Resonant paradigms in the study of religions and the emergence of Theravāda Buddhism

Abstract

Was Theravāda Buddhism actually invented in late colonial times? Was Buddhism in general constructed by Orientalists’ imagination and their will to intellectually subjugate foreign cultures under the concepts of ‘Western’ thought and ‘Western’ models of social differentiation? This article argues that we need complementary perspectives to understand the multilateral dynamics that produced our present knowledge of religion(s). In the case of Theravāda Buddhism, a unidirectional analysis conceals the dynamics of questions and responses that interrelate scholars and their field of study – including modern Buddhist representatives and uses of traditional resources of knowledge – to a complex of mutually resonating agencies. As this article will show, Theravāda Buddhism, as a modern religion and as a concept of historical analysis, has emerged from these relational processes rather than having been invented by unilateral scholarly projections upon blank screens of passive cultures.