The Restriction That Provoked Two Later Fraternities

The ordination King Kirti Sri Rajasinha and Saranankara imported from Ayutthaya in 1753 restored a full, valid higher ordination lineage to Sri Lanka at a moment when the island's own line of properly ordained monks had lapsed, and the fraternity it founded became, and remains, the oldest and largest of the island's monastic nikayas. That founding success carried a restriction that later proved costly to the order's unity: ordination within the Siyam Nikaya became effectively limited to men of the Goyigama caste, the dominant Sinhalese landowning caste, excluding capable monks and aspirants from other backgrounds from full ordination within the fraternity that Sri Lankan Buddhism's own revival had just re-established. That exclusion did not resolve quietly. Monks shut out of the Siyam Nikaya on caste grounds travelled abroad to receive ordination through different lineages entirely, founding the Amarapura Nikaya in 1803 and the Ramanna Nikaya in 1864 specifically as alternatives open to non-Goyigama candidates, so that two of the island's three principal fraternities exist directly because of a restriction the oldest and most prestigious one imposed on itself. The Siyam Nikaya itself later organised into two chapters based at Kandy, Malwatte and Asgiriya, each under its own Mahanayaka, a structure that still governs the fraternity today.