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

Abstract

While Dhammaloka's 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. Dhammaloka's 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 Dhammaloka's 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?