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BOOK REVIEWS THERAVADA BUDDHISM AND THE BRITISH ENCOUNTER: RELIGIOUS, MISSIONARY, AND COLONIAL EXPERIENCE IN NINETEENTH CENTURY SRI LANKA. By Elizabeth Harris. London: Routledge, 2006. 274 pp. Of all the facets of the multifaceted interactions among Buddhists and Christians, the one sure to generate the most heat is mission: Christians spreading the gospel, Buddhists spreading the dhamma, Christians preaching and Buddhists preaching at the same time in the same places. This is the central topic of Elizabeth Harris's Theravada Buddhism and the British Encounter: Religious, Missionary, and Colonial Experience in Nineteenth Century Sri Lanka. By throwing light on this crucial encounter, Harris greatly reduces the heat generated by these competing missions and makes greater understanding possible. At least, that would be one hoped-for outcome. Harris challenges the standard postcolonial critique (SPC) of what happened to Sri Lankan Theravada Buddhism and Sri Lankan Theravada Buddhists when Christian missionaries, riding on the coattails of the Portuguese, Dutch, and British colonialists, invaded the peaceful and pristine island of Ceylon, now Sri Lanka, in the seventeenth, eighteenth, nineteenth, and twentieth centuries. SPC posits Western colonial missionaries gaining power through their political proxies, shaping Western understandings of Theravada Buddhism to fit their Puritan and
Buddhist-Christian Studies – University of Hawai'I Press
Published: Nov 14, 2008
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