Buddhist History in the Vernacular: The Power of the past in Late Medieval SRI Lanka FROM THE PUBLISHER
Focusing on the thirteenth-century Sinhala Thupavamsa, this book problematizes modern interpretations of Buddhist histories, compares the production of Pali and Sinhala texts, and examines how historical works were directed towards religious ends.
SYNOPSIS
Berkwitz (religious studies, Southwest Missouri State U.) explores the motives and effects of historical writing about the Buddha and the establishment of Buddhism in Sri Lanka before the British privileged and popularized a craft of history rooted in reason and realism and aiming to reconstruct what actually happened in a supposedly objective and disinterested manner. He looks specifically at the late-13th- century Sinhala Thupavamsa to investigate how and why people in late medieval Sri Lanka began composing and transmitting historical narratives in a literary form of the vernacular Sinhala language with a more localized vision of the past. The excerpts are in English only. Annotation ©2004 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR
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