The Religious World of Kirti Sri: Buddhism, Art, and Politics in
Late Medieval Sri Lanka, by Holt, John Clifford 

Reviewed by  Michael W. Charney

The Journal of the American Oriental Society
Vol.118 No.1
Jan-March 1998
p.126
            

COPYRIGHT 1998 American Oriental Society

            Efforts, especially of studies of precolonial "institutions," to 
            determine religious "orthodoxy" in textually based belief systems 
            such as Theravada Buddhism too frequently misconstrue emphases of 
            earlier or later stages of the development of the religion as 
            constants. Prevalent historiography on Burma (a Theravada Buddhist 
            society), for example, frequently misconstrues Theravada Buddhism as 
            a static set of beliefs, with a similarly undynamic symbolic 
            representation of those beliefs in religious iconography, social 
            institutions, and the notion of kingship. Fortunately, Holt, whose 
            work focuses on Sri Lanka, studiously avoids this problem in The 
            Religious World of Kirti Sri. Holt locks into a "moment" in 
            Sinhalese Theravada Buddhism, the reign of Kirti Sri (r. 1751-82 
            C.E.) of the kingdom of Kandy in the central area of the island of 
            Sri Lanka, in an attempt to determine what it meant to be a 
            Theravada Buddhist during this particular reign and what the classic 
            Sinhala Buddhist Weltanschauung was. 
            Holt suggests that the chief motivation of Kirti Sri's religious 
            program was an effort to deny his internal opponents, the Sinhalese 
            Buddhist nobility, the opportunity to appeal to the popular masses, 
            on the grounds of Theravada Buddhist orthodoxy, to overthrow him, as 
            he was the successor to a foreign and Hindu dynastic line. To 
            achieve this goal, Kirti Sri had "to express the fundamentals of a 
            religious world view in a manner that was clearly accessible and 
            intelligible to the masses of lay Buddhists, his most important 
            constituency" (p. 42). As Holt explains, Kirti Sri generally 
            attempted to portray himself in the religious art and symbolism of 
            his reign in a manner consistent with the ideal image of Buddhist 
            kingship. Fortunately, Holt does not leave the reader uninformed by 
            simple references to "Theravada Buddhist orthodoxy" or other often 
            undefined (and equally not understood) labels, and instead spends 
            much of his book on an in-depth analysis indicating just how 
            religious orthodoxy was revealed in the religious art, ritual, myth, 
            and symbolism of Kirti Sri's reign. 
            An important contribution of Holt's work is his careful examination 
            of the chief elements of religious orthodoxy in the reign of Kirti 
            Sri. Holt identifies, for example, five elements of Kirti Sri's 
            political discourse: Asokan, the Sakran model of divine rule, 
            Mahasammata Buddhist myth, Manu, and the bodhisatta ideal. 
            Concerning the visual liturgy of Kirti Sri's religious art, Holt 
            identifies six chief elements: solosmasthana (sixteen sacred 
            places), sat sati (seven weeks of meditation after enlightenment), 
            suvisi vivarana (the twenty-four Buddhas), the thousand Buddha 
            motif, Buddhacarita (the life of the Buddha), and the Jataka tales. 
            The targeted audience of this religious symbolism was the popular 
            masses and, as Holt explains, the Jataka stories concerning the 
            "bodhisatta-as-king" were the chief "eye-level elements of most 
            visual liturgies in the temples that he restored" (p. 89). Kirti 
            Sri, in a manner familiar to historians of precolonial mainland 
            Southeast Asia, devoted most of his personal resources to support 
            Buddhism and Buddhist institutions during his reign. 
            Every study, however, has its weaknesses. Holt fails to examine 
            directly, for example, the relationship between religion and 
            ethnicity in this period in Sri Lankan history. Questions of ethnic 
            identity seemingly plagued Kirti Sri's reign, as the successor to a 
            Tamil Saivite dynasty which ruled the predominantly Buddhist and 
            Sinhalese kingdom of Kandy from 1739. Holt provides a chapter on 
            this subject, but chiefly for a discussion of how this problem 
            manifests itself in modern Sri Lanka. More useful would have been a 
            detailed discussion of how religious identity weighed as a construct 
            of ethnic identity in Kirti Sri's Kandyan realm. When considered 
            against this work's other contributions, however, this weakness does 
            not weigh heavily. 
            The Religious World of Kirti Sri is a well-conceived and carefully 
            executed study of a program of religious legitimation of kingship in 
            one reign. As such, Holt's work holds considerable comparative value 
            for historians not only of precolonial Sri Lanka, but also of other 
            early modern Theravada Buddhist societies, such as Burma, Rakhine, 
            Cambodia, and Ayudhya. 
            MICHAEL W. CHARNEY UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN