Rescued from the Nation – Anagarika Dharmapala and the Buddhist World (Buddhism and Modernity) - Hardcover

Kemper, Steven

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 022619907X ISBN 13: 9780226199078

Publisher: University of Chicago Press, 2015

Synopsis

Anagarika Dharmapala is one of the most galvanizing figures in Sri Lanka's recent turbulent history. He is widely regarded as the nationalist hero who saved the Sinhala people from cultural collapse and whose "protestant" reformation of Buddhism drove monks toward increased political involvement and eventual militarization. Yet as tied to Sri Lankan nationalism as Dharmapala is in popular memory, he spent the vast majority of his life abroad, engaging other concerns. In Rescued from the Nation, Steven Kemper reevaluates this important figure in the light of an unprecedented number of his writings, ones that paint a picture not of a nationalist zealot but of a spiritual seeker earnest in his pursuit of salvation. Drawing on huge stores of source materials - nearly one hundred diaries and notebooks - Kemper reconfigures Dharmapala as a world-renouncer first and a political activist second. Following Dharmapala on his travels between East Asia, South Asia, Europe, and North America, he traces his lifelong project of creating a unified Buddhist world, recovering the place of the Buddha's Enlightenment, and imitating the Buddha's life course. The result is a needed corrective to Dharmapala's embattled legacy, one that resituates Sri Lanka's political awakening within the religious one that was Dharmapala's life project.

About this title

Review:

"Kemper's book is a pleasure. Dharmapala was one of the key figures in the pan-Asian movements to revive Buddhism during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and Kemper offers intriguing details about his contributions that complicate our understanding of the Sinhalese native as he engaged with the Theosophists, British colonial officers, Bengali intellectuals, and even Japanese clergy. His book is a major contribution and will surely become the most-referenced work on Dharmapala."--Tansen Sen, Baruch College, City University of New York

Kemper s book is a pleasure. Dharmapala was one of the key figures in the pan-Asian movements to revive Buddhism during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and Kemper offers intriguing details about his contributions that complicate our understanding of the Sinhalese native as he engaged with the Theosophists, British colonial officers, Bengali intellectuals, and even Japanese clergy. His book is a major contribution and will surely become the most-referenced work on Dharmapala. --Tansen Sen, Baruch College, City University of New York"

About the Author:

Steven Kemper is the Charles A. Dana Professor of Anthropology at Bates College and the author of The Presence of the Past and Buying and Believing, the latter also published by the University of Chicago Press.

About this edition

• Publisher: University of Chicago Press
• Publication date: 2015
• ISBN 10: 022619907X
• ISBN 13: 9780226199078
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 480