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The Rajavaliya
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Book Synopsis "Ravanisation": The Revitalisation of Ravana among Sinhalese Buddhists in Post-War Sri Lanka by : Deborah de Koning
Download or read book "Ravanisation": The Revitalisation of Ravana among Sinhalese Buddhists in Post-War Sri Lanka written by Deborah de Koning and published by LIT Verlag Münster. This book was released on with total page 422 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book discusses Ravanisation: the revitalisation of Ravana among Sinhalese Buddhists in post-war (after 2009) Sri Lanka. The Hindu Ramayana generally portrays Ravana as a cruel king. How and why, then, has Ravana gained the interest of Sinhalese Buddhists? This study takes an ethnographic perspective to answer these questions. The book discusses multiple Ravana representations that have emerged at an urban Buddhist site (the Sri Devram Maha Viharaya) and a rural site (Lakegala), and discloses how Ravanisation relates to Sinhalese Buddhist ethno-nationalism. In addition, the material, ritual, and spatial perspectives offer unique insights in the personal and local relevance of Ravana.
Book Synopsis The Work of Culture by : Gananath Obeyesekere
Download or read book The Work of Culture written by Gananath Obeyesekere and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 1990-11-27 with total page 392 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume is the product of two decades of field research by one of Sri Lanka's distinguished anthropological interpreters.
Download or read book Ceylon Journal of Science written by and published by . This book was released on 1906 with total page 572 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Book Synopsis The Buddhist Viṣṇu by : John Clifford Holt
Download or read book The Buddhist Viṣṇu written by John Clifford Holt and published by Motilal Banarsidass Publishe. This book was released on 2008 with total page 460 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: John Holt's groundbreaking study examines the assimilation, transformation, and subordination of the Hindu deity Visnu within the contexts of Sri Lankan history and Sinhala Buddhist religious culture. Holt argues that political agendas and social forces, as much as doctrinal concerns, have shaped the shifting patterns of the veneration of Visnu in Sri Lanka. Holt begins with a comparative look at the assimilation of the Buddha in Hinduism. He then explores the role and rationale of medieval Sinhala kings in assimilating Visnu into Sinhala Buddhism. Offering analyses of texts, many of which have never before been translated into English, Holt considers the development of Visnu in Buddhist literature and the changing practices of deity veneration. Shifting to the present, Holt describes the efforts of contemporary Buddhist monks in Sri Lanka to discourage the veneration of Visnu, suggesting that many are motivated by a reactionary fear that their culture and society will soon be overrun by the influences and practices of Hindus, Muslims, and Christians.
Book Synopsis The Journal of the Ceylon Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain & Ireland by :
Download or read book The Journal of the Ceylon Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain & Ireland written by and published by . This book was released on 1891 with total page 732 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Contains Society's Proceedings.
Book Synopsis Placing the Origins of the Buddha by : Bhadrajee S. Hewage
Download or read book Placing the Origins of the Buddha written by Bhadrajee S. Hewage and published by Cambridge Scholars Publishing. This book was released on 2022-08-04 with total page 133 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Our understanding that the Buddha emerged from the Middle Gangetic region of the Indian subcontinent has been largely unchallenged for the past 200 years. However, can we truly trust our existing knowledge regarding the geographical locations associated with early Buddhism? Could the Buddha’s origins, in fact, lie elsewhere? Tracking the general theory explaining the Buddha’s emergence from the Middle Ganges, this book explores the lesser-known story of colonial Sri Lanka’s connections to the wider nineteenth-century orientalist quest of placing the Buddha across the northern expanses of the subcontinent. By doing so, this book highlights the many flaws and inconsistencies that continue to inform our current understanding of the Buddha’s geographical origins and urges us to rethink the very foundation on which our knowledge of early Buddhism is based.
