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Religion and Psychosocial Development in Sinhalese Buddhism

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 March 2011

John Halverson
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Extract

Even under the best of circumstances, “religion” can be a slippery term. In Buddhist Sri Lanka (Ceylon), it is especially so. Anthropologists recognize a religious complex that includes spirit exorcism as well as orthodox Buddhism; yet in Sinhalese usage, the word for religion, agama, applies to the latter but specifically excludes the former. On the other hand, from a Western perspective, orthodox “doctrinal” Buddhism—rationalistic, atheistic, non-supernatural—hardly seems to qualify as religion by any ordinary definition of the English word or its European equivalents. Indeed, that has, historically, been one of the strong appeals of Buddhism to the West. However, the terminological problem is not a vital one. Though it is well to keep in mind the indigenous distinctions, the various beliefs and practices of Sinhalese Buddhists so blend into one another and are so overtly connected, ritually and ideologically, that they present themselves as an identifiable complex that has been conventionally and justifiably called “religious.”

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Articles
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The Journal of Asian Studies , Volume 37 , Issue 2 , February 1978 , pp. 221 - 232
Copyright
Copyright © The Association for Asian Studies, Inc. 1978

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References

1 Gombrich, Richard F., Precept and Practice, Traditional Buddhism in the Rural Highlands of Ceylon (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1971), pp. 150–51.Google Scholar

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3 Cf. Gombrich, , “Buddhist Karma and Social Control,” Comparative Studies in Society and History, XVII (1975), pp. 212–20CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

4 “Theism” is admittedly an awkward term, but “deva-ism” or the like would be even clumsier. Needless to say, the word is intended to refer simply—without any Western or Christian connotations—to that aspect of Buddhist religious belief and practice which is directed to the Buddhist gods.

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15 Canonically, according to Gombrich (n. 1 above, p. 205), pirit is meant to mollify the demons. Obeyesekere records from a sanniyakuma ritual the statement that pirit has the power to banish disease; “The Ritual Drama of the Sanni Demons: Collective Representations of Disease in Ceylon,” Comparative Studies in Society and History, XI (1969), p. 187.

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17 See Gombrich (n. 1 above), pp. 58, 155–56 for critical remarks.

18 Evers (n. 12 above), p. 105.

18 Ibid., p. 58.

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21 A remarkable example of rationalization or “Buddhicization” (Gombrich): it tells how the Buddha long ago authorized the demons to torment humans, but bound them to desist when propitiated by suitable offerings; Obeyesekere (n. 11 above), p. 145. In some performances of the sanniyakuma, the final banishment of the possessing demon is done by explicit invocation of the Buddha's authority while a picture of the Buddha is held before the patient.

22 Ibid., p. 140.

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26 Obeyesekere (n. 11 above), pp. 151ff.

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28 Ibid., p. 24.