Brian Bocking

‘A MAN OF WORK AND FEW WORDS’? DHAMMALOKA BEYOND BURMA

While Dhammalokas very public career as ‘the Irish Pongyi’ (monk) c.1900–1911 was played out mainly in Burma, he also travelled extensively in other parts of Asia. There is independent evidence of his visit to Tokyo in the autumn of 1902, from which he emerged a ‘Lord Abbot’, and some information on his several months in Bangkok in 1903. Dhammalokas activities in Singapore, where in 1903–1904 he successfully established a Buddhist Mission and free school can also be documented. Other reports, still uncorroborated, place Dhammaloka at various times in Penang, Ipoh, Kuala Lumpur, Hong Kong, Ceylon, India, Nepal and—far less convincingly—in Lhasa and Melbourne. In this paper I review Dhammalokas activities in three very different socio-religious contexts: Japan, Siam and Singapore, between 1902 and 1905. Japan in 1902 was an autonomous, emerging modern imperial power; Singapore was an entrepôt British trading colony; and Siam was guarding its independence as an Asian Buddhist kingdom. Unlike in the West, where Buddhism was a novelty and could be made to mean almost anything, Buddhism in one form or another was already well-established in Japan, Siam and Singapore. How did Dhammaloka position and present himself, a campaigning Irish/European Buddhist cleric, in relation to other individuals and institutions in these three very different contexts, and how was he received and perceived in each case?

BEACHCOMBING, GOING NATIVE AND FREETHINKING: REWRITING THE HISTORY OF EARLY WESTERN BUDDHIST MONASTICS

This article provides an introduction to the special issue of Contemporary Buddhism entitled ‘U Dhammaloka, “The Irish Buddhist”: Rewriting the History of Early Western Buddhist Monastics’. Traditional accounts of pioneer western Buddhist monastics begin with the 1899 ordination of H. Gordon Douglas (Asoka), and highlight gentleman scholars writing for a European audience. They consign to obscurity a pre-existing world of western Buddhist monastics of all social classes. To open a window onto this hidden history, this issue presents new material relating to the extraordinary career of U Dhammaloka (?1856–?1914), widely known as ‘The Irish Buddhist’. A working-class autodidact, freethinker and temperance campaigner from Dublin, Dhammaloka became renowned throughout colonial Asia as an implacable critic of Christian missionaries and tireless transnational organiser of Asian Buddhists from Burma to Japan. The research described in this issue is innovative not only in content but also in method and approach, having advanced through collaborative, international research employing web-based research tools and online resources. These offer new possibilities for other translocative and interdisciplinary research projects.

A Buddhist Crossroads: Pioneer European Buddhists and Globalizing Asian Networks 1860–1960

Single-country approaches to the study of Buddhism miss the crucial significance of international networks in the making of modern Buddhism, in a period when the material basis for such networks had been transformed. Southeast Asia in particular acted as a dynamic crossroads in this period enabling the emergence of a ‘global Buddhism’ not controlled by any single sect, while India and Japan both played unexpectedly significant roles in this crossroads. A key element of this process was the encounter between Asian Buddhist networks and western would-be Buddhists. Those involved, however, were often marginal - ‘creative failures’ in many cases - whose stories enable us to think this history in a more diverse way than is often done. In other cases as isolated figures they could pave the way for the ‘mainstreaming’ of new forms of Buddhism by established actors in later decades. This article introduces the special issue of Contemporary Buddhism entitled ‘A Buddhist crossroads: pioneer European Buddhists and globalizing Asian networks 1860–1960’. The research described in this issue often raises other methodological questions of representativity and significance, while posing important challenges around collaborative research and the use of new technologies.

Death and religion in a changing world

fears about children who died without baptism becoming roaming souls that haunted riverbanks, marshes, and woods, scaring the living in order to avenge their miserable fate. Last, the coming back to life of a child, even only for the time necessary to attribute a name and an identity through baptism, could modify the hereditary line, allowing, for example, the father to keep the dowry of a wife who died in childbirth. Resulting from several years of research, the work of Jacques Gélis is a rigorous analysis of a phenomenon that ‘‘reveals the metaphysical anxieties of man’’ (p. 8), giving historical depth to fears and anguishes which, under new forms, still survive in our time.

Quality Time: Evaluating Religious Studies in Higher Education

The original version of this paper was presented on 30 June 1995 to the NATFHE Religious Studies Sections Annual Conference at the University College of St Martin, Lancaster. I am grateful to colleagues for comments and suggestions.