Buddhist Revival in Sri Lanka under British Colonialism during the late Nineteenth Century
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Published:
Aug 23, 2019
Keywords:
Buddhist Revival Sri Lanka, British Colonialism
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Abstract
This research article aims to survey the status of knowledge on Buddhist Revival in modern Sri Lankan history, from the late nineteenth to the early twentieth century, by scholars in Sri Lankan studies in English. The preliminary result of the survey is that the process of Buddhist Revival in Sri Lanka is a contradictory one. That is, the participants of this process shared the anti-colonial and anti-Christian sentiments. At the same time, if we consider this process on its sociological dimension, these participants were members of a class that was dependent on the British capital. This research article will elaborate the details of major figures in the Buddhist Revival, both monks and laymen, such as Anagarika Dharmapala, Hikkaduve Sri Sumangala, and both Sri Lankan and Western, such as Colonel Henry Steel Olcott.
The findings from this preliminary result lead this research article to suggest that we cannot understand religious phenomenon without taking into account the politico-economic and geopolitical dimensions of modern South Asian history.
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Hongsaton, P. (2019). Buddhist Revival in Sri Lanka under British Colonialism during the late Nineteenth Century. Journal of Social Sciences Naresuan University, 13(1), 13_113–142. Retrieved from https://so04.tci-thaijo.org/index.php/jssnu/article/view/210937
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Research Paper
References
เอกสารภาษาไทย
ประยุทธ์ หลงสมบุญ, พันตรี. (2540). พจนานุกรม มคธ-ไทย.กรุงเทพมหานคร: เรืองปัญญา.
Translated Thai Reference
Prayuth Longsomboon, Maj. (1997). Dictionary Bihar-Thai. Bangkok: Rueangpanya.
เอกสารภาษาต่างประเทศ
Amunugama, Sarath. (1985). Anagarika Dharmapala (1864-1933) and the Transformation of Sinhala Buddhist Organization in a Colonial Setting, Social Science Information 24 (4): 697-730.
........................................(2016). The Lion's roar: Anagarika Dharmapala & the making of Modern Buddhism. Sri Lanka: Vijitha Yapa Publications.
Asad, Talal. (2003). Formations of the Secular: Christianity, Islam, and Modernity. Stanford. California: Stanford University Press.
Aydin, Cemil. (2007). The Politics of Anti-Westernism in Asia: Visions of World Order in Pan-Islamic and Pan-Asian Thought. New York: Columbia University Press.
Batholomeusz, Tessa. (1994). Women Under the Bo Three: Buddhist Nuns in Sri Lanka. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Basu, Shamita. (2002). Religious Revivalism as Nationalist Discourse: Swami Vivekananda and New Hinduism in Nineteenth-Century Bengal. New Delhi: Oxford University Press.
Blackburn, Anne M. (2010). Locations of Buddhism: Colonialism & Modernity in Sri Lanka. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.
.....................................(2001). Buddhist Learning and Textual Practice in Eighteenth-Century Lankan Monastic Culture. Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press.
……………………………… (2011). ‘Buddhist Revival’ and the ‘Work of Culture’ in Sri Lanka, Past and Present. In Seneviratne, H.L. (ed.). The Anthropologist and the Native: Essays for Gananath Obeyesekere. New York: Anthem Press.
Bond, George D. (1988). The Buddhist Revival in Sri Lanka: Religious Tradition, Reinterpretation and Response. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press.
Chidester, David. (2014). Empire of Religion: Imperialism & Comparative Religion. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Deegalle, Mahinda. (ed.), (2006). Buddhism, Conflict and Violence in Modern Sri Lanka. London and New York: Routledge.
Duara, Prasenjit. (1995). Rescuing History from the Nation: Questioning Narratives of Modern China. Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press.
Evers, H. D. (1964). Buddhism and British Colonial Policy in Ceylon, 1815-1872, Asian Studies, 2: 323-333.
Frost, Mark. (2002). ‘Wider Opportunities’: Religious Revival, Nationalist and the Global Dimension in Colombo, 1870-1920, Modern Asian Studies, 36 (4): 937-967.
