ИСТИНА

The paper explores the factors behind the career of monk Saralanka, a native of port city of Tenasserim who moved to Ayutthaya in Siam in the 1730s or 1740s, allegedly took part in Siamese monastic mission sent to Lanka in 1756 to help revive monastic ordination on the island, came back to Tenasserim via Ayutthaya in the early 1760s, was deported to Upper Burma in 1766 or 1767 and lived there for some 14 years before returning to Tenasserim. During his residence in Upper Burma, Saralanka made a successful mini-career starting as foreign military deportee with questionable monastic status and ending as an abbot of his own monastery supported by influential courtiers. The life story of Saralanka could be traced with the help of his testimonies that were recorded several times while he had resided in Upper Burma and of which at least two survive. Interestingly enough, manuscript copies of two testimonies dating to about 1767 and the early 1780s display significant differences in the way Saralanka presented himself and the mission to Lanka he participated in, differences that most likely reflected the changes in his position at the Burmese court. Proposed paper discusses Saralanka’s trajectory to recognition by juxtaposing the analysis of characteristics of Burmese monastic leadership from the 1750s to the 1770s that might have facilitated Saralanka’s success, of the trend towards reinvigoration of Buddhist networking between Lanka, Siam, and Burma in the eighteenth century, and of individual capacities of Saralanka as an actor adapting to shifting perceptions of his own monastic enterprise and the overall venture of the sasana. The case of Saralanka who embodies the features of both marginal and mainstream monasticism offers valuable material for a discussion of individuality and individual contributions in the making and negotiation of Buddhism in historical Southern Asia.