Book Synopsis Re-exploring the Links by : Jorge Manuel Flores
Download or read book Re-exploring the Links written by Jorge Manuel Flores and published by Otto Harrassowitz Verlag. This book was released on 2007 with total page 396 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The island of Ceilao occupied a permanent and singular place in the political imagination of early modern Portugal. Concurrently, the Portuguese left a strong imprint in the Sri Lankan collective memory of the period. Five centuries later, a group of historians, art historians, anthropologists, and linguists reflect on the multiple dimensions of this phenomenon by rethinking texts and maps, ruined churches and ivory caskets, oral tales and Creole communities. Authored by 15 international scholars, Re-exploring the Links is divided in four parts: "Political Realities and Cultural Imagination"; "Religion: Con. ict and Interaction"; "Space and Heritage: Construction, Representation"; "Language and Ethnicity, Identity and Memory". While published on the occasion of the Portuguese arrival in Sri Lanka five centuries ago, this book is far from being a celebratory piece. Re-exploring the Links does not conform to nationalist models of historical interpretation and refuses both the rhetoric of discovery and the rhetoric of aggression. The aim of the volume is not to celebrate "encounters", but to reinvent an academic debate, independent of any political agenda and concerning a history that is Portuguese and Sri Lankan alike.INTRODUCTORY ESSAYChandra R. de Silva, Portugal and Sri Lanka: Recent Trends in HistoriographyPOLITICAL REALITIES AND CULTURAL IMAGINATION S. Pathmanathan The Portuguese in Northeast Sri Lanka (1543-1658): An Assessment of Impressions Recorded in Tamil Chronicles and Poems Rohini Paranavitana, Sinhalese War Poems and the Portuguese Karunasena Dias Paranavitana The Portuguese Tombos as a Source of Sixteenthand Seventeenth-Century Sri Lankan History Rui Manuel Loureiro, The Matter of Ceylon in Diogo do Couto's Decadas da Asia Jorge Flores, Maria Augusta Lima Cruz A 'Tale of Two Cities', a 'Veteran Soldier', or the Struggle for Endangered Nobilities: The Two Jornadas de Huva (1633, 1635)RELIGION: CONFLICT AND INTERACTIONAlan Strathern, The Conversion of Rulers in Portuguese-Era Sri Lanka John Clifford Holt, Buddhist Rebuttals: The Changing of the Gods and Royal (Re)legitimization in Sixteenth- and Seventeenth-Century Sri Lanka Ines G. Zupanov, Goan Brahmans in the Land of Promise: Missionaries, Spies and Gentiles in Seventeenth- and Eighteenth-Century Sri Lanka Jurrien van Goor, State and Religion under the Dutch in Ceylon, c. 1640-1796SPACE AND HERITAGE: CONSTRUCTION, REPRESENTATIONZoltan Biedermann, Perceptions and Representations of the Sri Lankan Space in Sixteenth-Century Portuguese Texts and MapsHelder Carita, Portuguese-Influenced Religious Architecture in Ceylon: Creation, Types and ContinuityNuno Vassallo e Silva, An Art for Export: Sinhalese Ivory and Crystal in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth CenturiesLANGUAGE AND ETHNICITY, IDENTITY AND MEMORYKenneth David, Jackson Singelle Nona/Jinggli Nona: A Traveling Portuguese Burgher MuseDennis B. McGilvray, The Portuguese Burghers of Eastern Sri Lanka in the Wake of Civil War and Tsunami
Book Synopsis The Silk Roads by : Vadime Elisseeff
Download or read book The Silk Roads written by Vadime Elisseeff and published by Berghahn Books. This book was released on 2000 with total page 356 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A look at the cultural, or intercultural, exchange that took place in the Silk Roads and the role this has played in the shaping of cultures and civilizations.
Book Synopsis Portuguese Encounters with Sri Lanka and the Maldives by : Chandra R. de Silva
Download or read book Portuguese Encounters with Sri Lanka and the Maldives written by Chandra R. de Silva and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2017-03-02 with total page 281 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Portuguese Encounters with Sri Lanka and the Maldives: Translated Texts from the Age of the Discoveries is designed to provide access to translations of 16th- and 17th-century documents which illustrate various aspects of this encounter, combining texts from indigenous sources with those from the Portuguese histories and archives. These documents contribute to the growing understanding that different groups of European colonizers - missionaries, traders and soldiers - had conflicting motivations and objectives. Scholars have also begun to emphasize that the colonized were not mere victims but had their own agendas and that they occasionally successfully manipulated colonial powers. The texts in this volume help to substantiate these assertions while also illustrating the changing nature of the interactions. The present volume contains chapters covering the Portuguese arrival in Sri Lanka and their first encounters with the island and its peoples, their subsequent relations with Kandy and Jaffna, and a final chapter on Portuguese relations with the Maldive Islands. A historical introduction provides the context in which the documents can be read and a select bibliography indicates the most recent and authoritative secondary works on the subject
Book Synopsis Implicit Understandings by : Stuart B. Schwartz
Download or read book Implicit Understandings written by Stuart B. Schwartz and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 1994-11-25 with total page 648 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: World-wide in scope, this volume brings together the work of twenty historians, anthropologists, and literary scholars who have tried to examine the nature of the encounter between Europeans and the other peoples of the world from roughly 1450 to 1800, the Early Modern era.
