by Hasini Haputhanthri & Sujeewa de Silva


Since time immemorial, people have experienced the divine and the spiritual through art and architecture. In Shared Sanctities, museologist and writer Hasini Haputhanthri explores some of Sri Lanka’s historically sacred spaces together with photographer and filmmaker Sujeewa de Silva, producing visual narratives on religious confluence. Hasini and Sujeewa situate Sri Lanka as an island of encounters, where people, ideas, and traditions from all over the world arrived via sailboats and ships, then took root, adapted, and grew into new forms. By exploring heritage sites of Polonnaruwa, Nalanda, Kandy, Galle, and Colombo, they document how temples and kovils, churches and mosques have borrowed, shared, and evolved through time - making the island, as Marco Polo said, ‘undoubtedly the finest island of its size in the world’. The second edition includes two new chapters - 'City of Gods', which explores the Tenavaram Temple and the Hindu heritage of Southern Sri Lanka, and 'The Lotus and the Rose', which traces the portrayal of the female form in Buddhist art. These additions offer new perspectives on the island’s enduring traditions of cultural exchange and shared sanctities.