wine and eating crusty bread, which local observers interpreted as demonic habits. In the Sinhala imagination, milk and rice were foods of supreme purity, while meat and alcohol belonged to the unruly outside world.
Local storytellers used this contrast to push back against colonial influence. A popular folktale known as The Carpenter Preta Tale reimagined the figure of Jesus as a wandering hungry ghost who was punished in the afterlife for stealing livestock, eating flesh, and drinking liquor. The message was clear. Consuming animal flesh was framed as a foreign corruption that had no place in a Buddhist society.
During the seventeenth century, English sea captain Robert Knox spent two decades living as a captive in the interior Kandyan Kingdom. His detailed memoirs reveal a society balancing lofty ideals with messy daily habits. Kandyan villagers hunted wild boar, caught river fish, and even considered land monitor lizards a delicacy. At the same time, they regarded the taking of life as a profound spiritual transgression.
Knox observed that Kandyan villagers treated cows with absolute sanctity. Beef was strictly forbidden, and local residents leveled the insult of beef eating slaves at white foreigners who consumed cattle. When Catholic missionaries attempted to justify meat consumption through theological tracts in the eighteenth century, influential Buddhist monks successfully petitioned the king to ban animal breeding for food and liberate captive fowl. Protecting animals became an act of patriotic defense.
By the late nineteenth century, the struggle against British colonial rule gave rise to a vigorous Buddhist revivalist movement. Activists like Anagarika Dharmapala made dietary reform central to their message. Dharmapala argued that the first precept of Buddhism demanded complete abstinence from meat and the active prevention of cruelty to animals. He attacked foreign eating habits, urged the public to boycott butcher shops, and championed vegetarianism as the purest expression of Sinhala cultural pride.
This complex heritage reaches into the unseen realm of folk ritual and traditional healing. In southern coastal exorcism ceremonies, dark spirits known as yaksas are offered roasted meats and fish, foods that reflect their low spiritual standing. Celestial deities, by contrast, receive platters of pristine fruit and sweet grains.
Even when rituals historically demanded a blood sacrifice, clever practitioners devised peaceful substitutes. Village exorcists perform symbolic executions using roosters that are released unharmed, betting that the spirits will not notice the trick. At the coastal temple of Sinigama, where people gather to seek justice through spiritual curses, the priest avoids animal sacrifice by grinding fiery chilies, mustard seeds, and limes in a stone mortar. The heat of the spices provides the aggressive energy needed for the curse without harming a single living creature.
A similar dynamic unfolds at the great shrine of Kataragama. Though dedicated to a fiery war deity once associated with gifts of wild game, the modern pilgrimage site bustles with worshippers offering baskets of fresh mangoes, bananas, and coconut. The fruit is blessed, shared with fellow pilgrims, and fed to temple cattle.
Sri Lanka’s food culture remains a continuous dialogue between two ancient symbols. The predatory lion provides strength and resolve, while the sacred cow calls the conscience back to kindness and peace. Navigating the space between the hunt and the sanctuary continues to define the island’s living relationship with the animal world.
BIBLIOGRAPHIC INFORMATION
- Title: Vegetarianism and Animal Ethics in Contemporary Buddhism
- Series: Routledge Studies in Asian Religion and Philosophy (Volume 16)
- Author: James John Stewart (Research Associate, University of Tasmania, Australia)
- Publisher: Routledge (Taylor & Francis Group)
- Publication Locations: 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN; 711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017
- Publication Year: 2016 (First published 2016; Library of Congress cataloging-in-publication date 2015)
- Edition: First Edition (Hardback and eBook)
- ISBN: 978-1-138-80216-2 (hbk); 978-1-315-75439-0 (ebk)
- Library of Congress Classification: BQ4570.V43S85 2015 | Dewey Decimal: 294.3’5693–dc23
- Historical Period Covered: c. 5th Century BCE (Early Vedic & Canonical Pāli Buddhism), Medieval/Colonial Sri Lanka (Portuguese 1505–1658, Dutch, British periods 1796–1948), Buddhist Revivalist era (1870s–1890s), to Contemporary Post-War Sri Lanka (specifically post-2009 to 2015).
- Main Subject Areas: Buddhist Ethics, Theravāda Buddhism, Ethnography of Sri Lanka, Animal Ethics & Liberation, Sociology of Religion, Dietary Ethics & Vegetarianism, Traditional Āyurvedic Medicine, Ethno-Religious Nationalism, Halāl Abolitionism, Protestant Buddhism.
(Ch. 1, 8, pp. 1–5)