Bawa Tharanaya, also spelled Bhavatharanaya or Bava Taranaya, is a novel by Martin Wickramasinghe (1890-1976), first published in 1973, when the author was in his eighties. It was his last novel. This Sinhala-language edition is published by Sarasa Prakashana. In English the title is given as Siddhartha's Quest.
The book retells the life and times of Prince Siddhartha, the future Buddha. Wickramasinghe had long wanted to write an account of the Buddha's life stripped of myth, and the novel treats Siddhartha as a human being shaped by his society, reading his quest in cultural and practical terms rather than through miracle. In Wickramasinghe's telling, the turn in the young prince's life grows out of his sympathy for the poor and the downtrodden.
That approach made Bawa Tharanaya one of the most controversial books of its time. Groups of monks and lay Buddhists, led by Yakkaduwe Pragnarama Thero, called for it to be banned, a few even demanded that its elderly author be jailed, and the matter was taken to Prime Minister Sirimavo Bandaranaike's government. A government official who read the book called it a thoughtful attempt to demystify the Buddha and advised against a ban; the Prime Minister declined to ban it, and the controversy faded.
The episode is still cited in Sri Lanka in debates about religious criticism and freedom of expression, and the novel remains the most direct statement of Wickramasinghe's lifelong rationalist reading of Buddhism.
It suits readers interested in the Buddha's life as literature, and in one of the defining arguments of modern Sinhala letters.
- Author: Martin Wickramasinghe
- Publisher: Sarasa Prakashana
- Published: 1973
- Language: Sinhala
- ISBN: 978-955-8415-45-6
