Religious World of Kiirti Srii: Buddhism, Art, and Politics in Late Medieval Sri Lanka / Edition 1

by John Clifford Holt, John Clifford Bolt

Overview

In this interdisciplinary inquiry, John Clifford Holt seeks to uncover how Buddhism was understood and expressed in Sri Lanka, Asia's oldest continuing Buddhist culture, during the advent of European colonialism. Holt focuses on King Kirti Sri Rajasinha, who ruled in the waning years of indigenous Sri Lankan rule, and how he successfully revived Sinhalese Theravada Buddhism despite persistent Dutch colonial threats and a deeply suspicious Kandyan Buddhist Sinhalese aristocracy.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780195107579
Publisher:	Oxford University Press, USA
Publication date:	04/28/1996
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	192
Product dimensions:	9.25(w) x 6.13(h) x 0.42(d)

About the Author

John Clifford Holt is Professor of Religion at Bowdoin College, where he organized and founded the Inter-Collegiate Sri Lanka Education (ISLE) Program. Dr. Holt has authored several books including Buddha in the Crown: Avalokitesvara in the Buddhist Traditions of Sri Lanka (OUP, 1991).

Editorial Reviews

"This wide-ranging and beautifully produced account is fascinating and enjoyable reading...this impassioned and original study, by a mature scholar trying to make holistic sense of a troubled society he knows and loves, will be of interest to scholars and students alike."—The Journal of Asian Studies

"Thus Holt's study looks to Sri Lanka's past and present, illuminating both eighteenth-century Buddhist worldviews and the current ethnic conflict."—The Journal of Religion

"The Religious World of Kirti Sri is a well-conceived and carefully executed study of a program of religious legitimation of kingship in one reign. As such, Holt's work holds considerable comparative value for historians not only of precolonial Sri Lanka, but also of other early modern Theravada Buddhist societies, such as Burma, Rakhine, Cambodia, and Ayudhya."—Journal of the American Oriental Society

"Readable and informative, [this book is] a pleasure for the academic specialist and the casual reader as well."—Mark Tatz, California College of Arts and Crafts

"The book that I have been waiting for: a perfect blend of history, ethnography, and iconography."—Francisca Cho Bantly, Georgetown University

From the Publisher

This is an important work both as an account of temple paintings and as an analysis of political implications of religious works....Through an analysis of temple paintings, Holt wants to see the way Sri Lankans became and lived as Buddhists....On the whole, The Religious World of Kiirti Srii is easy to read and accessible to average students of history of religions and Buddhism. —Journal of Buddhist Ethics

Mahinda Deegalle