Gombrich, Richard. (1983). From Monastery to Meditation Centre: Lay Meditation in Modern Sri Lanka. In Denwood, Philip and Piatigorsky, Alexander. (eds.). Buddhist Studies: Ancient and Modern. London: Curzon.
Gombrich, Richard. and Obeyesekere, Gananath. (1990). Buddhism Transformed: Religious Change in Sri Lanka. Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass Publishers Pvt. Ltd.
Guruge, Ananda. (ed.) (1965). Return to Righteousness: A Collection of Speeches, Essays and Letters of Anagarika Dharmapala. Colombo, Sri Lanka: The Government Press.
Holt, John. (1991). Protestant Buddhism?, Religious Studies Review, 17 (4): 307-312.
Jayasekera, P.V.J. (2017). Confrontations with Colonialism: Resistance, Revivalism and Reform under British Rule in Sri Lanka, 1796-1920 vol. 1. Colombo: Vijitha Yapa Publications.
Jayawardena, Kumari. (2000). Nobodies to Somebodies: The Rise of the Colonial Bourgeoisie in Sri Lanka. London and New York: Zed Books.
Johnson, Irving C. (2004). The Buddha and the Puritan: Weberian Reflections on “Protestant Buddhism.”, Sri Lanka Journal of Social Sciences, 27 (1&2): 61-105.
Kemper, Steven. ( 1978). Buddhism without Bhikkhus: The Sri Lanka Vinaya Vardena Society. In Smith, Bardwell L. (ed.). Religion and Legitimation of Power in Sri Lanka. Chambersburg: ANIMA Books.
................................(1991). The Presence of the Past: Chronicles, Politics, and Culture in Sinhala Life. Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press.
…………………………. (2015). Rescued from the Nation: Anagarika Dharmapala and the Buddhist World. Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press.
King, Richard. (2005). ‘Orientalism and the study of Religions,’ In Hinnells, John R. (ed.). The Routledge Companion to the study of Religion. London and New York: Routledge.
Ling, Trevor. (1980). Buddhist Revival in India: Aspect of the sociology of Buddhism. New York: St. Martin’s Press.
Lopez S. Jr., Donald. (2002). A Modern Buddhist Bible: Essential Readings from East and West. Boston: Beacon Press.
Malalgoda, Kitsiri. (1976). Buddhism in Sinhalese Society, 1750-1900: A Study of Religious Revival and Change. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Masuzawa, Tomoko. (2005). The Invention of World Religions; or how European Universalism War Preserved in the Language of Pluralism. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Mellon, Philip A. (1991). Protestant Buddhism? The Cultural Transformation of Buddhism in England, Religion, 21: 73-92.
Milbank, John. (1990 [2006]). Theology & Social Theory: Beyond Secular Reason. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing.
Mishra, Pankaj. (2012). From the Ruins of Empire: The Revolt Against The West and the Remaking of Asia. Allen Lane: Penguin Books.
Obeyesekere, Gananath. (1970). Religious Symbolism and Political Change in Ceylon.Modern Ceylon Studies. 1: 43-63.
..............................................(1991). Buddhism and Conscience: An Exploratory Essay, Daedulus, 120, (summer): 219-239.
……………………………………... (1992). Dutthagamani and the Buddhist Conscience. In Allen, Douglas. (ed.). Religion and Political Conflict in South Asia: India, Pakistan and Sri Lanka. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press.
.............................................(1997). [review of the book The White Buddhist: The Asian Odyssey of Henry Steel Olcott, by Stephen Prothero], Journal of Buddhist Ethics, 4: 329-335.
……………………………………….(2006). Buddhism, Ethnicity, and Identity: a Problem in Buddhist History. In Deegalle, Mahinda. (ed.). Buddhism, Conflict and Violence in Modern Sri Lanka. London and New York: Routledge.
Ostler, Nicholas. (2005). Empires of the Word: A Language History of the World. New York: Harper Collins.
