Saving Buddhism

Alicia Turner

Alicia Turner

Saving Buddhism

The Impermanence of Religion in Colonial Burma

Edited by: David P. Chandler and Rita Smith Kipp

University of Hawaii Press | 2014

https://doi.org/10.1515/9780824847913

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About this book

Saving Buddhism explores the dissonance between the goals of the colonial state and the Buddhist worldview that animated Burmese Buddhism at the turn of the twentieth century. For many Burmese, the salient and ordering discourse was not nation or modernity but sāsana, the life of the Buddha’s teachings. Burmese Buddhists interpreted the political and social changes between 1890 and 1920 as signs that the Buddha’s sāsana was deteriorating. This fear of decline drove waves of activity and organizing to prevent the loss of the Buddha’s teachings. Burmese set out to save Buddhism, but achieved much more: they took advantage of the indeterminacy of the moment to challenge the colonial frameworks that were beginning to shape their world.

Author Alicia Turner has examined thousands of rarely used sources-- newspapers and Buddhist journals, donation lists, and colonial reports—to trace three discourses set in motion by the colonial encounter: the evolving understanding of sāsana as an orienting framework for change, the adaptive modes of identity made possible in the moral community, and the ongoing definition of religion as a site of conflict and negotiation of autonomy. Beginning from an understanding that defining and redefining the boundaries of religion operated as a key technique of colonial power—shaping subjects through European categories and authorizing projects of colonial governmentality—she explores how Burmese Buddhists became actively engaged in defining and inflecting religion to shape their colonial situation and forward their own local projects.

Saving Buddhism intervenes not just in scholarly conversations about religion and colonialism, but in theoretical work in religious studies on the categories of “religion” and “secular.” It contributes to ongoing studies of colonialism, nation, and identity in Southeast Asian studies by working to denaturalize nationalist histories. It also engages conversations on millennialism and the construction of identity in Buddhist studies by tracing the fluid nature of sāsana as a discourse. The layers of Buddhist history that emerge challenge us to see multiple modes of identity in colonial modernity and offer insights into the instabilities of categories we too often take for granted.

Author information

TurnerAlicia:

Alicia Turner is Assistant Professor of Humanities and Religious Studies at York University.Alicia Turner is Assistant Professor of Humanities and Religious Studies at York University.

Reviews

Anne Hansen, University of Wisconsin, Madison:
Turner's book not only contributes to the study of religious transformations in mainland Southeast Asia but makes substantial contributions to larger scholarly conversations on Buddhist modernities and comparative colonialism. It will be required reading for everyone in the growing field of Theravada Studies.

Justin McDaniel, University of Pennsylvania:
Turner’s book is illuminating. Her interrogation of the terms ‘nation’ and ‘religion’ are refreshing, and her idea of the moral community as an alternative way to understand the emergence of a nation so defined by religion is thoroughly convincing. She shows how to write about the colonial period without turning every intellectual and cultural expression by a Burmese into a ‘response’ to colonial discourses.

The power of this book comes from how it explicates the work of Burmese Buddhists in redefining religion in the colonial period. Turner shows us how to look behind the curtain of scholarship proclaiming the all‐powerful colonial Oz to find that it was not only British authorities and European scholars who were grappling to control religion, but also Burmese Buddhists.

Turner has written Saving Buddhism in an accessible, engaging style. . . . Turner’s work will be useful for students of Southeast Asian colonialism and Southeast Asian history more widely.

History usefully teaches us the instability of categories. Turner’s critical interrogation of the terms “religion” and “nation” in Myanmar’s case provokes a refreshing effect. A major contribution to ongoing studies on comparative colonialism, religious transformations, nation, and identity in mainland Southeast Asia, Saving Buddhism finally challenges us not to take things for granted.

Turner has used a vast range of archival material gathered over the course of many years of fieldwork in Burma and in libraries and archives elsewhere. The resulting analysis is not only intellectually engaging and convincing, but also empirically satisfying. . . . This book is a remarkable achievement, one that communicates across disciplinary boundaries within Burma studies and national boundaries that divide Buddhist studies. . . . it should be essential reading for any political scientist or historian who seeks to put the current climate in the country into context. The book is highly recommended for use in the classroom and by researchers who seek to understand the historical emergence of lay Buddhism and its place in the new Burma that is presently unfolding.

Frontmatter Free access PDF PDF	i
Contents Free access PDF PDF	v
Acknowledgments Free access PDF PDF	vii
Note on Transliteration Free access PDF PDF	xiii
1. Introduction Access restricted Content is available PDF PDF	1
2. Sāsana Decline and Traditions of Reform Access restricted Content is available PDF PDF	23
3. Buddhist Education Access restricted Content is available PDF PDF	45
4. Morals, Conduct, and Community Access restricted Content is available PDF PDF	75
5. The Shoe and the Shikho Access restricted Content is available PDF PDF	110
6. Conclusion Access restricted Content is available PDF PDF	136
Notes Access restricted Content is available PDF PDF	157
Bibliography Access restricted Content is available PDF PDF	197
Index Access restricted Content is available PDF PDF	213
Other Volumes in the Series Access restricted Content is available PDF PDF	223

Saving Buddhism

The Impermanence of Religion in Colonial Burma

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