ABSTRACT
In this chapter, the author tests Blackburn's approach by moving across the Indian Ocean and focusing on Venerable Kirinde Sri Dhammananda: a Sri Lankan monk who played an important role in the propagation and development of Theravada Buddhism in Malaysia during the twentieth century. He not only seeks to uncover wider social processes that shaped Venerable Dhammananda and the Theravada traditions in colonial and post-colonial Malaysia, but also wish to explore how competing local logics, strategies, and relationships intersect and play out in the shaping of Venerable Dhammananda as a transnational Buddhist missionary. Many Sri Lankans were recruited through the colonial offices in Sri Lanka and Malaya. Conversations with several leading laypeople responsible for the creation of pan-sectarian Buddhist groups during the 1980s pointed to the role that Venerable Dhammananda's nonsectarian outlook played in their group's openness to the different Buddhist traditions.
