Overview

Rewriting Buddhism is the first intellectual history of premodern Sri Lanka’s most culturally productive period. This era of reform shaped the nature of Theravada Buddhism both in Sri Lanka and Southeast Asia, and even today continues to define monastic intellectual life in the region. Alastair Gornall argues that the long century’s literary productivity was not born of political stability, as is often thought, but rather of the social, economic and political chaos brought about by invasions and civil wars.  

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9781787355163

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'A masterful contribution towards the resolution of what Steven Collins designated as being 'the problem of literature in Pali, ' that is, the question as to why Pali kāvya emerged when and where it did (Collins 2003, 649-50). Meticulously researched, philologically rigorous, and intellectually capacious in its engagement with issues in grammar, poetics, philosophy of language, and sociology, Gornall delivers an engaging book surely to be of interest to specialists of premodern South Asian literature, Theravada Buddhism, and historians of India and Sri Lanka.' Religion

Author Information

Alastair Gornall gained his Ph.D. in South Asian Studies from the University of Cambridge in 2013. He is currently Assistant Professor in the Humanities at the Singapore University of Technology and Design, Research Associate in the Department of the Languages and Cultures of South Asia at SOAS, University of London, and was 2018 Robert H. N. Ho Family Foundation Research Fellow in Buddhist Studies. His research focuses on the intellectual and cultural history of Buddhism in South and Southeast Asia.

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