Their story
According to the Sri Lankan chronicles, the Dīpavaṃsa and the Mahāvaṃsa, Mahinda was a son of Emperor Ashoka, ordained as a young man under the elder Moggaliputta Tissa.
The chronicles tell that after the Third Council he was sent with a small group of monks to Laṅkā. On the full moon of the month of Poson he met King Devānampiya Tissa, out hunting on the hill of Mihintale, tested the king's intelligence with riddles about mango trees, and taught him. The king and his court accepted the teaching.
Mahinda went on to teach at Anuradhapura, where the king gave the Mahāmegha park for the monastery that became the Mahāvihāra. Tradition says he spent the rest of his life on the island.
The world they lived in
Sri Lanka had long-standing links of trade and culture with India. Ashoka's own inscriptions mention envoys of Dhamma sent south, to lands including Tambapaṃṇi, usually identified with Sri Lanka.
Their contribution
The chronicles credit him with establishing the monastic ordination lineage, the first monasteries and the study of the Pāli texts in Sri Lanka, from which Theravāda Buddhism later spread to Southeast Asia.
Teachings and works
No surviving writings
Tradition holds that he brought the commentaries on the canon to Sri Lanka, where they were preserved in Sinhala.
Related teachings
Their legacy
Poson, the June full moon, is celebrated across Sri Lanka as the day of Mahinda's arrival, with pilgrimages to Mihintale.
History and tradition
What history can establish
Mahinda is known from the Sri Lankan chronicles, written down several centuries later. Ashoka's inscriptions mention Dhamma envoys to Tambapaṃṇi but never name him, and the Chinese pilgrim Xuanzang heard in India that Mahendra was Ashoka's brother, not his son. That Buddhism reached Sri Lanka around this time is supported by early Brāhmī inscriptions from the island's cave monasteries.
What Buddhist tradition remembers
The chronicles add wonders: that Mahinda and his companions travelled through the air to Mihintale, and that the island had been made ready for Buddhism by the Buddha's own visits.
