Irish Buddhist Research Articles

THE IRISH BUDDHIST: THE FORGOTTEN MONK WHO FACED DOWN THE BRITISH EMPIRE. By AliciaTurner, LaurenceCox, and BrianBocking. New York: Oxford University Press, 2020. Pp. xvi + 320. Hardback, $39.95.

Religious Studies ReviewVolume 48, Issue 3 p. 440-440 Short Reviews of Recent Publications: Buddhism THE IRISH BUDDHIST: THE FORGOTTEN MONK WHO FACED DOWN THE BRITISH EMPIRE. By Alicia Turner, Laurence Cox, and Brian Bocking. New York: Oxford University Press, 2020. Pp. xvi + 320. Hardback, $39.95. First published: 16 November 2022 https://doi.org/10.1111/rsr.15997Read the full textAboutPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Share a linkShare onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditWechat No abstract is available for this article. Volume48, Issue3September 2022Pages 440-440 RelatedInformation

The Irish Buddhist: The Forgotten Monk Who Faced Down the British Empire

The Irish Buddhist: The Forgotten Monk Who Faced Down the British Empire

The Irish Buddhist: The Forgotten Monk Who Faced Down the British Empire, written by Alicia Turner, Laurence Cox, and Brian Bocking

The Irish Buddhist: The Forgotten Monk Who Faced Down the British Empire, written by Alicia Turner, Laurence Cox, and Brian Bocking

Alicia Turner, Laurence Cox, and Brian Bocking, The Irish Buddhist: The Forgotten Monk who Faced Down the British Empire

Alicia Turner, Laurence Cox, and Brian Bocking, <i>The Irish Buddhist: The Forgotten Monk who Faced Down the British Empire</i>

Mrs Pounds and Mrs Pfoundes

In this short essay written for Professor Ursula King’s Festschrift I reflect on the general problem of researching and recovering events and individuals previously ‘lost’ to historians of religions, taking as my example recent collaborative research into forgotten early Irish Buddhists. I consider also the problems of researching other traditionally under-represented figures, including many women; for example, the wife (Rosa Alice Hill) and mother (Caroline Pounds) of the Irish Buddhist Charles Pfoundes. In the second and rather more speculative part of the essay I look at some ways in which increasingly sophisticated and increasingly accessible technological developments, allied with growing ‘crowd’ participation in the provision and analysis of historical data, might in future enable us to discover far more than we currently can about events and individuals in the past.

Tai-Burmese-Lao Buddhisms in the ‘Modernizing’ of Ban Thawai (Bangkok): The Dynamic Interaction Between Ethnic Minority Religion and British–Siamese Centralization in the Late Nineteenth/Early Twentieth Centuries

Drawing on extensive Thai literary and oral history sources this article sets out to explain the complex social, political, ethnic and religious framework within which the opening by ‘the Irish Buddhist’ U Dhammaloka of a free, bilingual and multi-ethnic Buddhist school at Wat Ban Thawai, Bangkok in May 1903 acquires a broader and deeper significance. The article documents the mutual relationships between the local Buddhisms of Tai, Burmese and Lao ethnic minorities and the politics of British-Siamese alliance in the period before and during the First World War. It examines the British-Siamese support of these Buddhist communities in Bangkok and explores the British-Siamese use of their diplomatic relationship with the Tai, Burmese and Lao ethnic minorities in Ban Thawai and elsewhere (i.e. across the borders between Siam and Burma) in order to centralize power. It also discusses the anomalous effect of British and French influence in Ban Thawai which allowed local resistance to Siamese centralization and saṅgha reform.

TOWARD THE STUDY OF VERNACULAR INTELLECTUALISM: A RESPONSE

This article is a response to the three papers by Alicia Turner, Laurence Cox and Brian Bocking on U Dhammaloka, ‘The Irish Buddhist’, published in this issue of Contemporary Buddhism.