ABSTRACT
When reason failed, it was inevitable that other methods should be tried. Spence Hardy claimed that Buddhist priests began to take alarm by 1826 (Spence Hardy 1865: 286-7), but his estimate is conservative. The 1819 School Report for the Methodist Mission (Wesleyan Mission Press, Colombo) (SR) claimed that Buddhism was attempting to re-establish itself in several parts of the South (SR 1819: 199). And Browning, CMS missionary in Kandy, heard in the early 1820s that Buddhist monks were persuading the people not to support a missionary school. He commented, ‘This is almost the first instance wherein the influence of the Priests operating against us has absolutely come under my notice.’1 The CMS Reports that followed, however, reveal mounting evidence of resistance – in the laity to Christian teaching and within the monastic Sangha, to reduce missionary influence.2 Selkirk reported in 1830, ‘There is one thing which I perceive from my visits to and conversations with the people: they are in a state of greater excitement than ever I knew them before. They become angry and impatient when they are told by us that they are sinners, that their idolatry will not profit them, or that it is wrong to live without considering what they are doing, or whither they are going’ (Selkirk 1844: 352). Then, at a Buddhist festival in 1833, he found that Christian tracts were eagerly taken from the missionaries, not out of interest, but at the urging of a Buddhist monk who wanted to burn them. Selkirk explains that some tracts were torn in front of their eyes, others were stuck in trees, while some were destined to become wadding for guns (Selkirk 1844: 419).3