Book Synopsis Being a Christian in Sri Lanka by : Leonard Pinto
Download or read book Being a Christian in Sri Lanka written by Leonard Pinto and published by Balboa Press. This book was released on 2015-07-14 with total page 967 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Most people know something about their own religions. That knowledge is usually restricted to what is going on at the present time. When it comes to how their religions developed in their countries, their knowledge is on shakier grounds. As for religion in foreign lands, well, for many, that information is nonexistent. Author Leonard Pintos Being a Christian in Sri Lanka: Historical, Political, Social, and Religious Considerations is a critique based on the observations and experience of a Sri Lankan Christian. Pinto shares the history and importance of religion in his native land. Youll learn about Portuguese, Dutch, and British rule in the country formerly known as Ceylon, and how each affected religion there. Pinto dispels popular views about how ruling countries dealt with Christianity and other religions, and with those who practiced them. Youll learn how religion is practiced today from someone who lives it firsthand. Pintos book goes beyond the boundaries of Sri Lanka in assessing the problems faced by Christianity from the corrosive effects of the Age of Enlightenment. In Being a Christian in Sri Lanka: Historical, Political, Social, and Religious Considerations, Pinto comes to the conclusion Sri Lanka would benefit from a Sri Lankan national identity for all its citizens. Hegemony based on ethnicity and religion is dissuaded. Youll also find Pintos conclusions relevant to other countries.
Book Synopsis Ravana's Kingdom by : Justin W. Henry
Download or read book Ravana's Kingdom written by Justin W. Henry and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2022 with total page 297 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Ravana, the demon-king antagonist from the Ramayana, the ancient Hindu epic poem, has become an unlikely cultural hero among Sinhala Buddhists over the past decade. In Ravana's Kingdom, Justin W. Henry delves into the historical literary reception of the epic in Sri Lanka, charting the adaptions of its themes and characters from the 14th century onwards, as many Sri Lankan Hindus and Buddhists developed a sympathetic impression of Ravana's character, and through the contemporary Ravana revival, which has resulted in the development of an alternative mythological history, depicting Ravana as king of the Sri Lanka's indigenous inhabitants, a formative figure of civilizational antiquity, and the direct ancestor of the Sinhala Buddhist people. Henry offers a careful study of the literary history of the Ramayana in Sri Lanka, employing numerous sources and archives that have until now received little to no scholarly attention, as well as the 21st century revision of a narrative of the Sri Lankan people-a narrative incubated by the general public online, facilitated by social media and by the speed of travel of information in the digital age. Ravana's Kingdom offers a glimpse into a centuries-old, living Ramayana tradition among Hindus and Buddhists in Sri Lanka-a case study of the myth-making process in the digital age.
Book Synopsis Tamil Nationalism in Sri Lanka by : A.R. Sriskanda Rajah
Download or read book Tamil Nationalism in Sri Lanka written by A.R. Sriskanda Rajah and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2022-10-31 with total page 150 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book examines Tamil nationalism in Sri Lanka and provides insights on how Tamil nationalism has survived the destruction of the Tamil Tigers after May 2009 and continues to thrive, despite the absence of a charismatic leadership to lead it or a centralised organisation to mobilise the Tamils along ethnic nationalistic lines. The ethnic nationalist ideology shaped up by the Tamil Tigers continues to remain the driving force of the Tamil polity in Sri Lanka and the Diaspora. Using a Foucauldian counter-historical theoretical framework, the author analyses and offers answers to these questions: What is keeping Tamil nationalism alive despite the demise of the Tamil Tigers over a decade ago? Why do many Tamils in Sri Lanka and abroad refuse to accept a Sri Lankan political identity? How are Tamils able to continue on a nationalist path despite the absence of a unified political leadership? The book argues that Tamil nationalism has survived the latter’s destruction because it has become counter-historical. It is this that has allowed, despite the internecine rivalries between Tamil political parties and Diaspora groups, the Tamil nationalist spirit to remain alive. The author also suggests that counter-history has, for many Tamil political parties and Diaspora groups, become the means of waging war, other than through an armed struggle, against the Sri Lankan state. Based on field research, interviews and documentary analysis, the book provides empirical and unique insights on Foucault’s thesis that power is multifaceted and can function in the absence of centralised mechanisms. This book will be of interest to researchers in the fields of Politics and International Relations, in particular those working on ethnic nationalism, post-armed conflict peacebuilding/conflict resolution, the politics in Sri Lanka, diaspora politics and Foucault.
