Rooted in the premise that “to believe, however briefly, in the possibility of reconciliation among warring groups is to experience a glimmer of regenerated vision . . . to become a pilgrim in the midst of conflicting evidence” (xiii), Bardwell L. Smith’s Precarious Balance: Sinhala Buddhism and the Forces of Pluralism is a posthumous collection of six essays earlier published between 1972–2012. Across the collection, Smith maintains this hopeful vision as he analyzes some of the most tendentious moments in Sri Lanka’s history, ranging from the ancient Anurādhapura Kingdom (ca. 4th century BCE–11th century CE) through the post-colonial period and the early decades of Sri Lanka’s nationhood, exploring a series of co-constitutive linkages and disjunctures in the life of Sinhala Buddhism as it constructed and maintained incomplete hegemony over the island’s pluralist societies.
The first and second essays examine how ancient Pāli language chronicles sought to represent an ideal social order in the Anurādhapura period and the strategies by which its rulers utilized this representation to cement their moral and political authority. This idealized portrayal, Smith argues, served as a foundational blueprint for later constructions of Sinhala Buddhist identity, a project that was not without liability. “If the sacred reality in which society is rooted provides meaning to social and political existence,” such forms of meaning-making also render themselves vulnerable (35). While political and religious authority derived their legitimacy through symbolic, ritual, and doctrinal technologies that are vital for institutional stability, they also provided the very means by which such claims could be weakened or contested by virtue of disharmony and abuse of power.
The third essay highlights Smith’s most compelling analytical framework, a working definition of pluralism in the island’s medieval Buddhist-majority kingdoms as kind of dynamic tension between the “centripetal and centrifugal tendencies” of diverse cultures (55). The chapter examines specific instances of religious assimilation, such as the incorporation of Hindu deities into the Buddhist pantheon of dēvas and the hybrid practices of veneration popular among everyday people. For Smith, these processes of assimilation were simultaneously a strategy for maintaining Sinhala hegemony and a reflection of the diverse cultural influences that shaped Sri Lankan society (up to the limit that such assimilation did not threaten the contingent supremacy of Buddhism as arbiter of that hegemony).
The focus shifts to the Polonnaruwa Kingdom (ca. 11th–13th century CE) in the fourth essay, where Smith continues to develop the argument about pluralism as dynamic tension between the centripetal and the centrifugal in relation to Anurādhapura’s successor states. Polonnaruwa’s rulers, Smith contends, attempted but ultimately failed to reconstruct the popular and courtly basis of Anurādhapura’s forms of political allegiance, a central preoccupation for the kingdom’s Buddhists (93). In his analysis, Polonnaruwa’s decline as the island’s center of religious and political power in the 13th century derived from the failure of its monarchs and religious elite to sustain this equilibrium in the face of increasing pluralism, culminating in a series of “conflicts, stalemates, and disintegration” (78). With the decline of the Polonnaruwa Kingdom came the end of a singular island-wide ceremonial and ritual center, which soon gave way to multiple overlapping loci of state power.
The final two essays explore the interplay between the forces of modernity and Sinhala Buddhist identity in these new political formations, focusing on the impact of European colonialism and post-colonial nationhood. Acknowledging the powerful intellectual roots of Sinhala Buddhist subjectivity in the ancient past, Smith examines the ways in which modern Buddhists have grappled with the realities of pluralism in the context of developing and sustaining a nation-state. The chapters explore crises modern Sri Lankans face, attuned to echoes of earlier struggles concerning the tension between preserving tradition and adapting to new realities. Central to Smith’s exploration is the subject of reform in the context of nationalism. “There is no issue of importance to either the internal life of the Sangha, the relationship between bhikkhus and laypeople, or the impact of Buddhism on contemporary thought and society,” Smith argues, “that is not centrally dependent on how and in what ways reform takes place” (110). Smith’s primary analytical tools—the balance between centralizing and peripheralizing tenancies, between unity and orthodoxy on the one hand, and representations of diversity marshalled in service of hegemony on the other—are once again brought to bear on the tumultuous growing pains of Sri Lanka’s early nationhood and attempts at self-definition as a “Buddhist country” in the second half of the 20th century (127-129).
Smith passed away in November 2022, and thus the book’s gathered essays understandably do not consider more recent and contemporary tests of Sri Lanka’s fragile pluralism, leaving open the possibility for scholars to engage with his arguments about the nature of power concerning, for example, contemporary expressions of Buddhist nationalism in the post-civil war period or moments of inter-ethnic and inter-religious solidarity such as the 2022 Aragaliya. Despite the force with which Smith developed these lines of analysis about the contingent and interdependent nature of religious and political power in successive Sinhalese Buddhist polities, the reader often finds themselves wanting a more concrete, closer treatment of particular historical conjunctures as a counterbalance to a more structural approach largely derived from abstracted lists of types or kinds, such as the “six modes of assimilation” in the third essay (57-72). Yet, Precarious Balance holds tremendous value for scholars of Theravāda Buddhist history and those of Sri Lanka more generally by gathering together some of the most important contributions by one of the field’s defining voices into a volume that celebrates his lifelong commitment to pluralism, tolerance, and reconciliation while scrutinizing the reasons these have been and continue to be difficult to sustain.
Tyler A. Lehrer is an assistant professor of history at Virginia Wesleyan University.
Tyler A. Lehrer
Date Of Review:
October 31, 2024
