Abstract
The modern Buddhist revival in Sri Lanka came to fruition in the period leading up to independence from Britain in 1948. By this time, a broad division had taken shape within Sri Lankan Buddhism between "modernists" and "traditionalists" (Gombrich 1991). These alternatives can be represented by Walpola Rahula's The Heritage of the Bhikkhu and Gamini Salgado's The True Paradise. Both offer an integral vision of Buddhism in the period preceding Independence, but neither deals adequately with the cultural and political complexities of Sri Lanka at that time. Yet these books—like the traditions from which they emerge—also complement one another in ways that intimate a more adequate view of the issues than is imagined by either independently. In such a view, Buddhism might especially discover itself a reconciler of the claims of cultural diversity and the search for a common politics.
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