The Treasury of Lives

Bhikkhu Aniruddha Mahathera was born in Kathmandu on December 15, 1915, to a family of Newar merchants who had a trading house in Lhasa. His father was Dasaratna Tuladhar (1891–1977), and his mother was named Dibyalaxmi. His birth name was Gajaratna Tuladhar.

His mother died when he was young, and as a result his father brought him with him to Lhasa before enrolling him in the Central Hindu Boarding School in Varanasi. After three years at that school, he went again with his father to Lhasa. He also lived for a time with his uncle in Calcutta, where he studied Pāli at the Dharmarajika Vihara under the Nepalese Buddhist master Dharmaditya Dharmacarya.

His father was friends with the great Indian Buddhist scholar Rahul Sankrityayana (1893–1963) and converted to Theravada Buddhism (he was ordained in 1933 with the name Dhammāloka). In 1930 his father and Sankrityayana advised Gajaratna to travel to Sri Lanka to study Buddhism, as his father had done the year before. In Sri Lanka he met Venerable Bhadanta Ananda Kausalyayana (1905–1988), an Indian Buddhist, and enrolled at the Vidyalankara Tririvena, a Buddhist college. He was ordained there with the name Aniruddha.

After five years at the college, where he studied Singhalese, Pāli, Sanskrit, and English, Bikkhu Aniruddha went to Kushinigar, the site of the Buddha's parinirvāṇa. His father had by then settled in Kushinigar and was working to establish it as a pilgrimage destination. In 1936 Bikkhu Aniruddha was advised by a Burmese monk, Venerable Chandramani Mahasthavir (1876–1972) to study in Burma, and there, at the age of twenty-one, he received full ordination from Mahapandita U Chakkapala Mahasthavir at Mawlamyine. He remained in that city for ten years studying the Burmese and Pāli scriptures at Taum Pok Chyau Vihara.

During World War II, Bikkhu Aniruddha was forced to hide from Japanese invaders. He was also unable to return to Nepal as the Rana government there was hostile to both the Newar community and Buddhists. His father, who had in 1943 established Ananda Kuti Vihara, the Theravada monastery at Swayambhunath, had been banished from Kathmandu in 1944 for proselytizing and for advocating for the banned Newar language, Nepal Bhasa. 

In 1946, when the Rana ban against Buddhism was lifted, Bikkhu Aniruddha returned to Nepal. He helped his father establish the Nepalese Theravada Buddhist magazine, Dharmadaya, and served as the first editor for two years. After helping his father for a short time in Kapilavastu, he settled in Lumbini. With the support of the Nepalese king Mahendra (1920–1972) he built the Buddhist temple there in 1956, beside the Ashoka Pillar and the tank where the Buddha's mother is said to have bathed before giving birth to the Buddha. He also put up a hostel for pilgrims.

In 1967 the secretary general of the United Nations, U Thant (1909–1974) visited Lumbini, where Bikkhu Aniruddha conversed with him in Burmese about his desires to establish Lumbini as a major pilgrimage destination. The massive redevelopment plan was eventually designed by Japanese architect Kenzo Tange (1913–2005), which called for the destruction of Bikkhu Aniruddha's temple, and it was later torn down.

In 1991, after forty-six years in Lumbini, Bhikkhu Aniruddha returned to Kathmandu. He was given the abbacy of Ananda Kuti Vihara at Swayambhunath. He also built a small temple at Matatirtha, a holy site to both Buddhists and Hindus in Kathmandu, dedicated to his mother.

Bhikkhu Aniruddha published over 20 books on Buddhism, including texts translated from Singhalese and Burmese. He was granted multiple honors and religious titles in both Burma and Sri Lanka for his work spreading the Theravada tradition in Nepal. In 1998 he was honored with the title Patriarch of Nepal by the All Nepal Bhikkhu Association and the prime minister of Nepal. That year he visited England and gave teachings at the Lumbini Nepalese Buddha Dharma Society.

Like many Nepalese Theravada Buddhists of his era, who were strongly influenced by Rahula Sankrityayana, who himself was shaped by Western Protestant Imperialist views of Asian religion, Bhikkhu Aniruddha held a fairly negative opinion of traditional Newar Tantric Buddhism, viewing Tibetan and Newar lamas as ritualists unfamiliar with even basic Buddhist doctrine. Nevertheless, Bhikkhu Aniruddha developed a strong and respectful relationship with Chogye Trichen (bco brgyad khri chen, 1920–2007), who built a Tibetan monastery in Lumbini in the early 1970s.

Bhikkhu Aniruddha  died in 2003 in Kathmandu’s Ananda Kuti Vihara.