Prothero, Stephen. (1995). Henry Steel Olcott and “Protestant Buddhism.”, Journal of the American Academy of Religion, 63, (2) (summer) : 281-302.
……………………………... (2011). The White Buddhist: The Asian Odyssey of Henry Steel Olcott. Indiana: Indiana University Press.
Queen, Christopher S. (1996). Dr. Ambedkar and the Hermeneutics of Buddhist Liberation. In Queen, Christopher S. and King, B. Sallie. (eds.). Engaged Buddhism: Buddhist Liberation Movements in Asia. New York: State University of New York Press.
Ratnajeevan, S., Hoole, H., Thamotharampillai, C.W. (1997).Tamil Revivalist, Nethra, October-December, 2 (1): 1-45.
Roberts, Michael. (1982). Caste Conflict and Elite Formation: The Rise of a Karava Elite in Sri Lanka, 1500-1931. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Sarkar, Sumit. (1989). Modern India, 1885-1947. New York: St. Martin’s Press.
Seneviratne, H. L. (1999). The Work of Kings: The New Buddhism in Sri Lanka. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press.
Snodgrass, Judith. (2003). Presenting Japanese Buddhism to the West. North Carolina: The University of North Carolina Press.
Smith, Bardwell L. et al.(eds.) (1972). The Two Wheels of Dhamma: Essays on the Theravada Tradition in India and Ceylon. Chambersburg, Pennsylvania: American Academy of Religion.
Spencer, Jonathan. (1990). A Sinhala Village in a Time of Trouble: Politics and Change in Rural Sri Lanka. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Spencer, Jonathan. (ed.) (2004). Sri Lanka: History and the Roots of Conflict. London, New York: Routhledge.
Stirrat, R. (1981). The Shrine of St Sebastian at Mirisgama: An Aspect of the Cult of the Saints in Catholic Sri Lanka, Man, 16 (2): 183-201.
Swearer, Donald K. (1970). Lay Buddhism and the Buddhist Revival in Ceylon., Journal of the American Academy of Religion, 38 (3) (Sep.) : 255-275.
Tambiah, S.J. (1976). World Conqueror and World Renouncer. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Wickramasinghe, Nira. (1995). Ethnic Politics in Colonial Sri Lanka 1927-1947. New Delhi: Vikas Publishing House.
Wikipedia, Lotos Club, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lotos_Club [accessed, 19 March
2017].
Wilson, A.J. (2000). Tamil Nationalism: Its Origins and Development in 19th and 20th Centuries. London: C. Hurst & Co. (Publishers) Ltd.
Wimalaratne, K.D.G. (1985). Buddhist Revival in Sri Lanka. Colombo: SATARA.
ประยุทธ์ หลงสมบุญ, พันตรี. (2540). พจนานุกรม มคธ-ไทย.กรุงเทพมหานคร: เรืองปัญญา.
Translated Thai Reference
Prayuth Longsomboon, Maj. (1997). Dictionary Bihar-Thai. Bangkok: Rueangpanya.
เอกสารภาษาต่างประเทศ
Amunugama, Sarath. (1985). Anagarika Dharmapala (1864-1933) and the Transformation of Sinhala Buddhist Organization in a Colonial Setting, Social Science Information 24 (4): 697-730.
........................................(2016). The Lion's roar: Anagarika Dharmapala & the making of Modern Buddhism. Sri Lanka: Vijitha Yapa Publications.
Asad, Talal. (2003). Formations of the Secular: Christianity, Islam, and Modernity. Stanford. California: Stanford University Press.
Aydin, Cemil. (2007). The Politics of Anti-Westernism in Asia: Visions of World Order in Pan-Islamic and Pan-Asian Thought. New York: Columbia University Press.
Batholomeusz, Tessa. (1994). Women Under the Bo Three: Buddhist Nuns in Sri Lanka. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Basu, Shamita. (2002). Religious Revivalism as Nationalist Discourse: Swami Vivekananda and New Hinduism in Nineteenth-Century Bengal. New Delhi: Oxford University Press.
