Buddhist Learning and Textual Practice in Eighteenth-Century Lankan Monastic Culture
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A01=Anne M. Blackburn
Arhat
Asceticism
Astrology
Author_Anne M. Blackburn
Bhikkhu
Brahmin
Buddhaghosa
Buddhism
Buddhist devotion
Buddhist modernism
Buddhist studies
Buddhist temple
Buddhist texts
Catechism
Category=QRAX
Category=QRF
Category=QRVS5
Ceremony
Christian monasticism
Colonialism
Compendium
Curriculum
Deity
Dharma
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
Erudition
Exegesis
Exposition (narrative)
Gautama Buddha
Generosity
Grammar
Handbook
Householder (Buddhism)
Incumbent (ecclesiastical)
Indian subcontinent
Kandy
Lanka
Literacy
Literature
Manuscript
Manuscript culture
Memorization
Monastery
Monasticism
Narrative
Novitiate
Ordination
Orthodoxy
Paritta
Preacher
Princeton University Press
Prose
Protestantism
Recitation
Redaction
Refuge (Buddhism)
Religion
Religious education
Religious text
Renunciation
Sangha
Sanskrit
Sawm
Sermon
Sheldon Pollock
South Asia
Southeast Asia
Sri Lanka
Suggestion
The Buddhist (TV channel)
Understanding
Vinaya
Visuddhimagga
Vocabulary
Writing
Product details
- ISBN 9780691070445
- Weight: 510g
- Dimensions: 152 x 235mm
- Publication Date: 18 Jun 2001
- Publisher: Princeton University Press
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Hardback
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Anne Blackburn explores the emergence of a predominant Buddhist monastic culture in eighteenth-century Sri Lanka, while asking larger questions about the place of monasticism and education in the creation of religious and national traditions. Her historical analysis of the Siyam Nikaya, a monastic order responsible for innovations in Buddhist learning, challenges the conventional view that a stable and monolithic Buddhism existed in South and Southeast Asia prior to the advent of British colonialism in the nineteenth century. The rise of the Siyam Nikaya and the social reorganization that accompanied it offer important evidence of dynamic local traditions. Blackburn supports this view with fresh readings of Buddhist texts and their links to social life beyond the monastery. Comparing eighteenth-century Sri Lankan Buddhist monastic education to medieval Christian and other contexts, the author examines such issues as bilingual commentarial practice, the relationship between clerical and "popular" religious cultures, the place of preaching in the constitution of "textual communities," and the importance of public displays of learning to social prestige.
Blackburn draws upon indigenous historical narratives, which she reads as rhetorical texts important to monastic politics and to the naturalization of particular attitudes toward kingship and monasticism. Moreover, she questions both conventional views on "traditional" Theravadin Buddhism and the "Buddhist modernism" / "Protestant Buddhism" said to characterize nineteenth-century Sri Lanka. This book provides not only a pioneering critique of post-Orientalist scholarship on South Asia, but also a resolution to the historiographic impasse created by post-Orientalist readings of South Asian history.
Anne M. Blackburn is Assistant Professor and Director of Graduate Studies in the Department of Religious Studies at the University of South Carolina. She has traveled and conducted research in Sri Lanka since 1986.
