Person · Buddhist revivalist · India
Anagārika Dharmapāla
Also known as Anagarika Dharmapala — Bodh Gaya campaign
The 19-20 century Sri Lankan-Indian Buddhist reformer Anagarika Dharmapala (David Hewavitarne, 1864-1933), the central figure of the 19-century Buddhist revival in Sri Lanka and India. Dharmapala was born into a wealthy Sinhalese Buddhist family in Colombo. He converted from Christianity back to Buddhism under the influence of Henry Olcott and Helena Blavatsky of the Theosophical Society in the 1880s. He founded the Maha Bodhi Society of India in 1891 to campaign for the recovery of the Mahabodhi Temple at Bodh Gaya from the Hindu Mahanta's control (achieved partially in 1949). He attended the 1893 World's Parliament of Religions in Chicago (alongside Vivekananda) as the Buddhist representative. His Maha Bodhi Journal (1892 onwards) was the central vehicle for the 20-century Buddhist revival. His tomb at Sarnath (where he founded the Mulagandhakuti Vihara in 1931) draws Buddhist pilgrims from across Asia.
- Date
- 1891–1933
- Function
- Religious institution & practice
- Condition
- historical person + institutional legacy
- Confidence
- Established / referenced
- Location
- 24.700, 84.990
About the place
Placed at Bodh Gaya, the site of his long campaign to return the Mahabodhi temple to Buddhist control, which began in 1891 and continued for the rest of his life.
Connections (3)
- CampaignBodh Gayā / Mahābodhi Temple
Dharmapāla found the Mahābodhi temple under a Śaiva mahant's control in 1891 and litigated for decades to recover it. The Bodh Gaya Temple Act of 1949 produced a management committee with Hindu and Buddhist members and a Hindu district magistrate as chair — a compromise still disputed by Buddhists today.
- Court associationSwami Vivekananda
Dharmapāla and Vivekānanda both addressed the World's Parliament of Religions at Chicago in September 1893 and travelled parts of America together afterwards. Two South Asians used the same platform to argue that their traditions were the equal of Christianity, and both went home to build organisations. Dharmapāla spent the rest of his life litigating for control of the Mahābodhi temple at Bodh Gayā, which was then in the custody of a Śaiva mahant and remains a disputed arrangement.
- Monastic foundationMahabodhi Society, Calcutta
Dharmapāla founded the Mahabodhi Society in Calcutta in 1891 because that is where the courts and the presses were, and used both to reconnect Sri Lankan, Burmese, Japanese and Western Buddhists with the Indian sites. A tradition India had almost entirely lost was reassembled from outside, by a Sinhalese working in a colonial capital, using litigation and a journal as his instruments.
On these journeys
Sources
Mahabodhi Society records; Dharmapala writings; histories of Buddhist modernism.
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