Blackburn, Anne M. (2010). Locations of Buddhism: Colonialism & Modernity in Sri Lanka. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.
.....................................(2001). Buddhist Learning and Textual Practice in Eighteenth-Century Lankan Monastic Culture. Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press.
……………………………… (2011). ‘Buddhist Revival’ and the ‘Work of Culture’ in Sri Lanka, Past and Present. In Seneviratne, H.L. (ed.). The Anthropologist and the Native: Essays for Gananath Obeyesekere. New York: Anthem Press.
Bond, George D. (1988). The Buddhist Revival in Sri Lanka: Religious Tradition, Reinterpretation and Response. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press.
Chidester, David. (2014). Empire of Religion: Imperialism & Comparative Religion. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Deegalle, Mahinda. (ed.), (2006). Buddhism, Conflict and Violence in Modern Sri Lanka. London and New York: Routledge.
Duara, Prasenjit. (1995). Rescuing History from the Nation: Questioning Narratives of Modern China. Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press.
Evers, H. D. (1964). Buddhism and British Colonial Policy in Ceylon, 1815-1872, Asian Studies, 2: 323-333.
Frost, Mark. (2002). ‘Wider Opportunities’: Religious Revival, Nationalist and the Global Dimension in Colombo, 1870-1920, Modern Asian Studies, 36 (4): 937-967.
Gombrich, Richard. (1983). From Monastery to Meditation Centre: Lay Meditation in Modern Sri Lanka. In Denwood, Philip and Piatigorsky, Alexander. (eds.). Buddhist Studies: Ancient and Modern. London: Curzon.
Gombrich, Richard. and Obeyesekere, Gananath. (1990). Buddhism Transformed: Religious Change in Sri Lanka. Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass Publishers Pvt. Ltd.
Guruge, Ananda. (ed.) (1965). Return to Righteousness: A Collection of Speeches, Essays and Letters of Anagarika Dharmapala. Colombo, Sri Lanka: The Government Press.
Holt, John. (1991). Protestant Buddhism?, Religious Studies Review, 17 (4): 307-312.
Jayasekera, P.V.J. (2017). Confrontations with Colonialism: Resistance, Revivalism and Reform under British Rule in Sri Lanka, 1796-1920 vol. 1. Colombo: Vijitha Yapa Publications.
Jayawardena, Kumari. (2000). Nobodies to Somebodies: The Rise of the Colonial Bourgeoisie in Sri Lanka. London and New York: Zed Books.
Johnson, Irving C. (2004). The Buddha and the Puritan: Weberian Reflections on “Protestant Buddhism.”, Sri Lanka Journal of Social Sciences, 27 (1&2): 61-105.
Kemper, Steven. ( 1978). Buddhism without Bhikkhus: The Sri Lanka Vinaya Vardena Society. In Smith, Bardwell L. (ed.). Religion and Legitimation of Power in Sri Lanka. Chambersburg: ANIMA Books.
................................(1991). The Presence of the Past: Chronicles, Politics, and Culture in Sinhala Life. Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press.
…………………………. (2015). Rescued from the Nation: Anagarika Dharmapala and the Buddhist World. Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press.
King, Richard. (2005). ‘Orientalism and the study of Religions,’ In Hinnells, John R. (ed.). The Routledge Companion to the study of Religion. London and New York: Routledge.
Ling, Trevor. (1980). Buddhist Revival in India: Aspect of the sociology of Buddhism. New York: St. Martin’s Press.
Lopez S. Jr., Donald. (2002). A Modern Buddhist Bible: Essential Readings from East and West. Boston: Beacon Press.
Malalgoda, Kitsiri. (1976). Buddhism in Sinhalese Society, 1750-1900: A Study of Religious Revival and Change. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Masuzawa, Tomoko. (2005). The Invention of World Religions; or how European Universalism War Preserved in the Language of Pluralism. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Mellon, Philip A. (1991). Protestant Buddhism? The Cultural Transformation of Buddhism in England, Religion, 21: 73-92.
