ABSTRACT
Joseph Joinville (or de Jonville), Captain Robert Percival, Rev. James Cordiner, Dr John Davy, Rev. William Harvard and his Methodist colleagues, and Edward Upham, the writers I have chosen to represent the first wave of visitors to Sri Lanka in the nineteenth century, cover a variety of roles. Each encountered Buddhism in a different way and with a different agenda. All were pioneers and knew it. They questioned, categorized and evaluated. And they did not come to the same conclusions.