Book Synopsis The Ceylon Antiquary and Literary Register by : John M. Senaveratna
Download or read book The Ceylon Antiquary and Literary Register written by John M. Senaveratna and published by . This book was released on 1916 with total page 360 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Book Synopsis Legends of People, Myths of State by : Bruce Kapferer
Download or read book Legends of People, Myths of State written by Bruce Kapferer and published by Berghahn Books. This book was released on 2011-12-01 with total page 444 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The civil war in Sri Lanka and the part that nationalism seemed to play in it inspired the writing of this book some twenty-three years ago. The argument was developed through a comparative analysis of nationalism in Sri Lanka with the author’s native Australia. At the time this constituted an innovative approach to comparison in anthropology, as well as to nationalism and its possibilities. It was not based on differences but on the way in which perspectives from within the two nationalisms, when seen side-by-side, could present an understanding of their implication in producing the violence of war, racism, and social exclusion. The book has lost none of its importance and urgency as proven by the chapters in the Appendix, written by top scholars working in Sri Lanka and in Australia. These contributions bring together new material and critically explore the book’s themes and their continued relevance to the various trajectories in nationalist processes since the first publication of the book.
Book Synopsis Grandeur of the Lion by : Carl Muller
Download or read book Grandeur of the Lion written by Carl Muller and published by Penguin UK. This book was released on 2012-01-01 with total page 163 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For many centuries, Lanka was referred to as Sihaladipa—the island of the Sihala, who were the people of the lion. Children of the Lion told the story of the conquest of Lanka by the great king Vijaya. City of the Lion, carried forward the story of the Sinhala race recounting the return of the lion people to Anuradhapura after the bold and reckless Sinhala prince, Duttha Gamani, waged war against the usurper, Elara, who had ruled over their precious city for nearly fifty years. In the third book in the series, Carl Muller recounts the glorious days of Duttha Gamini’s reign. With blazing energy the king transformed Anuradhapura into the greatest Buddhist city of ancient times. The gods smile down on him—he is blessed with a son and mysterious discoveries of flowers bearing gems, caves with silver and many other riches are made all over the kingdom. These divine treasures help him erect enduring wonders of Buddhism like the colossal Maha Thupa and Ridi Vihara in Anuradhapura. Vividly told, full of rich mythology, Grandeur of the Lion is an extraordinary book about one of the most astounding periods of Sri Lankan history.
Book Synopsis François Valentijn’s Description of Ceylon by : S. Arasaratnam
Download or read book François Valentijn’s Description of Ceylon written by S. Arasaratnam and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2017-05-15 with total page 407 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: François Valentijn's Oud en Nieuw Oost-Indien (Old and New East Indies) has for long been regarded as a primary source of information on a number of regions of maritime Asia. It is a veritable encyclopaedia, bringing together an array of facts, trivial and vital, from a wide range of contemporary and earlier literature, acknowledged and unacknowledged, and contains valuable excerpts from contemporary documents of the Dutch East India Company and from private papers. It is indeed a public archive. Despite this historic character of the work, it was never republished in full in a critical edition or made available in English translation. It has therefore remained relatively unknown and little read, except by the specialist wanting to quarry this mine of information for his particular purpose. This edition of Valentijn embraces the part dealing with Ceylon (now Sri Lanka) in the fifth volume of Old and New East Indies. The island of Ceylon is one of three areas that has received the most detailed treatment in the work, with substantial sections devoted to geography, topography, society, natural history and the record of historical tradition. He also provides an almost contemporaneous account of the Dutch conquest of the island. For his description of Ceylon, Valentijn has had access to a variety of sources - Sinalese, Portuguese and Dutch - and has presented this material to us with his characteristic attention to detail. The volume now published with an introduction and explanatory notes is many things for many people: a geographer's manual, a naturalist's handbook, an anthropologist's collection of caste and custom, an antiquarian's record of tradition and a chronicler's narrative of history. One of the most informative writings on Ceylon is made available, for the first time, to the English-reading public.
