Locations of Buddhism

Colonialism and Modernity in Sri Lanka

Anne M. Blackburn

• Publisher: University of Chicago Press
• Year: 2010
• ISBN:
  9780226055091
• Topic: Teología y religión
• Subtopic: Religión

Modernizing and colonizing forces brought nineteenth-century Sri Lankan Buddhists both challenges and opportunities. How did Buddhists deal with social and economic change; new forms of political, religious, and educational discourse; and Christianity? And how did Sri Lankan Buddhists, collaborating with other Asian Buddhists, respond to colonial rule? To answer these questions, Anne M. Blackburn focuses on the life of leading monk and educator Hikkaduve Sumangala (1827–1911) to examine more broadly Buddhist life under foreign rule.

In Locations of Buddhism, Blackburn reveals that during Sri Lanka's crucial decades of deepening colonial control and modernization, there was a surprising stability in the central religious activities of Hikkaduve and the Buddhists among whom he worked. At the same time, they developed new institutions and forms of association, drawing on pre-colonial intellectual heritage as well as colonial-period technologies and discourse. Advocating a new way of studying the impact of colonialism on colonized societies, Blackburn is particularly attuned here to human experience, paying attention to the habits of thought and modes of affiliation that characterized individuals and smaller scale groups. Locations of Buddhism is a wholly original contribution to the study of Sri Lanka and the history of Buddhism more generally.

CHAPTER ONE

Hikka

uvē Suma

gala at Adam’s Peak

In March 1868, an edited manuscript copy of the Vinaya (a collection of Pali texts on monastic life and discipline) was brought in state from the Saba-ragamuva town of Pelmadulla downriver to Kalutara on the southern coast and, thence, thwhom we meet again irough a series of southern towns and villages to the major port city of Galle. The manuscript reached Galle on 5 June 1868 in the company of one of its chief editors, Hikka

uvē Suma

gala. After months based primarily at Pelmadulla (Tissa Kariyawasam 1973, 302; Prajñānanda 1947, 1:182), surrounded by manuscripts and immersed in editorial debate at this somewhat remote location, Hikka

uvē must have been glad to return to his own district, and a slightly less punishing schedule. Yet, then and later, he had ample reason to be grateful for the months spent involved in the editorial council and sangīti (recitation of authoritative texts) at Pelmadulla. It had confirmed his status as one of the leading scholarly monks of his generation, intensifying the pride and attachment felt for him by a widening circle of teachers, students, and dāyakas (lay patrons). The Vinaya procession along the southern coast “was a lengthy process, during which all the Buddhists living by the side of the high road witnessed not only the labours of a scholar but the recognition and reverence offered to the scholar himself…. The processions were organized by the villagers on the instructions of the chief incumbent of their temple" (Tissa Kariyawasam 1973, 307).¹

This chapter explores the biographical events and social processes that brought Hikka

uvē Suma

gala to the Pelmadulla council, and that carried him from it to the high rank of the incumbency of Śrī Pāda nāyaka thera (chief priest of Sri Pada, or Adam’s Peak). In this chapter, we meet some of the key figures who inhabit subsequent phases of this narrative, beginning to understand the world of social relationships and obligations within which Hikka

uvē made his life. At the same time, this chapter introduces some central features of the Lankan Buddhist world during the last half of the nineteenth century. Crucial to this world was the movement of persons and influence between the southern maritime districts (especially Galle and Colombo), the middle highlands of Sabaragamuva, and the former capital city of Kandy. Buddhist-Buddhist and Buddhist-Christian debates together helped shape Buddhist scholarship and demonstrations of monastic prowess. Lay supporters competed for connection to high-status monks, while such monks developed their careers in part by selectively mobilizing the possibilities inherent in monastic lineages. By following Hikka

uvē to and from his participation in the Pelmadulla editorial council we gain a broader sense of the local setting in which he and other Buddhists—lay and monastic, male and female²—made their lives and begin to sense the intellectual vitality of their era. The period we consider in this and subsequent chapters was a time of emphatic British colonial presence on the island. Lankans also witnessed the deepening and widening of ties among La

kā, Southeast Asia, mainland South Asia, and East Asia.

Editing at Pelmadulla

Hikka

uvē Suma

gala was one of nearly sixty (Tissa Kariyawasam 1973, 304) Buddhist monks invited to Pelmadulla to undertake what was initially conceived of as a massive project to edit the Pali texts contained within the

(Vinaya, Sutta, and Abhidhamma collections understood to be authoritative teachings of Gotama Buddha). The invitations were made by the highest-ranking and highest-caste persons in the Sabaragamuva region, the radala leaders among the Goyigama, including Iddamalgo

a, Mahavala-tänna, Älapāta, Ma

avannavala, Ellāvala, Eknäligoda, and Molamurē (Pañ-ñāsekhara 1965, 112).³ Within this group Iddamalgo

a, Basnāyaka Nilame (chief caretaker, since 1844) of the Mahā Saman Dēvāla (shrine to the deity Saman) in the town of Ratnapura, seems to have been the most active organizer of the Pelmadulla activities. Iddamalgo

a had constructed a Dharmaśālāva (preaching hall) to be used for the preparation of Buddhist manuscripts and for major sermons. Indeed, he seems to have conceived of the Pelmadulla Dharmaśālāva as a site for the production of authoritative texts for use by Buddhists around the island (Prajñānanda 1947, 1:172-75).⁴Symbolically, arranging an editorial council and a sangīti was a bold move: it placed the editorial project of Pelmadulla within the central life story of the Buddha-śāsana ...