Milbank, John. (1990 [2006]). Theology & Social Theory: Beyond Secular Reason. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing.
Mishra, Pankaj. (2012). From the Ruins of Empire: The Revolt Against The West and the Remaking of Asia. Allen Lane: Penguin Books.
Obeyesekere, Gananath. (1970). Religious Symbolism and Political Change in Ceylon.Modern Ceylon Studies. 1: 43-63.
..............................................(1991). Buddhism and Conscience: An Exploratory Essay, Daedulus, 120, (summer): 219-239.
……………………………………... (1992). Dutthagamani and the Buddhist Conscience. In Allen, Douglas. (ed.). Religion and Political Conflict in South Asia: India, Pakistan and Sri Lanka. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press.
.............................................(1997). [review of the book The White Buddhist: The Asian Odyssey of Henry Steel Olcott, by Stephen Prothero], Journal of Buddhist Ethics, 4: 329-335.
……………………………………….(2006). Buddhism, Ethnicity, and Identity: a Problem in Buddhist History. In Deegalle, Mahinda. (ed.). Buddhism, Conflict and Violence in Modern Sri Lanka. London and New York: Routledge.
Ostler, Nicholas. (2005). Empires of the Word: A Language History of the World. New York: Harper Collins.
Prothero, Stephen. (1995). Henry Steel Olcott and “Protestant Buddhism.”, Journal of the American Academy of Religion, 63, (2) (summer) : 281-302.
……………………………... (2011). The White Buddhist: The Asian Odyssey of Henry Steel Olcott. Indiana: Indiana University Press.
Queen, Christopher S. (1996). Dr. Ambedkar and the Hermeneutics of Buddhist Liberation. In Queen, Christopher S. and King, B. Sallie. (eds.). Engaged Buddhism: Buddhist Liberation Movements in Asia. New York: State University of New York Press.
Ratnajeevan, S., Hoole, H., Thamotharampillai, C.W. (1997).Tamil Revivalist, Nethra, October-December, 2 (1): 1-45.
Roberts, Michael. (1982). Caste Conflict and Elite Formation: The Rise of a Karava Elite in Sri Lanka, 1500-1931. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Sarkar, Sumit. (1989). Modern India, 1885-1947. New York: St. Martin’s Press.
Seneviratne, H. L. (1999). The Work of Kings: The New Buddhism in Sri Lanka. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press.
Snodgrass, Judith. (2003). Presenting Japanese Buddhism to the West. North Carolina: The University of North Carolina Press.
Smith, Bardwell L. et al.(eds.) (1972). The Two Wheels of Dhamma: Essays on the Theravada Tradition in India and Ceylon. Chambersburg, Pennsylvania: American Academy of Religion.
Spencer, Jonathan. (1990). A Sinhala Village in a Time of Trouble: Politics and Change in Rural Sri Lanka. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Spencer, Jonathan. (ed.) (2004). Sri Lanka: History and the Roots of Conflict. London, New York: Routhledge.
Stirrat, R. (1981). The Shrine of St Sebastian at Mirisgama: An Aspect of the Cult of the Saints in Catholic Sri Lanka, Man, 16 (2): 183-201.
Swearer, Donald K. (1970). Lay Buddhism and the Buddhist Revival in Ceylon., Journal of the American Academy of Religion, 38 (3) (Sep.) : 255-275.
Tambiah, S.J. (1976). World Conqueror and World Renouncer. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Wickramasinghe, Nira. (1995). Ethnic Politics in Colonial Sri Lanka 1927-1947. New Delhi: Vikas Publishing House.
Wikipedia, Lotos Club, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lotos_Club [accessed, 19 March
2017].
Wilson, A.J. (2000). Tamil Nationalism: Its Origins and Development in 19th and 20th Centuries. London: C. Hurst & Co. (Publishers) Ltd.
Wimalaratne, K.D.G. (1985). Buddhist Revival in Sri Lanka. Colombo: SATARA.