May 1979 Sri Lanka issued three stamps to commemorate the 2523rd Vesak Festival (birth of Gautama Buddha).
The 1 r value depicts Theri Sang(h)amita, daughter of Emperor Ashoka, bringing to Sri Lanka a cutting of the Bodhi tree under which the Buddha attained Enlightenment.
She is shown in the bow of an ornately carved boat.
The design of the stamp is taken from a mural in the Kelaniya Temple in Sri Lanka.
In the 3rd century BCE, Sanghamitra, daughter of Emperor Asoka, carried a cutting of the revered Bodhi tree at Bodhgaya to Sri Lanka. Buddhism was symbolically planted, along with the holy tree, on the island. Both the faith and the venerated tree continue to flourish today.
The deeply venerated tree is at Anuradhapura in central Sri Lanka and it may be the oldest recorded living tree in the world. It stood at Bodhgaya since at least the 6th century BCE. The cutting brought by Sanghamitra was planted in Anuradhapura in 249 BCE by the king of Sri Lanka who called himself Devanampiya-tissa, meaning “Beloved of the divine”. He was following a tradition of not using his name. This was a time when no portraits were made in Indic art and the names of artists were not put on their works. Our ephemeral personalities were not considered important. The higher purpose of life was to lose the sense of the self, the ego, and to recognize the ‘maya’ or ‘mithya’, the world of illusory forms, around us.
The Bodhi tree marks a most wonderful and unique interaction between two countries. In fact, when the tree at the original site in India was no more, it was grown again from a cutting of the tree in Sri Lanka. The two countries have jointly kept the tree and its tradition alive.
Sri Lanka 1979 1 r sg?, scott547.
http://www.frontline.in/arts-and-cultur ... 569610.ece