ABSTRACT
In the previous chapter I assigned the rise of a new brand of Buddhism, which I labelled ‘Protestant’, to two overlapping causes: the influence of the British, especially their Protestant missionaries, and the rise of an urban middle (including professional) class. The British and their missionaries have left, and indeed many Sinhalese Protestant Christians have formally reverted to Buddhism; the middle class, of course, is still there and the cities continue to grow, while the countryside too is being urbanized. One can therefore ask, a whole generation after Independence, which features of Protestant Buddhism seem likely to be of permanent influence and which were more evanescent products of narrow circumstance.
